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http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/sometimes-cunnilingus-is-just-cunnilingus

Love this article! Voices my exact frustrations about people using ‘science’ to prove things. Being an engineering student I can clearly see many flaws with this science that is supposedly all knowing in our world. This science that has been led primarily by white men, having a majority of scientific studies developed, executed and interpreted through the white, male lens.

This male interpretation of science has clearly affected findings, as for example, in the ‘scientific’ idea of reproduction that society has. An incorrect narrative about reproduction exists in the scientific world. The story of reproduction many of us have been told goes as follows: there is a female egg that’s just sitting there doing nothing really, while on the other end there is a huge crazy race of competing male sperm trying to aggressively get at this passive female egg. The first sperm that gets to the egg wins, digging itself into the egg and claiming its victory through reproduction. This is in fact a hugely male interpretation of reproduction, and it isn’t quite right but has been widely accepted by society without question, because this is what the intelligent male scientists of our patriarchal society told us.

The reality is that the female egg actually has a much more active role in the process than we are told. The egg contains proteins, found outside of the egg, that help with the selection process of the egg. So in fact, it’s not the first sperm, or any sperm that can simply attach to the egg, but there is a specific chemistry that needs to take place for even this basic, elemental reproduction process to take place. Additionally, “early this year, scientists showed that mammalian eggs secrete a certain enzyme to avoid being fertilized by more than one sperm (which could bring death to egg and embryo).” So the egg even has a way of making sure that she is not attacked by multiple sperm at once, a sort of defence mechanism, where if her enzymes don’t get their right to choose, no one gets what they want. This is how important consent is even in this primary concept of chemical reactions, how amazing is that!

In this world, the narrative has been warped to make the feminine seem passive and without a choice, while the masculine is active, competitive, and gets what he wants when he gets to the girl, even from the very first moment of conception. This is the perfect example of how much a male point of view can affect a scientific study and known biological ‘belief’ that has been around for decades. But after further male and female combined scientific research, a much more complex, beautiful, and accurate reality has been revealed. Elementally, the importance of chemistry, selection, and choice in reproduction, not aggression, and imposition are clear necessities, not rights, but necessities, in natural biology.

I think this is such an important finding, it should really be announce in every newspaper. Science needs more women (thus gender equality) for more of this genius!

You can read more about their findings in this excellent article here.

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http://www.theguardian.com/education/mortarboard/2013/jun/20/why-i-started-a-feminist-society

This article clearly depicts the continued need for feminism today. It was a very frustrating read, seeing the lack of support that these brave young women received in their fight for women’s equality. It also makes me feel that a very important task in the feminist struggle is to bring more males aboard. Many say that women don’t need man’s help, because we aren’t weak little sheep that need to be protected, we need to fight for our own rights. I feel that this is a very polarizing way of looking at women’s struggle, and that it can be a little destructive to the struggle as well, making our gender an island instead of understanding our connectedness with the rest. I think that often (such as in this article) it is men who stand in the way of women’s success in campaigns such as this one, and if there were more men who identified as feminists, then these kinds of campaigns (headed by women) would see greater success. I think that women’s issues are also men’s issues and this is why men are essential in our fight, because it isn’t only women who suffer from living in a patriarchal society, although we certainly are the key victims. I think it is evident that both genders would prosper from living in a world where men and women could mutually respect one another and be treated as equals.

Every man has a mother, many have sisters, wives, and female friends that they care about and want to see thrive in their lives, not raped, sexually harassed, abused, or with eating disorders because society has made them feel inadequate. This is why in our struggle as feminists, it makes me so happy when I hear a man openly say he is a feminist, just as much as when I hear a woman say she is a feminist to the core. To me it seems so simple and fundamentally necessary to want equality for both sexes. I believe that the only place where we should really digress is in how this equality should be reached, in which case much dialogue and discourse needs to take place to find the right solution. But I simply don’t understand how a caring human being living in this world and seeing the crap women such as the ones from this article have had to deal with could still insist that he/she is not a feminist; does not want equality.

So for a man reading this and wondering what he can do to join the struggle, here is a thought-provoking article talking about ways men can be allies to women, along with a male-privilege checkist, that may help put things into perspective 🙂