Use of the term "hamburger" by sonographers to describe baby girl "bits"

...Typos aside!

I never use this term, I simply tell the parents the sex of the baby if they want to know and if asked "how can you tell?" I answer "by looking between the legs same as when the baby is born" and zoom in circling the cursor over the genitals.
Nice to have another fault of my proffesion pointed out on MN though!

Righto it is insanity to have heard of the practice of treating women like meat in male dominated society. Gotcha.

Aitch, meat and meaty words are quite often used to talk about women, our genitals and our sexuality is a disparaging way. This is due to the long standing patriarchal tradition of treating women like meat and or livestock. AFAIK boats, canoes, sailing equipment, etc, not so much, due to there not being a long standing oppressive practice of treating us like boats.

Circular thread now. Thank you for the earlier discussion about Hustler, etc.

'I'm not suggesting that the word hamburger should be banned for all uses in all situations. I'm saying it is a rubbish word to use to describe the presence of female genitals during a scan'.

Except for the fact it is accurate. Therefore, rather than being a rubbish word, it is in fact the most accurate word.

This thread is like falling down a rabbit hole into a virtual universe of insanity.

i guess, for me, it's like if the scan shape indicating female genitalia was a canoe, that would be fine. i don't see how that changes just because i have now looked up urban dictionary and discovered that 'pink canoe' is a slang term for vagina.
if someone said 'there's your daughter's canoe' i would wince, for all the reasons given before regarding use of euphemism etc but the shape of a canoe imo has to be something different.

I'm not googling looking for offence

I googled burger/slang/vagina and lots of results came up - I CBA to link to them all so linked to the first couple, there are plenty more.

I thought the term was crass before I found out that it is unfortunately also nasty slang. I quite clearly explained on this thread why I think it is a bad choice of word - I quite clearly said on this thread that the slang thing just confounds matters.

Lots of people don't care about nasty/offence language even it is not being used with intent. I do care. I respect the right of others not to care or not think there is a problem.

I'm not suggesting that the word hamburger should be banned for all uses in all situations. I'm saying it is a rubbish word to use to describe the presence of female genitals during a scan.

haaang on... your first link is to another crowd-sourced dictionary (fur burger definition provided by 'Lucas' in 1998 with the pitch 'i wanna lick a Fur Burger', so he's hardly Samuel Johnson and the second uses urbandictionary.com upon which to hang the offence taken.

but i as far back ago as 20 years i've heard of female genitals being referred to as a 'fur chequebook', but you can't ban all reference to chequebooks as a result. i genuinely think if you're having to google for offence, then you are going too far.

Agree not a euphemism. Not just basing the slang thing on urban dictionary. I did a quick search and it comes up in other places.

onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/fur-burger

www.sogoodblog.com/2009/02/18/are-bk-burger-shots-inappropriately-named/

yyy agree with toothbrushthief again, it's not a euphemism, it's a shape to look for. i'm genuinely surprised you're putting so much store in what you read in urban dictionary, beachcomber, i've always assumed that as a crowd-sourced wiki scouring the internet for foul language, the pornified misogynist wanker viewpoint would be hugely over-represented. there really isn't much on that site that doesn't mean women's genitalia in some form or another...

Doesn't everybody check in regularly to find out what the MN collective think of them .

This thread is probably an undercover mission by the sonography bigwigs.

HAMBURGER IS CRASS GOT IT? (Just making sure)

Beach - agree - but the people who write the books (which are unlikely to be rewritten) and the lecturers on sonography post grad courses are are the ones who need to know. Hopefully they are all scouring MN for tips

Well it would seem that Linerunner is correct - burger (rather than the longer hamburger) is used as slang for the vulva.

As in fur burger, burger shot, and apparently a cheeseburger is a rather gross sexual thing too. I would be well pissed off if I were a sonographer being taught this term only to find out later that it is also used in misogynistic slang.

I don't doubt that it is an unfortunate coincidence but perhaps a more grown up term that is unlikely to be the same sort of word used in slang might be more appropriate nowadays?

Aitch - you're absolutely right and everyone else is being ludicrous. HTH!

It is not slang for a woman's genitals. Any more than a constellation name is slang for stars. On websites where people are squinting at ultrasound pictures, that's the shape they're told to look out for.

The 1970s wasn't the best decade for language being PC though was it? If it is as old as that perhaps it needs a rethink. Three white lines = presence of foetal vulva seems fine surely?

It's not a euphemism though is it? It's a descrption of the fact that ultrasonically, vulva mimic a hamburger.

TBH I think it's this basic misunderstanding of why the term is used, which is adding to the offence taken.

The assumption that it's used to disparage, make people 'feel comfortable' ???, because you're an idiot etc etc are assumptions and not based on the real reason it is used.

It's used by textbook writers. They have to use words to describe a grey scale line appearance and relate it to anatomy. The penis is obvious. Foetal vulva are less easy to identify -more subtle. It's a term which started probably in the 1970's and holds no connotation for the user.

I wonder if anyone has been told to 'look for a turtle' with reference to their ds's scans. I certainly can't remember a conversation along those lines when I had my scans. Personally I prefer medical terms to be used because I don't like the implication that just because I am a patient I am therefore a bit of an idiot, which sadly can be prevalent in healthcare (and very noticeable if like me you cross from one side of the desk to the other - I remember my GP doing a huge double take seeing me in his consulting room instead of at a meeting). However I suspect that this has more to do with the fact that many people find it hard to talk about female genitalia (and what a very weird idea that most women have no idea what their genitals look like) so need to use a euphemism in order to feel comfortable.

don't be a hamburger, linerunner...

This thread .. it could have been a contender ...

sorry i posted before i read the whole thread didn't realise this had turned into a bloodbath!!!

?

I would like this to be a discussion, not a debate where one poster has a gavel.

but that's always been agreed, what's your point? the issue is whether it is 'the shape of' or 'the hamburger'.

well my sonographer said" i can see 3 lines so this tells me it's a girl " no mention of food at all :)

That's what you said at 20.25. Surely we all agree that ...

Yes. I would agree that.