Emily Martin

Emily Martin (born 1944) is a sinologist, anthropologist, and feminist. Currently, she is a professor of socio-cultural anthropology at New York University. She received her PhD degree from Cornell University in 1971. Before 1984, she published works under the name of Emily Martin Ahern.

Sinology

Martin’s work on sinology focused on topics both in Mainland China and Taiwan. These topics included Chinese religion and rituals, architecture, politics, traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese women’s culture, Chinese rural culture, Chinese lineages and genealogies, etc.

Anthropology of Science and Feminism

Martin focuses the anthropology of science and analyzes science from a feminist perspective. Her work includes detailed analysis on human reproduction and related things. She uses her feminist perspective to explain that even current scientific literature is gender-biased, and such bias are entrenched in our language, so the scientific stories such as “the miracle of life created by union of the egg and sperm” are presented in a sexist way, making women at a disadvantageous position.

For example, in her analysis of menstruation, Martin notes that due to linguistic and cultural gender bias, our perception on menstruation is usually negative and misogynistic. We tend to think menstruation as a failure, because the egg is not fertilized and the woman’s uterine tissues begin to “break down” or “slough off". When we see the words such as “break down” or “slough off”, a negative perception is associated with menstruation since such words make menstruation more like failure, dirtiness, structural breakdown and destruction, and wound. (In contrast, we don’t see the shedding of the stomach lining as a structural failure and we don’t see cellular-debris-containing semen as dirty----as a matter of fact, some of us might never know that semen contain debris) Such a wound perception is enforced by the fact that the woman bleeds and may suffer from pains and discomfort because of menstruation. Martin supports the view that menstruation is a normal physiological function and process (not a dirty thing or/and the “secret illness”) that can be viewed as a success----the success of the female body to avoid pregnancy, the success of the female body to get rid of possible harmful stuff from the uterus. Yet, our language and culture keep making us misogynistic and to think menstruation as a bad thing. Such gender bias is also responsible for our tendency to “praise” males for their “amazing” ability to produce a huge amount of sperm, despite of the fact that the sperm is a lot cheaper to produce when compared to the egg and the sperm suffer an extremely high mortality in the female reproductive tract and only few sperm can make it all the way to the egg. (Robbins and Larkin, 2007: 255)

Another good example of Martin’s feminist analysis on reproduction is the metaphorical analysis of the egg and sperm. The egg (the Woman), in Martin’s view, reinforces our culture’s view of passive “damsel in distress” image, while the active sperm (the Man) races to the egg to penetrate her. The truth is, the egg is not so easy to be penetrated as commonly believed. A sperm is not powerful enough to penetrate an egg----the egg’s barrier can only be weakened by the collective efforts of a number of sperms.

From Martin’s analysis, there are four main lessons: 1. We think we know a lot because of science in this age, but the truth is, the way we interpret science is sexist and it actually makes us ignorant (even worse, we are unaware of our ignorance for the most of the part). 2. Such gender bias reinforces gender inequality and continues to keep our traditional misogyny alive. 3. We have to realize our mistakes and strive to achieve a new understanding with total fairness. 4. We must ensure we will not pass the mistakes to the future generations, since they are really harmful for human understanding as well as gender relations.

Bipolar disorder

Martin drew on her own experience with bipolar disorder to write "Bipolar expeditions: mania and depression in American culture." In it, she argues that mania and depression have a cultural life outide the confines of psychiatry and that the extravagances of mood which might be dubbed 'irrational' are also present in the most 'rational' side of American life (for example, economics and the stock market.)

References

*Robbins, R.H. and S.N. Larkin. 2007. "Cultural Anthropology, A Problem-Based Approach, First Canadian Edition", Thomson Nelson, Toronto.