So, the other day (actually almost two weeks ago now--how the time staggers forward bleary-eyed, weighed down by a backpack full of theory texts) we were talking in class about the pretty dire state of science's literary tropes.
The basic idea--and this isn't new at all; Emily Martin's "The Egg and the Sperm," kinda the core text for this area of exploration, was published in 1991--is that the language scientists use to describe things are often gendered in a pretty problematic (and let's face it, often pretty offensive) way. Martin's big point is that the narrative of the mad rush of sperm against one another, where only the best sperm will claim victory and attain the female-coded egg as the prize, reinforces constructed gender stereotypes and lead to bad science. She describes how the reliance on this descriptive narrative of sperm as masculine action heroes has prevented dissemination* of more accurate, modern models where the sperm and egg have a more interactive relationship.
*Pun not intended by shamelessly embraced.
For a good example of this, paired with some really delicious racism masquerading as internationalism, check out this video, courtesy of my fellow femtechnet blogger BorgBlog:
Don't watch the whole thing though because your brain might start to ooze out your ears. In particular, I love how there are four Mexican kids while there's just one kid for every other nation. Charming, really.
Anyway, in pretty grotesque form this video lays out the basic metaphor, with the drowning sperm and so on. (Really, who thought that was a good idea?) It's written to explain the concepts with metaphors that avoid explicit discussion of sexuality but consistently reinforce the strictly gendered nature of reproduction.
So, the question was raised, though, of how you could even begin to teach these concepts differently. I mean, there's an element, even at best, of dominating instruction--the truth-telling voice of authority of the traditional documentary. The problem, and your mileage may vary as far as how great a problem you think it is, is that such an authorial voice excludes the possibility of dialogue back and forth. Furthermore, it limits the narrative to a single pathway leading from orgasm to conception. There's no time to go through a whole bunch of scenarios where things work out differently.
It was suggested in class that there might not be an alternate way of handling things. The medium is just a natural limiter in some respects.
That got me thinking though. If the medium is acting as a natural limiter for the narrative and metaphorical content, what if we think not solely about altering the narrative but about altering the medium itself? And we have, more than ever before, an unprecedented ability to create media experiences with divergent narratives.
It seems to me that video games, visual novels, hypertexts, and works of similar scope all would be ideal formats for conveying this sort of information--both on a minute biological level and on a broader sexual interaction level. A game, or a gamelike work of interactive fiction, would allow for a dialogue rather than a lecture to take place, and it would better accommodate a new narrative of sexual reproduction that recognizes the complex interactions that allow conception to take place. For example, consider playing as a sperm cell, with a group of other students in similar roles, playing with an AI representing the egg. Now, already you're introducing a potential for competition but also a potential for collaboration--the group goal is conception, but the individual goal is to be the "winning" sperm cell. There's a pull and tug between different aims there that makes for interesting gameplay and can, if accompanied by strong guidance from the game or from an instructor, help to reinforce the complexities of impregnation.
An effective AI would make it possible to simulate the interaction of gametes and make real the possibility of different outcomes that do not lead to conception--or lead to unusual conceptions resulting in twins or triplets! Would it be difficult to make nonconception feel like something other than failure? Sure! But this, I think, is a solvable problem, and games provide far more potential solutions (in particular, alternate goals, multiple types of unlockable achievements--perhaps even mutually exclusive ones for different types of non/conception!) than other media do, while not substantively increasing the number of problems with the traditional narrative. The problems, in short, already exist, and certainly will carry over into gameplay, but ultimately can be countered with a wider variety of solutions.
Perhaps even have students play as sperm cells is too traditional. Fine! There is a long tradition of AIs being played alternately by other players during multiplayer, why not port that logic in here and make it possible to have players as egg, sperm, or both? Obviously, my gravitation towards sperm as PCs and eggs as NPCs demonstrates a bias, but that bias comes from the narrative, not the medium, and the medium offers readily available alternate narratives that can counter my design biases. Again, solvable problems.
I think this logic can be extended even further, in fact, to encompass much of sexual health. The wide proliferation of dating sims, h-games, and erotic moments within larger game worlds shows that players are interested in simulated sexual and romantic experiences.
To me, it seems logical to take these established game types and develop versions that present sexuality in a more nuanced and egalitarian way, with an eye toward representing more diverse experiences. I can't think of a better way of having students explore the different ways in which they can negotiate sexual experiences with partners than in a setting where their choices have an impact on the way the narrative proceeds. The idea that sex is something to be negotiated can't, I think, be expressed as effectively in static media as it can in a medium where you actually collaborate with an AI in developing the story's course.
Essential to this sort of experience, I think, would be the ability of students to discuss their experiences within the game--potentially anonymously on the web?--in order to get a more full and comprehensive picture of just how events can play out. If we're trying to express how there can be multiple experiences of sexuality, then being able to talk about the variety of possibilities within the game seems fairly important.
Similarly important would be the ability of students to anonymously craft their own characters and interactions--interactions that might span a whole range of gender expressions and sexualities, with a whole range of possible outcomes positive (and negative? The value of negative experiences in simulations would have to be carefully weighted and tested, but might be potentially useful).
Would it ever happen? Ha ha, of course not. All of this is far too corrupting and sinful to get implemented in schools, at least in the US and probably in Canada. Even European countries might balk a bit at the idea of an actual sex sim, no matter the wide proliferation of such sims in far less egalitarian contexts or the proliferation of low-grade, narratively stunted, sexist pornography.
It's a nice thought though. And I think this illustrates the power of the tools available to us now. It's worth considering how we can bend these tools to our own ends, thereby challenging the narrative.
This is Cyborg Maria, and I'm ready to play.
I have the most ridiculous taste in music.
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