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Sexualities
DOI: 10.1177/136346070363002
2003; 6; 277Sexualities
Lisa Jean Moore
Children's Books
`Billy, the Sad Sperm with No Taiľ: Representations of Sperm in
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Abstract Books about human reproduction produced for Englishspeaking
children both construct and perpetuate processes of
social reproduction. This social reproduction takes place within
the context of capitalist, patriarchal and heteronormative sociocultural
norms. Information about human reproduction is
`processeď and `distilleď for the young ­ it is made sterile and
perfected. For the purposes of this analysis, 18 children's books
were interpreted. It is within these sections that I build a theory
about the transference that occurs between humans and cells. I
also develop a nascent theory about the interconnectedness of
disembodiment and anthropomorphism. Through the use of the
constant comparative method, I conclude with a discussion of the
process of sperm taking on the role of social reproducer of
culture in secular books whereas God assumes this role in
Christian books.
Keywords children's books, heteronormativity, human reproduction,
representation, sperm
Lisa Jean Moore
College of Staten Island, USA
`Billy, the Sad Sperm with No Taiľ:
Representations of Sperm in
Children's Books
It was from an early age, around six or seven, that my initiation into the
intricacies of sperm representation began. My first lesson consisted of my
mother and me sitting on our `entertaining' sofa in the living room
(instead of the ratty family-room couch). The sofa, a forbidden place for
me and ordinarily covered with a slick and shiny plastic wrapper, was plush
and inviting. But it simultaneously indicated the serious nature of our
pending conversation. My mother seemed giddy, smiling at me enthusiastically
as we opened the pages to a new book. From How Babies Are Made
(Andry and Schepp, 1968), I learned that `the sperm, which come from
the father's testicles, are sent into the mother through his penis' and that
`a sperm from your father joined with an egg from your mother' ­ there
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were illustrations of chickens, dogs and humans engaged in different
sexual positions and white sperm in pursuit of the egg. My mother said I
could read the book whenever I wanted and put it in a special place for
me near the couch. It was a new treasure. My earliest introduction to
sperm was part of a memorable event and to this day, I can still conjure
up images of sperm as white eel-shaped illustrations positioned in dogs,
humans and chickens.
I share this personal story to suggest there are different ways individuals
can come to know sperm. Sperm matters to human bodies and beings. It
is imagined and represented in both the musings of curious children and
the biotechnical manipulation of reproductive processes. At least presently,
each individual body originates in part from sperm ­ in this much, human
beings have a common sperm origin. But our understandings of sperm can
be quite different as sperm is layered with meanings related to human
sexuality, reproduction, life and death, health and illness, masculinity and
femininity, and populations. Having had many experiences with sperm,1 it
is remarkable how a seemingly private and personal relationship is so
mediated by public interactions and representations.
Many of our intimate dealings with semen are shrouded in secrecy or
confidentiality such as books read with our mothers, secrets shared in a
coatroom, wet dreams hidden in our beds, or reproductive services
pursued in the fertility industry. Ironically, these private and secret experiences
are the products of social reproduction ­ for example, children's
books are mass-produced and marketed, and professionals (i.e. in the
medical and legal fields) coordinate donor insemination.
Books about human reproduction, produced for English-speaking
children, both construct and perpetuate processes of social reproduction.
This social reproduction takes place within the context of capitalist, patriarchal
and heteronormative socio-cultural norms. Information about
human reproduction is `processeď and `distilleď for the young ­ it is made
sterile and perfected. The stylized and sterilized representations are then
narrated to children in order to teach them about `where they have come
from'. Similar to how research scientists and healthcare providers sanitize
and sterilize medical instruments for their work, knowledge about human
reproduction must be scrubbed, washed, massaged, and homogenized for
consumption by the young. The reproduction of the `perfect chilď is both
the purpose of contemporary human reproduction and the purpose of
social reproduction of these books. As these biological actions are illustrated
for the young audience, so too are heteronormative values imparted
to reproduce social hierarchies. Humans then, are both biologically and
materially reproduced by the circulation of sperm while simultaneously
socially reproduced by images and narratives about the circulation of
sperm.
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Children's culture is both a fantastic and a dangerous space to explore
sperm's discursive and representational constructions. `When we want to
prove that something is so basic to human nature that it cannot be
changed, we point to its presence in our children' (Jenkins, 1998: 15).
Both children and sperm are constructed as some form of pre-socialized
creatures that exist as biological and thus remain unmediated, animalistic,
primitive, and nave. The truth of human nature is embodied in children
and sperm cells. And we often lament how social forces corrupt children,
through an aging process.
Even though it is an interactive event that requires seemingly endless
social negotiation and power transfer, human reproduction is simply
assumed to be some innate biological drive that furthers progressive
human evolution. In order to erase this interactive event, we point to the
presence of heterosexual and reproductive urges and desires within our
children. The nave chilďs body, similar to the imagined sperm cell, is
naturally heterosexual, monogamous, reproductive, gendered ­ reading
these texts (children's facts of life books), we are again reminded of the
bombardment with social processes that fabricate universal truth.
Through her analysis of Peter Pan, Rose (1998) asserts that children's
literature is written by adults, read to small children by adults, and often
purchased or borrowed by adults. In this process of controlling the
production and accessibility of children's literature, adult writers and
readers project a notion of the child based on the adulťs desire. Rose asks
us to interrogate the adulťs goals and desires in children's literature with
specific attention to how these desires shape cultural production. In her
estimation, children's own sexuality is erased in these children's books
(they are never figured as sexual and sex acts are always couched as something
to happen when they are married adults). However, in my reading
I see children's sexuality as implied as an eventual natural unfolding of a
code or script hidden in their cells. As Rose states, adults' `panic' that
children's sexuality will be radically different than their own often fuels a
great instantiation of heteronormative regulation. `Children's fiction
emerges, therefore, out of a conception of both the child and the world
as knowable in a direct and unmediated way, a conception which places
the innocence of the child and a primary state of language and/or culture
in a close and mutually dependent relation' (Rose, 1998: 59).
My sperm in shining armor
Guided by the work of Star and Griesemer (1989), I understand semen as
a boundary object ­ that is, the same object, semen, is brought into
different arenas and its flexibility allows it to be used for local purposes
and inscribed with local meaning by different social worlds (Clarke, 1991).
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Meanings about semen accrue through practices and uses. For example,
members of certain professional groups including andrologists (physicians
and scientists who perform laboratory evaluations of male fertility), semen
bank owners and operators, and reproductive scientists all depend upon
constructing semen as a healthy, attractive, fertile and desirable
commodity. Sex workers, on the other hand, have called semen,
`hazardous waste materiaľ referring to its potentially dangerous or lethal
quality (Moore, 1997).
Focusing my analytic lens on sperm itself provides me with interesting
angles from which to interpret how sperm is `spenť, is `reabsorbeď, and
how it `swims', `spurts', and careens, crashes, through ducts, penises,
vaginas, test tubes, labs, families, culture, and politics. Groundbreaking
work by Martin (1991: 500) has explored the absurdity of `objective and
true' knowledge about fertilization by revealing the ways in which knowledge
is always socially and temporally situated. She explained that these
biology textbooks construct tropes, which reveal the cultural beliefs and
practices enacted in their suggestive images. Sperm cells become performers
acting out heterosexist fantasies/realities of patriarchal culture by
`keeping alive some of the hoariest old stereotypes about weak damsels in
distress and their strong male rescuers'. But we are exposed to these narratives
well before we enter middle school. My desire is to go beyond the
easily argued interpretation of children's facts of life books as reliant upon
and reinforcing of gendered and sexed hierarchies in the social worlds. By
using grounded theory analysis, I not only interpret the similarities
between sperm representations in these children's books but I also
incorporate outlier books as well as their differences. This includes an
exploration into the processes of transference, disembodiment and anthropomorphism
that emerge from these books.
Bettelheim's (1976) The Uses of Enchantment explores the creation,
dissemination and consumption of fairy tales as processes of socialization.
To read fairy tales is to transmit role models to children in preparation for
social rituals, most importantly heteronormative sexuality.2 But it is not
only the transmission of cultural norms that children's literature provides.
Sociological and historical analyses of many texts have revealed persistent
and pejorative representations of subordination, inferiority, weakness, and
stupidity for those who rank lower with respect to social power. Gender,
racial/ethnic, age, and ability biases have been embedded in children's
literature since the beginning of the genre (Ayala, 1999; Council on Interracial
Books for Children, 1980; Day, 1999; Klein, 1985; Nasatir, 2002).
Sex and gender role stereotyping is perhaps the most prevalent form of
discrimination in preschool children's books (Kolbe and La Voie, 1981;
Lehr, 2001).
Davies' (1989) seminal qualitative and post-structural study of
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children's play, children's speech and children's reading practices, reveals
the immersion of children in the culture, pragmatics and sanctions of
`doing gender' (West and Zimmerman, 1987). However, Davies remains
hopeful about a chilďs alternative or even transgressive comprehension
of normatively constructed texts. Children are also meaning-making
beings and may interpret things differently than the way adults intend
them to.
Children are subjected to the material forces of the discursive and interactive
practices through which the male­female dualism is constituted as a given. They
can learn, however, to see this as one form of discourse that they are free to resist
if they are freed from the moral obligation to constitute themselves in terms of
a polar definition based on genital/reproductive sex. (Davies, 1989: 40)
A chilďs ability to construct an alternate `reading' of a text is complicated
by their self-reported practice of `adopt[ing] discourses simply in order to
please teachers' and other adults (Fraser, 1990: 77). Although not the aim
of this article, it would be valuable to interrogate children's roles in the
production of their own culture and how children do transgressive reading
of these `heterosexual manuals'.
Moving beyond the self-identified fairy tales, which are clearly fictionalized
and fantastic, children's facts of life books make different claims
under the rubric of `science'. Perhaps in maintaining a fairy tale motif,
children's books can ease into science, a marker of maturity, while at the
same time preserving a notion of the precious innocence of childhood.
There is a more profound assertion of the pre-eminence and `naturalness'
of reproductive development and participation. Nevertheless, these books
also communicate norms, sanctions and rewards about human reproduction
to children aged four to ten. As demonstrated later, these books are
moral tales with protagonist heroes and damsels and villains culminating
in a happily-ever-after ending. Dorothy Broderick,3 a librarian and
renowned intellectual freedom advocate (co-founder of Voice of Youth
Advocates), addressed the contents of children's facts of life books in her
1978 article `Sex Education: Books for Young Children' which are perhaps
the social prescription for biological fairy tales:
Sex Education books should impart accurate information and healthy attitudes.
Two essential attitudes must come through loud and clear: (1) the sexual act
that leads to a baby being created should be connected with human emotions
of loving and tenderness the man and woman feel for each other and make clear
the commitment they have to each other and (2) the book should convey that
having a baby is a conscious decision on the part of the couple and not an
inevitability of the sex act. (Broderick, 1978: 160)
Although heroic in her fight against the repressive and omnipresent
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threat of censorship, these `essential attitudes' have become the backdrop
of almost all children's books about reproduction.
However, this monolithic origin story is not always true, and children
who do not enter the world this way could be confused or shamed by
reading it. It is difficult to deny the ideological statements embedded in
this prescription for sex education children's books. In these books,
heteronormative, committed, intentional sexual relations are presented as
a necessary context when representing reproduction. When I began my
research, I was interested to see if the pace of technological innovation and
changing methods of conception has amended children's books' contents.
After a brief discussion of my methodology, I review the state-of-theart
scientific construction of sperm. My analysis continues with an exploration
into the different cultural, social, economic and material contexts
of sperm representation in my sample of children's books. I offer my
theory of the implications of children's literature, which renders and
describes sperm as heroic. Through a more detailed comparison of two
types of books, I suggest that secular and Christian children's books differ
in their approach to narrating and imagining reproduction by placing
agency in different sources. This is part of a larger project about the
multiple constructions and productions of semen in different industries,
such as sperm science (Moore, 2002), DNA forensics, and semen banks
(Moore and Schmidt, 1999). These industries do not exist within a
vacuum, and as a sociologist, I work to contextualize these industries.
They are all part of a contemporary moment in which men's power and
status are being questioned and reconfigured (and also reproduced and
maintained). Interpreting different social worlds' portrayals of sperm, I
work to reveal the rules by which sperm becomes good and bad, productive
and destructive. In so doing, I hope to promote the field of gender
and sexuality studies by extrapolating from semen how contemporary
western men are depicted as good and bad.
Methods
For the purposes of this analysis, 18 children's books were interpreted.
The books chosen for this examination were selected based on the following
inclusion criteria:
* written in the English language
* representation of sperm through narrative or visual images
* hard copy, text-based
* audience ­ intended for children aged 4­10.
This study does not claim to be exhaustive nor representative of all
children's books on human reproduction. However, I did work to
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incorporate a range of variation based on the dimensions of publication
date (range: 1968 to 2001), gender of author (M 6 /F 10 /Both 2), type
of illustration (3 photography, 11 cartooning, 3 painting, 1 pen and ink
drawing) and stated ideology (4 religious and 14 secular). Each book was
read and analyzed by a single coder. All the books, sperm representations
and narratives about sperm were assigned categories (e.g. scientific,
humorous, religious) and dimensions (e.g. anthropomorphized, nonhuman/speaking,
non-speaking, personhood). Analytic memos were
written to explore these categories and dimensions. To check coder
reliability, a second analyst recoded the books.
These data were then analyzed based on a modified grounded theory
methodology. According to Strauss, a key developer of grounded theory,
it is through one's immersion in the data that these comparisons become
the `stepping stones' for formal theories of patterns of action and interaction
between and among various types of social units. Grounded theory
is a deductive process whereby analysts incorporate as much data as
possible in order for the formative theories to be used as deductive tools.
This tool, the grounded theory, ultimately aims to incorporate the range
of human experiences in its articulation and execution.
`Theory evolves during actual research, and it does this through
continuous interplay between analysis and data collection' (Strauss and
Corbin, 1994: 273). My methodology combines grounded theory techniques
with content and discourse analysis as a way to develop theoretically
rich explanations and interpretations of semen. Content analysis is
the study of social artifacts (Babbie, 1989), which are used to make inferences
to the larger society (Weber, 1990). Similar to other qualitative
research, content analysis can be exploratory and descriptive, enabling
limited insight into why significant relationships or trends occur. The aim
is not toward standardization of facts into scientific units, but rather an
appreciation and play with the range of variation of a particular phenomenon.
Outliers, books that do not fall neatly into the collection of the most
common themes and concepts, are useful because they enable analysts to
capture this range of variation and dimensions of the concepts. This
process builds an understanding of the diversity of human experience.
For the purposes of this article, I have queried the following areas:
* What are the contexts in which sperm may be represented in children's
books?
* What are some of the underlying ideologies that can be extrapolated
from these contexts and representations?
* How do children's books represent the state-of-the-art scientific innovations
in sperm science? In other words, if science constructs a `truth'
of sperm to be mostly polymorphic, often non-motile, and sometimes
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dwindling, are children's books incorporating these differences in their
text?
* Are assisted reproductive technologies considered as ways to become
pregnant?
* Are deformed or slow sperm represented at all? How?
* Are there `gay sperm' or other non-normative, renegade sperm
represented in children's books?4
* How gendered are textual and visual narratives of sperm?
* Is there male bonding or bullying in sperm representations?
One of the significant contributions of Davies' study is exploration of
the difficulty of using an adult understanding of the world, as lens to interpret
a chilďs understanding of the world. `Meanings which seemed to me
to be readily available to any listener were not necessarily readily available
to [children]' (Davies, 1989: viii). Children's books, perhaps more so than
other texts, are polysemous. Because I am no longer a child, I do not have
access to that interpretive angle in my own research. As Buckingham
(1990) articulates,
Interpreting any children's program, and perhaps particularly one aimed at a very
young audience, is fraught with difficulties. As adults, we are not the intended
audience; and as such, there is a significant risk of `misreading', taking things too
literally, or simply lapsing into pretentiousness. It is all too easy to dismiss such
programs as boring or simplistic, or alternatively to find them cute or anarchic
or surrealistic, responses which could be seen as characteristics of how adults
relate to children generally. The danger here is that we end up simply imposing
adult categories, and thereby making unwarranted assumptions about viewers.
Spotting the intertextual references and symbolic associations or alternatively
`hunting the stereotypes', are easy games to play; but they tell us very little about
how children themselves interpret and relate to what they watch.
Thus, one limitation of my research is that it is not an empirical account
of how children experience and integrate these texts into their understandings
of the human body and social relationships. A robust understanding
of how children, as social and cultural agents, interpret the
polysemous nature of these texts would require detailed analyses of how
children consume these images.5
A brief scientific biography of normal sperm
Traditional fairy tales are essentially fables transmitting the norms of social
reproduction. These stories provide a vision of how lives begin, progress
and end. As normative structures, fairy tales are scripts of how we should
live and reproduce culture. Many contemporary western stories about
human reproduction emerge from a scientific context but similar to fairy
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tales they are just as rhetorical. These books are reliant upon the fields of
biology, anatomy, gynecology, and urology. Clearly, when labeling and
narrating reproductive processes, authors and illustrators use scientific
terminology such as `sperm', `egg', `ovum', and `conception'. Furthermore,
the images, whether rendered through photography, cartooning, or
painting, are knowable through the use of scientific technologies such as
electron microscopes, dissection, and x-rays. This scientific context is
important to acknowledge because it is the children's books' reliance on
science that bolsters their contents as being objective and truthful. But just
because there is a claim of scientific relevance and objectivity does not
mean that these stories are not also fantastic and reveal prevailing moral
and social imperatives. Indeed, what is remarkable about these books ­
published over a 40-year span ­ is the homogeneity of social messages
reiterated through the child-appropriate scientific lens.
Before I begin my analysis of these children's books, it is important to
review briefly the widely accepted contributions of contemporary reproductive
endocrinology as a baseline for scientific interpolation translated
into these `child-appropriate' texts. Sperm, and more specifically semen, is
a substance essential to human reproduction. Determining the normal
semen and sperm has been the work of scientists for many centuries in
response to experiences of male infertility (Moore, 2002).
Sperm count, motility and morphology are the scientific and clinical
parameters used to categorize the relative health of a man's fertility. Sperm
count is the number of sperm cells in a quantity of semen. A concentration
of more than 48 million per milliliter is considered normal (Guzick et al.,
2001). Some men who have lower sperm counts can experience fertility
but it is assumed that they rank highly on the other measures. It is often
said in the fertility industry that the quality of sperm is more important
than the quantity.
Motility6 is the movement of sperm cells within semen. A motility of
greater than 63% is considered normal. Morphology, or the shape of sperm
cells, must be greater than 12% of normal morphology (Guzick et al.,
2001). During the 1930s, G.L. Moench sketched out 50 variations in
sperm morphology with names such as, microsperm, megalosperm, puff
ball type of cell, and double neck. No longer do we simply have to contend
with the 50 variations of sperm cells represented by Moenche, we now
must understand sperm as dissected into distinct parts: cytoplasm, head,
neck, mid-piece and tail. Spermatogenesis,7 the process by which the
primordial stem cells evolve into spermatogonia, is broken into various
stages to identify the abnormality in the process that leads to male factor
infertility (Spark, 1988).
If you were to examine microscopically a sample of semen from most
men, you would find that the sperm are polymorphic; there are several
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different shapes and sizes of sperm cells. Also some sperm would be
moving in haphazard directions while others would be stationary. `Ideally',
a sperm cell `shoulď have an oval head, with a connecting mid-piece and
a long straight tail and move in a forward direction. If too many sperms
are abnormally shaped (round heads; pin heads; very large heads; double
heads; absent tails), this means the sperm will not be able to fertilize the
egg. As in most human endeavors, scientific methods attempt to normalize
human variation and create standards. Based on this brief scientific
synopsis of sperm, and given the great range of variability of sperm's shape
and functionality, I am curious about the accuracy of representations of
sperm in and across many venues.
Analysis
There are five different contexts I explore in this analysis. They are:
* the biological continuum
* setting the mood
* the site of reproduction
* images of conception
* the spermatic hierarchy
It is within these sections that I build a theory about the transference that
occurs between humans and cells. I also develop a nascent theory about
the interconnectedness of disembodiment and anthropomorphism. In this
article, I use the term anthropomorphism as the act of attributing human
forms or qualities to entities, which are not human or attaining `personhooď
(or fully human, for sperm and egg in homo sapiens are `human').
Children's book authors anthropomorphize nearly everything from letters
of the alphabet to cats in hats to Bernstein bears. Specifically, anthropomorphism
is describing sperm or egg cells as having human form and
possessing human characteristics such as jealousy, competition, or love.
This anthropomorphism of sperm and eggs offers a way for sperm or eggs
to dance their way into children's imaginations. Disembodiment is the
process whereby body parts and organs are removed from their physical
and somatic contexts and viewed as independent of the human forms from
which they come.
Within these children's books there is a relationship between disembodiment
of reproductive owners of the means of production (the humans) and
anthropomorphism of workers of reproduction (the sperm and eggs).
Through the use of the constant comparative method, I conclude with a
discussion of the process of sperm adopting the role of social reproducer of
culture in secular books whereas in Christian books God assumes this role.
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The birds and the bees: biological continuum
A heuristic measure used to situate a majority of the books' subject matter
places humans in a biological continuum of flowers, amphibians and
mammals. Many books precede the discussion of human reproduction
with an exploration of the greater realm of nature and hence `naturaľ
relationships. Other species, such as flowers, birds, bees, and dogs all `fit
together' ­ a description used in several books as a way to indicate the
predetermined way that `beings' intuit how to reproduce. Universally
books present idealized images of biological exemplars with no imperfections.
Furthermore, there are virtually no images of infertility, disease,
mutation, homosexuality, auto sexuality, sexual violence, or coercion.
In many children's books, the first few pages are about the courtship
and performance of all species. `Love starts as a twinkle in two people's
eyes, warming the hearts of both gals and guys. Animals, too, feel this
wild attraction; it makes the males spring into action. Once they've picked
a special sweetheart, then dazzling displays of affection starť (Davis,
2001: 14). After enacting some natural role of performance, `fitting
together'8 culminates when a baby is achieved. In the end the perfect
baby is on a pedestal with a cheering, delighted audience. This is the
grand finale where the baby is the epitome of achievement for the two
parents. The treatment of a chilďs birth as an achievement, albeit natural,
is echoed in many children's books. Is this supposed to make the child
(reader) feel good, that they've done something remarkable already by
being born? Perhaps this ties in to the experiences of making children feel
special when we teach them about heterosexual reproduction, as in the
anecdote at the beginning of this article.
Setting the mood-creating fertile ground
Emotions are used to separate entities on the biological continuum ­
flowers differ from animals because humans feel (and apparently so do
sperm cells). The books work to set the ambience or the context under
which reproduction should occur.
(a) Emotional context: Heterosexual, properly gendered humans are in
love, in a committed, monogamous relationship (there is no question
of paternity). They are intentional actors guided by their intense
feelings.
(b) Physical context: These actors have appropriate anatomical equipment.
They are potent and fertile bodies that fit together, particularly
in the missionary position.
(c) Material context: The humans perform their sex act in a home in a
bed (often decoratively detailed).
One book (Mayle, 1977) even depicts a sperm in a tuxedo entitled The
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romantic sperm. The caption reads: `How could an egg resist a sperm like
this?' (Fig. 1). This exceptional anthropomorphized sperm cell clearly
indicates the contexts of human reproduction ­ emotional: it is seated on
a heart and blushing and smiling in a suggestive fashion; physical: it is
capable with senses (eyes, nose, mouth, hands, tail); material: it is classed
and cultured with a top hat and a bow tie and `tails'. The sperm cell
becomes a character to root for in his Gatsbyesque pursuit of goals and
desires.
There is also a concomitant moral tale of the specialness of the sex act,
a personal and intimate connection not to be shared with just anyone.
Weddings are illustrated in several books (Baker, 1990; Christenson, 1982;
Hummel, 1982; Nystrom, 1995; Westhemier, 2001). Transference
between sperm and egg cells and human beings is also very evident in these
books. For example, just as the man and woman are in love, so too are
sperm and egg. There is a process whereby the emotions and agency of
the human reproducers are transferred to the materials of reproduction.
Sexualities 6(3­4)
288
Figure 1. From Peter Mayle (1977) Where Did I Come From? The Facts of Life Without Any
Nonsense and with Illustrations. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Citadel
Press/Kensington Publishing Corp. www.kensingtonbooks.com
Copyright Citadal Press/
Kensington Publishing Corp.
Copyright Citadal Press/
Kensington Publishing Corp.
Copyright Citadal Press/
Kensington Publishing Corp.
Copyright Citadal Press/
Kensington Publishing Corp.
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by Lucie Jarkovska on October 12, 2007http://sexualities.sagepub.comDownloaded from
These cells become the stand-ins for the mom and the dad since sperm
and eggs are appropriately gendered. Sperm is depicted as blue and eggs
are colored pink. Sperm are identified as `him' and `his'. Furthermore,
when sperm speak to one another, they use male terms for male bonding:
`Come on boys!' (Cole, 1993). Eggs are also gendered with false
eyelashes, perfume, make-up, and hearts.
Material site of reproduction
A majority of the books perform an act of disembodiment by placing the
site of reproduction in a centralized place often circled or dissected from
the human body. We are taught that human reproduction occurs not in
the head, not in the breasts nor the feet ­ rather it is centralized only in
the penis and uterus represented by disembodiment in many ways (Fig. 2).
Uteri and penises are both unencumbered by the complexity and messiness
Moore `Billy, the Sad Sperm with No Taiľ
289
Figure 2. Reproduced with kind permission from Chilďs Play (International) Ltd from The Birds
and the Bees  M. Twinn, 1990.
Copyright M. Twinn
Chilďs Play (International) Ltd
Copyright M. Twinn
Chilďs Play (International) Ltd
Copyright M. Twinn
Chilďs Play (International) Ltd
Copyright M. Twinn
Chilďs Play (International) Ltd
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by Lucie Jarkovska on October 12, 2007http://sexualities.sagepub.comDownloaded from
of the human bodies (and psyches and desires) from which they emerge.
However they are now seen as parts that function as closed systems. Maps
of sperm reproduction teach readers about sperm's journeys through
detailed directions and highlighted pathways. They are illustrated with
names of places, directions and legends (Brown and Brown, 1997).
Notably body parts are not anthropomorphized ­ but treated as an
objective `environmenť for the egg and sperm. The children's books'
imagery and text switch back and forth from the disembodiment of human
body parts to anthropomorphizing the sperm and egg where cells are
given human subjectivity, personalities and scripts. The audience is asked
to now switch identification from the human producer to the sperm as the
agent and the egg as the damsel. There is even a blueprint for rational
production of the quintessential sperm complete with smiling face and tail
in motion. This image entitled `sperm plans' provides measurements of
sperm and evaluative comments such as `what a swimmer!' and `Likes
eggs' (Harris, 1999: 34).
The site of reproduction also provides a context for capitalist principles
of production and competition. These books are in the process of naturalizing
capitalism. One book figures the industrial imagery of semen and
sperm cells as being factory made (Harris, 1999). Maps and directions
offer more precision for the factory to mass-produce the best sperm. The
man's body is a factory of mass production whose purpose is the further
production of labor power (under a capitalist system). This is further illustrated
by a drawing of male reproductive system where there are colored
arrows that show how the sperm travels. Testicles are labeled with `millions
of sperm are made here'. The sperm race through a factory of complex
machinery and fueling stations. Also, a competition metaphor is used to
show the sperm moving and talking about their feelings and actions.
Getting there first is a theme in many books (e.g. Davis, 2001: 25), where
the race motif is made explicit. The race `on your mark, get ready, get set
. . .' is narrated by some sperm (Harris, 1999: 22). Sperm also inform one
another of their losses, `whaťs happening, is we just lost the race' (Harris,
1999: 36) and turn to swim away from the victor.
Furthermore, there is clear imagery of a mechanized factory of mass
production used around the creation of the sperm cells. This is distinctively
male, as the same process is not used to illustrate the creation and
production of an egg. Parents are responsible for the reproduction of
cultural capital. Through competition for scarce resources, parents must
prepare in the capitalist reproductive cycle ­ parents are owners of means
of production and the sperm and eggs are the workers. There are rules, a
pathway, a sense of scope, a sense of humor ­ office culture, overcrowding.
The social reproduction of capitalist production is illustrated through
human reproduction (Martin, 1992). The actors are the raw materials of
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reproduction (the sperm and egg) wherein we are given blueprints to
create our own competitive and alienated labor force.
In many books, there is a recurring theme that suggests the closer and
closer we get to the moment of conception, the more and more disembodied
the human actors become. Simultaneous to this disembodiment,
agency, personality and subjectivity are now fully transferred from the
human producers to their sperm and egg cells (anthropomorphically illustrated
and narrated). The sperm and egg are made to stand in both visually
and textually for human beings.
Swimming to action: images of conception
The claims of the historical legacy of sperm's and men's crucial, necessary
and even exclusive role in human reproduction have been well documented
and analyzed (e.g. Laqueur, Correia-Pinto). Children's books may
play a part in keeping this interpretation of sperm's centrality alive. Some
of the text echoes theories of men starting life and not needing an egg,
rather just a womb. Historically, this is the representation of a male
producing homunculus in sperm, to be deposited fully formed into a
female body for incubation. `A spurt of quite thick, sticky stuff comes from
the end of the man's penis and this goes into the woman's vagina. Well,
believe it or not, this sticky stuff is how you and I and all of us started. Iťs
called semen, and in the semen are sperm' (Mayle, 1977).
In many books, sperm are portrayed as having consciousness, selfreflexivity
and abilities to communicate with each other. Sperm are also
happy and willing to do what they are programmed to do. Sperm are
integral to insemination ­ the sperm cell is portrayed as having a purposeful
goal and intentional action/agency. They have feelings as well as
agency. Perhaps yielding to the anti-sex pressures to make `age appropriate'
literature, sperm and eggs are only depicted in relation to a baby.
There is no question that ejaculate exists in other contexts.
* Image of sperm going to the big sun like light of the glowing egg
(Hummel, 1982)
* An image reminiscent of the Jedi knight racing toward the death star
(Blank, 1983)
* Dr Ruth's pop-up book for three-dimensional effect (Westheimer, 2001)
* Image of sperm racing to the finish line where an egg with a heart
above her is waiting. Valentines-type illustration with hearts and egg
on a red tasseled pillow is used to portray the fragility of the egg (see
Davis, 2001)
Furthermore there is a preponderance of narratives describing the exceptionalness
of the one sperm that gets to fertilize the egg. Other than
primping and batting eyes to be attractive to the sperm, eggs typically are
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passive. As with many content analyses, a brief word sampling comparison
of descriptors used for sperm cells reveal a preponderance of verbs and
masculine terms: `faster', `swims', `hurries', `digs', `wagging', `fertilize',
`strong', `healthy', `wow', and `yahoo' versus passive nouns and feminine
terms for eggs:9 `waits', `travels', `beautifuľ and `is releaseď.
These descriptions are also useful for depicting the sperm as active.
Mommies do have eggs. They are inside their bodies.
And daddies have seeds in seed pods outside their bodies.
Daddies also have a tube. The seeds come out of the pods and through the tube.
The tube goes into the mommy's body through a hole. Then the seeds swim
inside using their tails. When the seeds are inside the mommy, they start . . . the
Great Egg Race. (B. Cole, 1993)
The father's sperm are even smaller, so small you can see them only with a microscope.
Sperm from different animals have different shapes, but they always have
heads and tails. The tail moves and helps the sperm swim fast. (Andry and
Schepp, 1968: 15)
There are outliers for these representations that stand out as significant.
As a sign of the feminist movement or perhaps a commentary on recent
innovations in reproductive endocrinology, Harris' book states `Scientists
have discovered that if an egg is in one of the tubes, a chemical in the
liquid around the egg attracts one sperm out of the two hundred sperm ­
just like a magnet.' However, unable to shake off the gendered, heteronormative
context, this text is accompanied by an illustration of an egg,
coiffed with lipstick and blush, putting on perfume and a sperm speaking
with hearts in his text bubble:
One sperm speaking to another:
`I feel a strange attraction.'
`Whaťs around the corner?'
`See anything yet?'
`I feel like I'm being pulled by a magnet.'
`Oh my! Look at that!!'
The Harris (1999) book is also unique in that it is the one book that
incorporates Assisted Reproductive Technologies into the normative
reproductive narratives. When the sperm is not rendered as agentic, it is
the scientist who stands in to get the sperm to function properly.
Scientist as matchmaker: `In fact, scientists have figured out several ways for an
egg cell and a sperm cell to meeť (Harris, 1999: 38).
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Scientist as pimp, or God: `Doctors can place sperm into the vagina or uterus
with a syringe ­ a tube like an eyedropper. The sperm can then swim to the
Fallopian tubes where a sperm can meet and join with an egg. Or doctors can
put an egg and a sperm in a special laboratory dish where egg and sperm can
meet and join together' (1999: 38).
Scientist as club owner, or swinging single: `There are times when a man and a
woman have sexual intercourse, but do not wish to make a baby. Scientists have
invented ways called `birth controľ that can keep a sperm and egg from
meeting. And if a sperm and egg do not meet, the beginning cells of a baby
cannot start to grow' (1999: 38).
`We was robbeď: spermatic hierarchy
As the biological sciences attest in the foregoing passages, in children's
books not all sperm are created equal. Embedded in sperm imagery from
cartoon books are smiling, competitive, or befuddled sperm talking to one
another and presumably the audience. These sperm evaluate themselves
and others based on their ability to follow directions, swim quickly,
navigate the difficult terrain, and eventually merge with the egg. In
children's books, the measure of the better sperm is loosely based on
motility, not morphology.
From this subset of the sample, secular books that anthropomorphize
sperm ascribing language skills to the cells, we learn that:
* sperm have desire
* sperm are in a race
* sperm are competitive
* there will be one and only one winner
* there is a sense of entitlement and unfairness
* there is a sense of empowerment
* action and speed are good; fatigue and slowness are bad
For example, one author states how `For most of the time, though your
sperm are inside your body, waiting and twiddling their thumbs. What they
would really like to do is get out.' (Mayle, 1975: 26). Sperm are depicted
with racing stripes and numbers on them, and state `Gotcha' and `We was
robbeď as they are racing en mass to the egg (B. Cole, 1993: 24). There
is also a sense of male bonding in that sperm cheer each other on. `Come
on, boys' appears in three of the books as a rallying cry from the masses
of sperm in pursuit of the egg (B. Cole, 1993; Smith, 1997: 5).
Present even in the books that do not explicitly anthropomorphize
sperm, there is a quality of exceptionalness to the sperm that is able to
swim and fertilize the egg. There is a notion that out of the millions and
millions of sperm that exist, the one that actually `swims' to join with the
egg is important. This distinction of being the sperm that gets to
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inseminate the eggs is noted almost universally (e.g. Andry). Hierarchies
among men are also naturalized along the way through the naturalization
of competitions based on physical strength, endurance and speed as the
natural ­ and adaptive way to figure out hierarchies among boys and men.
`Iťs all Goďs plan'
While reading these children's books, I was struck by both the similarities
and the distinct differences between secular books and those that labeled
themselves explicitly Christian. Using a component of grounded theory,
the constant comparative method, I continually compared a particular
incident (using the categories mentioned earlier) from data from secular
books with another incident in the data from Christian books in terms of
similarities and differences. Similar to secular books, Christian books do
maintain an integration of the biological continuum and (not surprisingly)
a heteronormative context for human sexual relations. Although not all
books are as explicitly Judeo-Christian as Ruth Hummeľs (1982), Where
do Babies Come from? A Series for the Christian Family, images of Goďs
plan of heterosexual coupling and matrimony abound in imagery of
weddings or brides and grooms.
`Is that when they get married and they're a bride and groom and everything?'
Suzanne put her ribbon on her hair and pretended it was a veil.
`Yes, God is happy when two people decide to get married and start a life
together with His blessing,' Mother continued. `He made them for living
together and showing their love to each other all their life. At special times they
like to hold each other very close. God made their bodies so they fit together
in a wonderful way.
`At those times the sperm from the man's body can go into the woman's body.
Sometimes a sperm and an ovum join in the mother's body. That is when a baby
begins.'
Despite these similarities, a remarkable and striking difference began to
emerge ­ Christian books do not represent sperm in an anthropomorphized
fashion rather, they are much more scientific (less animated or
anthropomorphized) than secular books. It is notable that this Christian
approach ­ by its silence ­ constructs heterosexuality as problem-free, just
as much as the secular ones. There is no room for people who are unwilling
or unable to have this kind of heterosex. As outlined earlier, a trend in
secular books is for human reproduction to be disembodied and broken
down into bodily organs as centralized sites of reproduction. Sperm and
eggs are transformed into happy characters with smiling faces. The knowledge
of social reproduction is transferred to the emotional and anthropomorphic
sperm and egg. Readers are asked to identify with new
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protagonists of sperm and egg and this transfer of knowledge is complete.
This anthropomorphism is the crux of how children learn to identify with
the good guy ­ the sperm ­ that is,
* properly gendered male
* happily mass-produced
* a diligent laborer
* heterosexual
* happily competitive, but a good sport
* intentional
* speedy
* a winner
But Christian books do not require these characters (dressed or talking)
because the normative values come from God. There is complete disembodiment
during the site of reproduction but no anthropomorphism of
the sperm and egg. Agency does not rest with the sperm, nor are the sperm
or egg depicted as proxies for humans. Rather, agency is wholly relegated
to God, not sperm ­ `Iťs Goďs wonderful way' (Christenson, 1982: 28)
and `Yes, thaťs the way God planned it! Both mother and father have a
part in making the baby, but God has the biggest parť (Hummel, 1982:
22). Therefore there is no transference as the marker of the movement of
agency from one entity to the other. God is agency. Heteronormativity
does not need to be taught through happy smiling tadpoles, it is transmitted
through an all knowing, everywhere God. This reinforces a classic
Christian interpretation of social problems ­ `love the sinner, hate the sin'.
That is, there are no bad people (reverse-anthropomorphized as sperm in
this case), just bad behaviors. Sperm does not get ascribed with all the
human achievements and failures. The human embodiment is perfect
because it comes from God; it is just the behavior that is wrong (homosexuality,
promiscuity, infidelity).
Conclusions
Children's books about human reproduction attempt to explain biological
processes to a young audience. However, they are also socially reproducing
normative guidelines for gender display, sexual orientation and citizenship.
Adults who write, publish, read, control, or deny these books are part
of the interactive process to train potential reproducers. Through the
creation of the sperm and egg as characters, many children's books anthropomorphize
these entities presenting personalities for easy identification.
It is open to empirical analysis how successful these books are at naturalizing
gender, sexuality, relations of production, and divine intervention for
children. By relegating the entire `natural order' to God, Christian
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children's books are able to code prescriptive social norms as Goďs will
when describing human reproduction. Remarkably, secular children's
books, even those that strive to be feminist, rely on the sperm and egg, in
eerily stereotypic ways, to transmit normative socialization for gender, sex,
and sexuality development.
Children's books are only one enterprise that produces representations
and meanings of human sperm. Sperm is almost universally viewed as the
bringer of life within children's books. These books neglect to mention
that sperm has also been construed as the bringer of death (forensics,
AIDS/HIV and sex workers). It seems to me there is traffic between the
notions of semen and the categorization of men. Again and again,
children's books, semen bank enterprises, sex workers, forensics, scientists,
and pornographers socially produce semen and sperm in stylized ways that
draw on existing tropes of masculinity while simultaneously constructing
new ones. Sperm enterprises, whether religious, scientific, sexual or
popular create partial representations of sperm which rely on existing
beliefs about power, hierarchies and dualisms. For example, lively semen
and men are depicted in children's books as:
* loving, heterosexual, monogamous, intentional, God-fearing
* pursuing reproduction, fertile, productive
* fathers and daddies
* non-violent
Deadly semen and men are depicted in the semen industry and forensic
practice as:
* homosexuals, bisexuals, men who have sex with men
* men of color
* unfaithful men, sexual predators
Unfortunately many of these representations are taken as a version of a
singular truth about biology and destiny. We must remember that these
are not arbitrarily produced representations and we must work to reinsert
social analyses of the belief systems that these images and practices recreate
and perpetuate.
Acknowledgements
This article has been greatly improved by the thorough reading and generous
comments of Sunny Brandler, Monica Casper, Shari Colburn, Peter Hegarty,
Kristen Karlberg, Judith Lorber, Robyn Mierzwa, Victoria Pitts, Matthew
Schmidt, Andy Walters and an anonymous reviewer at Sexualities.
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Notes
1. In addition to my academic investigations of sperm, I have also served as the
President of the Board of Directors for The Sperm Bank of California in
Berkeley, California from 1991­1996.
2. What I mean by heteronormative sexuality is the processes by which heterosexual
normative relations (that is, genitally born boys who become men pair
up with genitally born girls who become women) are produced as natural and
reinforced as transparent and unambiguous positions. Heteronomativity is
hegemonic in that refines and reproduces itself through using socio-cultural
ideological forces to convince individuals of its inherent naturalness and thus
superiority. Social institutions that relegate various others as sex, gender
and/or sexual outlaws multiply construct heteronormative sexuality.
3. Dorothy Broderick was famous for stating that every library in the country
ought to have a sign on the door reading: `This library has something offensive
to everyone. If you are not offended by something we own, please complain.'
4. It is from thinking about these different sperm morphologies that led to the
title of this essay: `Billy, the Sad Sperm with No Taiľ. Others considered were
`Why Sammy Can't Swim', `Ten Million Aren't Enough: A Counting Book',
and `Not Too Fast and Not Too Slow'.
5. Due to the convergence in North America of a culture of sexual repression
and a construction of childhood as `pure innocence', it would be very difficult
to gain access to a sample of young readers under 12. Indeed, since academic
researchers must get Committee on Human Subjects Research approval from
their college's Institutional Review Board, it is likely that many researchers
(including this one) would get derailed in endless bureaucracy and revisions of
forms.
6. Determining motility is a fairly complicated process that involves a four-tiered
system of rank. The World Health Organization uses an A­D system: Grade A
sperms are those which swim forward fast in a straight line, Grade B sperms
swim forward, but either in a curved or crooked line, or slowly, Grade C
sperms move their tails, but do not move forward and Grade D sperms do not
move at all. Sperms of grade C and less are considered poor.
7. It takes approximately 70 to 76 days for sperm to be produced from the first
stages of spermatogenesis to last moment prior to ejaculation.
8. `Men's and Women's Bodies are made to fit together. The man puts his penis
into a woman's vagina and releases his sperm near her egg' (Davis, 2001: 28).
9. Eggs are described much less frequently than sperm.
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Biographical Note
Lisa Jean Moore, PhD, MPH is a professor at The College of Staten Island, City
University of New York. Her research interests include gender and sexuality
studies, social and cultural studies of science, medicine and technology and
feminist theory. Some recent publications on social studies of sperm and human
genital anatomy have appeared in the journals Social Text and Body and Society.
Address: Department of Sociology, College of Staten Island/CUNY, 2800
Victory Boulevard, Staten Island, NY 10314.
[email: ljmoore@postbox.csi.cuny.edu]
Sexualities 6(3­4)
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