Sheoul wrote:If a person moves into position to operate a vehicle you say "they got into the car." Not "he and the car interacted."
That is because he and the car are not interacting. If a person moves into position to operate a vehicle, he is acting on the vehicle, which is totally dependent upon his actions and does not act in return.
What Dealing With It is trying to say is that yes, the sperm may fertilize the egg, but this is not the only action taking place at this time, and to present only that action without acknowledging that the female component is active is extremely androcentric. It's like saying "Timothy won the debate," when Timothy was actually on a team of four people. Ignoring social connotations (such as interpreting the statement as, "Timothy was the reason the team won the debate."), saying that Timothy won the debate is ultimately giving Timothy credit for the work of all four members of the team.
The sperm is Timothy.
The egg is the other member of its team.
If you want to get technical, all a sperm has to do to fertilize an egg is release its genetic material. It is then the job of the genetic material within the egg to assimilate that and combine it. But, rather than going into depth about that, Dealing With It was simply suggesting that we acknowledge that both cells play a role in the creation of an embryo.
This entire tangent sort of proves the point on political correctness, though. It's never safe to assume that you know what the other party is going to interpret out of your comments, so it's advantageous to all parties to communicate in the least offensive way possible, at least in situations where folks don't know each other very well.
