The Egg and the Sperm: what you didn't learn in school

[Carmen]

This is how I learned about the egg and the sperm in middle and high school: the egg drifts along the fallopian tube, passively waiting to be penetrated by the strong, active sperm that has journeyed long and far to find it.
I just accepted this story to be biological fact. I recently learned, however, how much the language and narrative used to describe this process is skewed. In reality, the sperm and the egg are mutually active players in reproduction. The egg is just as active as the sperm. For example, rather than the sperm 'penetrating' the egg, the egg catches the sperm, holding onto it and pulling it in. That's not the way we learn about it though - funny how skewed the way we learn about these things is huh? It's so interesting how gender perceptions - such as men being active and women being passive (and non-gender binaries not being brought up at all) are normalized as if they are an intrinsic part of our biology. But they're not!
I wonder what else we learn is skewed by cultural norms and stereotypes... and how do they affect expected gender roles and the ways we behave in our relationships? I would even go so far as to wonder how they affect who we think we are?

[Snorkmaiden]

Great point! You could say the same about what we learn about sexual roles. It's always about 'penetrating' and never about 'engulfing', which can just as easily be seen as an active role! No one ever told me that in heterosexual intercourse, it's not a given that one party is active and the other is passive. If that's how people want it, it can happen with one of them being active and the other not moving an inch, and there is no reason why the active party should necessarily be the person with the penis.