embryos are inherently female anyway, they just require an extra hormone at the right
developmental stage to make them male. We simply deny them that.” This is a security measure
to prevent the dinosaurs from multiplying in the scenario that they escape the island and reach
the mainland. However, this revelation can be considered in an alternate light when considering
that the entirety of Jurassic Park’s administration is male. Subsequently, Jurassic Park can be
viewed as a patriarchal society whose entire economy is based on the monetization of femininity.
Patriarchal social structures are characterized by male privilege, with males maintaining primary
or exclusive access to positions of authority (Johnson 6; 165), characteristics that Jurassic Park
embodies. In this society, only males such as Wu and Hammond occupy roles of power or
control; as Jurassic Park’s owner and CEO, Hammond especially serves as the society’s most
influential figure. In contrast, the entirety of Isla Nublar’s female population is literally caged for
the purpose of amusement.
There is further subtext to be derived from the dinosaurs’ inability to breed through the
application of a psychoanalytic concept known as womb envy. Womb envy is a theory in
feminist psychology that suggests men feel an anxiety towards women that is derived from envy
towards the female reproductive system. Originally coined by psychoanalyst Karen Horney,
womb envy is a universal concept, as “Anthropological studies show many cultural practices
[are] designed to compensate men in fantasy because they cannot bear children in reality” (Ende
et al. 167). While early hunter-gatherer or foraging societies demonstrated equality between
sexes, much of modern society is predominantly patriarchal, particularly Western societies that
ascribe to Abrahamic religions. In these monotheistic religions, “the womb is described in the
scriptures as merely the property of the male God, who appropriates the woman’s role in
childbirth” (170). Subsequently, Western societies where these religions are popular established
male authority over women’s reproductive rights. Additionally, the anxiety that men feel due to
womb envy commonly manifests as femiphobia. The debasement and depreciation that men
display towards women serve as a psychological defense against womb envy, as contempt is a
socially accepted form of male emotion (Bayne 153). The male narcissism described above is a
direct product of patriarchal social systems:
Men seem to have envied the fact that the “inferior” sex, placed on earth to serve them, has
the exclusive ability to bring forth life. [Patriarchal religions] encouraged men to have a
grandiose self-image. This grandiose self-image appears to have been threatened by women's
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