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

[ahhhhhpushit]

I've heard this term reported by mothers so many terms that it must by the term sonographers aee taught at sonographer school.

Anybody else feel uncomfortable by it?

Imagine it being said about a baby's bits once she'd been born!

Is it just me?

DD1 looked like an upturned beetle on her 12 wk scan

Oh it made me think of jade's "kebab" moment

i absolutely think that if you are looking to take offence (and put in a complaint and jeopardise someone's career as the OP's friend apparently did) then no-one can stop you. but it's quite a reach, GIVEN THE FACT THAT THE THING LOOKS LIKE A HAMBURGER ON THE SCAN.

How is anyone making it about them? It's about chewing the cud over some feminist analysis of a practice that people are interested in, and pondering the connections, isn't it?

"The idea of needing to provide reference to an alternative object for me is twee. The choice of object is then "

oh i see. perhaps if you had written 'for me, the idea of... etc' that would have been clear.

ChickensHaveNoLips, I think you are being charitable with 'disdain'. I prefer 'violence'.

The only reason it doesn't shock more than it does (although it did at the time it was published - it scared the advertisers away), is because it is a woman being ground up. If it was a person of colour or a clearly identified Jew, it would be considered hate speech by wider society.

It is hate speech. But it is against women therefore not a big deal/art!?/a joke/yadda yadda.

In a porn mag. In a patriarchy. Not buying it.

do you think they'd get away with putting that on a top shelf now, beachcomber?

I'm confused. That's what your quote of me says, isn't it?

nope.

some sort of parenthesis required for it not all to be about you personally not requiring reference to an alternative object. hence my saying it's not about you, the nhs has to speak to the mass audience.

Beachcomber, that is a scary notion. Because on first viewing I genuinely wasn't shocked, and just didn't 'get' it. I was looking for the 'angle'. And if it had been a person of another identifiable group, I would have been shocked, and disgusted, instinctively. How fucking depressing. I'm so used to seeing women used as objects that I don't even notice that it's offensive! How fucked up is that?

That's a good question Aitch.

I don't know. I like to think not because feminists and all sorts of tuned in women would protest.

They paved the way for the likes of Nuts, etc to be seen as no big deal though. The meat grinder image is shocking because it is particularly unapologetic. It is pure hate not dressed up as a sexual fetish or a kink or sexually 'liberated'.

Its all the same bullshit though. And coming from the same place - misogyny.

When I had my scan with DS I asked if they could tell us the sex and they asked us if we were looking for a snail or a hamburger

Snail/hamburger did seem to be the accepted wisdom of symbolic genitalia at the time, it would have been just under 4 years ago now.

Yep, looks pretty much like an upside-down snail to me. Actually it looks more like a gun but that is ridiculously inappropriate so let's not go there.

ChickensHaveNoLips. Exactly.

You are absolutely right. We don't immediately see how violent and hateful an image it is, because we are desensitised to hate speech against women. It is depressing and fucked up, you are quite right.

Which is why even though it isn't badly meant and it is not intended to degrade, that using hamburger and female sex in the same sentence whilst looking at female genitalia is crass.

Not top of the list come the revolution but revelatory of a certain desensitization all the same.

Ha

Are you hoping for a gun or a fairy's nose?

The only reason it doesn't shock more than it does (although it did at the time it was published - it scared the advertisers away), is because it is a woman being ground up. If it was a person of colour or a clearly identified Jew, it would be considered hate speech by wider society

Beachcomber - you have described this perfectly for me, and like Chicken said, I am appalled that I am so used to and accepting of this sort of this that I don't even realise it.

Thanks for explaining.

Should i google this image?
Am a bit scared.

here came up on google with the following blurb which I found quite sensible

"In 1978, Hustler magazine depicted a headless woman shoved into a meat grinder on their June cover. Thirty two years later, Spike TV chose virtually the same image to promote their television show Blue Mountain State. Also, note the poster image for the film Choke, pictured below. This installment of "Disembodied Women" focuses on the continued use of dismemberment, in this case exposing women's bare legs, to advertise films. The posters vary considerably, promoting horror films and romantic comedies, as well as foreign films and period pieces. The problem with such advertisements, as media activist Jean Kilbourne argues in her book Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, is that this perpetual sexual objectification of women encourages men to think of women as inferior. Additionally, women begin to view themselves as a collection of body parts, where a perceived flaw in only one area of the body leads to an obsessive desire to perfect the whole. For more disturbing evidence, check out our first and second installments, The Rear View and The Headless Woman, and feel free to add to our growing list of offending films in the comments section."

You're welcome.

I don't just know this stuff, I had it explained to me too.

SQ are you talking about the Hustler/meat image? It is nasty but it isn't the sort of thing that gives you flashbacks. Which is why it is so cunning.

It would be OK if it was a black woman or a jewish woman. I mean not OK by me but YKWIM.

I can't imagine a situation where an image of any man being ground up would be a magazine cover.

I find all of this very hard to believe.

What is this? The NHS or a game of Operation?

I have had two children and 4 scans. Songraphers were really careful to use language that anybody could understand, including backbone rather than spine. I find it very difficult to believe that there are pregnant women who don't know what a vulva is or what one looks like. I have certainly been taught to remember the difference between different bone conditions by recognising it as being either a wispa or an aero bubble but that doesn't mean it should be said to a parent about their child or that I shouldn't over time just know the difference by being familar with the body.

I find it very hard that to believe that sonographers aren't just pointing to the relavant area on the scan once they have identified it and are telling parents that their child has a turtle, a hotdog, a hamburger or any other such nonsense. It would make them look like a half trained imbecile who was still having to use some kind of memory jogger rather being competent to identify a vulva as a vulva because they must see them on a scan many times a day, and should have seen more of them than they have seen hamburgers.

And did you notice the quote from Larry Flint on the front page of SQ's link?

"We will no longer hang women up like pieces of meat"

It was a pure 'fuck you' to feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon who were speaking out against porn by referring to violence such as images of women tied up and hanging that were used in 'extreme niche porn'.

We won't hang them up, we will grind them up and spit them out. Which is exactly where modern porn is now.

Sorry, I know all this is slightly off topic. But at the same time it is highly relevant IYSWIM.

He was a cunning bastard that Larry Flint.

Very true on black woman or Jewish woman SQ.

More domination in it being a white stereotypically attractive woman though (you can tell just from the legs). Porn is very racist.

Interesting reading all these comments since this afternoon.
I think if I pointed out the female parts and said to my patients here is the vulva, most of them would look blankly at me. I talk a lot through my scams and point out everything as I go through. I always say " here's part of babies brain we measure, the cerebellum, it's the dumbbell shape here" and I talk about all the views of the heart I'm checking "this is the fish lips view" (yes really.. is that offensive too?) when I'm doing dating scans and I point to spine and say it looks like a zip.. look you can see all the bones in the spine..
when I had my scan with ds1 14 years ago, I could not make head not tail of the image and the sonographer didn't explain anything to me as he went. I didn't dare ask at the time either. which is why I talk the whole way though. explaining everything I'm looking at as I go. does this make me now sound patronising? I've had patients thank me for explaining and pointing out what I'm looking at. not everyone can see the image as well as we can and some can not make it out at all and are gratefull for the explanation.

(I'll apologise now for spelling mistakes I'm on my phone)

Explaining things is good. Explaining them in terms people can easily understand is good.

It isn't patronising at all. It is helpful. It is just unfortunate that the term hamburger has negative associations when it comes to women.

Perhaps those associations are obscure enough that it doesn't bother most people, but I honestly thought the meat/women thing was quite mainstream.