Continued from Chapter 2.
This will a pretty simple chapter. I feel embarrassed to write this, because everyone already knows it since high school. The problem is, most people are seen to be not quite conscious of scientific knowledge, and would rather repeat traditional dialogues of the older generations (who did not have the knowledge). (Well, there exists a difference between 'gathering knowledge' and 'internalizing it').
Let's get down to business. An egg has 23 chromosomes. A sperm has 23 chromosomes. They meet and produce a full human being with 46 chromosomes. So why is the sperm worshipped and the egg ignored? That is easy to explain. Seeing is believing. The semen is visible, and people know that it as a gene-carrier. But they have not seen the egg, and hence, have no clue about its existence. They know the uterus, which grows big in pregnancy for everyone to see. (BTW, I have not seen my heart/pancreas, but I know it exists).
Traditional psyche holds the notion that "Akaash ka beej Dharti mein phut-ta hain", that the father is the sky and the mother is the earth. Drawing an analogy with farming in an agricultural society, Indian culture thinks that "the sperm (alone) becomes a baby in the womb". Here is a catch that we missed out. If the egg (ovum) was unnecessary, the sperm and the womb could have been in the same body! The male body could itself carry the baby. Why does the sperm need to transferred to the female body? Because the egg, the biggest cell, is there. We missed the elephant in the room! But why have the egg? Why cannot the sperm itself be armed with 46 chromosomes and grow into a full human being? Well, Nature is intelligent. It knows that sexual reproduction is genetically flexible as compared to vegetative propagation. It is doing its own genetic engineering for millions of years to improve the species.
Even the Western societies thought that the "male's bun" gets baked in the "female's oven"! They did not know that hiding inside the oven is another half-bun, which must meet the males half-bun (not full bun) in the oven. Otherwise the male half-bun will die and be chucked out of the oven in a month at most. Bottomline : Respect the Egg. Respect its 23 chromosomes. Stop denying its existence. You cannot see the egg, because a mammal does not lay eggs like others species (fish, amphibians, reptiles, insects, birds). But this is not an excuse to be blissfully unaware of its existence.
This ignorance made the male think that he was propagating his own lineage. He did not know that half of the off-spring's genetics come from the mother. He wanted a son to inherit his property. He began blaming the female for delivering a girl! Ok listen. Out of the 2x23 pairs = 46 chromosomes in a human, there is one pair of sex chromosomes. Females have XX chromosomes as the 23rd pair, and males have XY. The mother's egg can provide only an X chromosome to the offspring. It is the father's sperm who either gives X to produce a daughter, or gives Y to produce a son.
In a typical 28-day menstrual cycle, there is only a 24-hour window, roughly at the middle of the cycle, when the woman ovulates and carries a live ovum (egg). A sperm deposited in her cervix can stay alive for 2-3 days, and travels to meet the egg. An ovum can stay alive for 24 hours only. Thus, having sex during the fertile window, i.e., during Day 11-14 of the cycle can lead to pregnancy. Otherwise the egg and the sperms both die and are drained out in the next menses. The uterus gets fresh again for the next cycle. On any of the remaining 24 days of the cycle, the sperm barely stands a chance!
Lineage, derived from the word 'line', should actually be replaced with 'descendency', which is not linear, but exponential. A man knows he got his Y-Chromosome from his father; who, in turn, got it from his own father, and so on. Thus, Y-chromosome-based lineage is linear, and is very easy to understand and track. This explains why surnames are owned by males, to be imposed on Y-less females (without their permission). A man knows he got his X-Chromosome from his mother, but she could have gotten it from either her mother or her father. So the X-Chromosome could not be tracked, and hence matrilineage was vague. But coming to the basic question : why was the lineage information at all required? Read Chapter 1 : to transfer personal property. Meritocracy gave way to nepotism. Monarchy became hereditary. Professions ran in families. This has been the norm in every civilization. It is only recently that democracy is running most of the world.
Remember, we have talked about only one pair of chromosomes, i.e., the sex chromosomes. The rest of the 22 pairs can be coming from any of the ancestors. Every individual has two (02) parents, four (04) grandparents, eight (08) great-grandparents, sixteen (16) great-great grandparents, and so on. Your 46 chromosomes can come any of the previous seven (07) generations, consisting of 2-raised-to-the-power-seven = 64 individuals. You can get your cancer / diabetes / hair / height / fat distribution / etc. from your father's mother's father's mother, or from your mother's father's mother's father.
The male insecurity about his progeny reached amusing levels. He was seen doubting "Yeh bachcha mera hain?" Dude, why were you not around your pregnant wife to confirm this information? You were busy showing off your archery skills and muscle power to other men in sports and wars. Therefore you confined the females in the house (as your reproductive slave) to prevent her from mating with someone else! You stopped her from going out of the house and claim her own place under the sun. You used domestic violence to make her behave exactly according to your wishes. You chained her in metal jewelry to hear her movements and know her whereabouts all the time. And now, you are demanding answers? Fatherhood is a responsibility. It is neither a privilege, nor an entertainment, nor a deal, nor an entitlement. You cannot have the cake and eat it, too. You cannot have an heir without sharing the responsibility of bringing him/her up.
Notice : a poor father does not bother much about his children. He has no property to pass on to. He does not require an heir. If he still yearns for a son, He is actually simply doing what others do, ignorant of root of the Vishvruksha of patriarchy. Unofficial marital separations are very common in lower and lower-middle class, without legal divorces. The man is often seen to leave the wife and children, because he has limited means to look after them.
Coming back to economics, should we be rich-and-patriarchal or poor-and-equal? The challenge is to create a society that is sufficiently rich and socially equal at the same time. Why be stinking rich and destroy the planet in the process?
Things will continue to unravel as we move on to Chapter 4 (War).
