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

?

Yes, actually identifying a foetus's genitalia by a slang word such as hamburger is ridiculously crass.

yes, i think that's what i feel, toothbrush. i said a few times that i thought you had an interesting take on this, i agreed with your earlier thought as well.

I know that raising awareness is important but sometimes feel that we give publicity/credence to misogynistic/pornified attitudes which would otherwise exist only in the small minds of a sad minority. This is a general observation, not regarding this exact point.

i reckon there's a deathly moment in every long-running thread where people are driven to consult the urban dictionary and respond as if it meant something. it's not dissimilar to Godwin's Law, imo. Every word on there means cunt, pretty much, i doubt we'd be able to communicate at all if we had to cut out the entire urban Roget's thesaurus for women's genitalia.

anyway, OP, i got the impression that an official complaint had been put in because of what you wrote in response to Rita asking if it was a sonographer and if it was 'shaped like a hamburger' or 'hamburger'.

ahhhhhpushit Thu 23-Feb-12 20:21:01
Rita - no ive had friends complain that's exactly what was said "and if you look you can see her hamburger"

i guess what you wrote can be interpreted both ways but i mean FFS even I would have complained to the authorities if a sonographer had pointed out my daughter's actual 'hamburger', so i guess it just never occurred to me that someone would be so utterly useless as to moan about it to their pals without having taken the matter further officially, especially if the pal was the type to post on this board.

we all agree, surely, that actually identifying a foetus's genitalia by a slang word such as 'hamburger' is ridiculously crass? that's the nub of this, so to speak. whether 'the shape of a hamburger' is different to calling it a 'hamburger'.

Beachcomber - good answer :)
What will I be doing? Nothing. I have never used it and nor have colleagues.
The reason I like your answer is that instead of making sonographers 'guilty' with what should be a (perhaps) crass comparision learned from textbooks it actually makes clear that the fault lies in the people who use the term in otherwise derogatory use.

Ah well that does confound matters slightly. Somebody did say upthread that burger was nasty slang for vagina.

That makes it very crass. Although I imagine most people are ignorant of this slang.

urban dictionary is interesting, especially (2) and (7); but contra other definitions.

Erm it's public and a lot of people visit it and read the content. Chats with my mates tend to be rather smaller in scale, with people I know and in either a private space, or one where people don't tend to listen in on a particularly large scale.

Saying online discussion is a 'yak with mates' would be rather like saying attending a conference is 'yaking with mates'

toothbrush, btw apparently the OP's friend has put in a complaint about this.

The terminology isn't derived from pornography.

It isn't porn terminology. It is an unfortunate turn of phrase given the patriarchal/porny association the misogynists make between women and meat. One that I would have thought most people would prefer to distance themselves from, be it in the context of a scan, the way we present women in the press, general everyday language about women, etc.

And that is where the battle lies IMO. And it is where I try to do my bit. I did before this thread and will continue in the same vein after. In other words keep up my little bit of activism which protests against women having subhuman status. Because that is where the problem lies. When women are treated as fully human, phrases like hamburger being used by sonographers will have no negative connotations and carry no weight. Bigger picture and all that.

Talking about these things is always good too. Exploration, development of analysis and thought, raising awareness, raising consciousness, etc.

So there you go, Toothbrush. I'm going to keep on exactly as before, questioning these things when I see them, whilst doing what I can to advance the position of women in society by doing my wee bit of activism and volunteering.

What about you?

"How is posting on a popular forum 'yaking about it with your mates'? "

how is it not?

How is posting on a popular forum 'yaking about it with your mates'?

Feminist discussion is activism in itself. And this will never be high on my list of priorities so I'll focus my time on those which are high on my list.

I also have f) be glad that I knew before my scan so I could have my wtf moment now rather that when there's lots of other stuff going on

bollock, if this is wrong, you have to complain, you can't just yak about it to your mates on the Feminist board. i'd be ashamed of myself if i thought that sonographers were using terminology derived from pornography that were going to upset a number of right-minded women and i did nothing.

Yes, I like the sound of (E).

E) have an interesting discussion contemplating this from a feminist perspective

erm... regardless of the rights/wrongs of calling describing the ultrasonic appearance of vulva as hamburger, what do you intend to do as a result of this thread

a) carry on being offended
b) complain to the sonographer
c) formal complaint to the hospital
d) it doesn't bother me, so nothing

I know lots of sonographers and strongly doubt that a single one of them has a pornographic knowledge/association. It happens that none of them use this term (I have watched all of them work) but if they did, they would rather know, than be accused of pornographic conotations in their work (whilst probably thinking- what?????)

business as usual.

Ok Aitch no worries.

Basically it wouldn't be crass if it wasn't about sex/gender. IMO. That is that bit that makes it unfortunate. And it isn't of the sonographer's making.

I blame the patriarchy for this one.

i wasn't replying to you, beachcomber, you've been perfectly clear throughout that you don't think it's come from pornography, and of course i agree with you. Dworkin 100% said it had and Linerunner... well, seemed to say that it had and then repeated it and then backed off from it while maintaining that stranger things have happened.

but then i still don't understand why it's crass to use any meat-based descriptor to point out a part of a body, male or female, that is after all made of flesh.

There are lots of circumstance where artefacts, assemblages or cultural systems have shared attributes. It is rare that one crosses consciously and directly over to another. I don't think anyone has seriously suggested this on this thread.

More often, such attributes share an antecedent, a common idea, myth or symbolic system. Or are part of a shared zeitgeist. This is part of the discussion on this thread.

Sometimes it's completely co-incidental.

Even if it's completely co-incidental, if one becomes aware that another usage of the attributre is troublesome, that in itself might legitimately make somne observers uncomfortable about its use in an 'innocent' context. That is what is largely being discussed on this thread.

Aitch, I'm not making the point that this terminology has travelled from porn to sonography.

Because I don't think it has. And I think that would be a pretty ridiculous and random thought process. And I don't make ridiculous points and my thought process is just fine.

I think it is a pure coincidence due to the shape of the body part being examined. I don't think there is intention to offend AT ALL. Like I said, I'm not accusing sonographers as being tools of the patriarchy, oppressing unborn females with references to porny comparisons of pieces of meat.

It is still crass though.

And I feel like you are arguing against a point I'm not making.

I guess no-one is aware of the general women/meat thing then. It is very very obscure feminist knowledge.

what's squicked?

so that would be 'i have no evidence whatsoever that will demonstrate that this terminology has travelled from porn to sonography'.

in which case, you can all be as squicked as you like, if that's what you all desire, but it just doesn't make it real.