I have an experiment for you.

[ThanksMsMay]

Go to google images and type in "human body"

What do you notice?

There's no images of actual humans? (On the first page anyway)

They're all men shaped

Well that's a good point but it didn't register for me as I was looking for a diagram.

I was surprised all the diagrams were male as that passes for default human

Inside muscle images of people ?

Yes condensed!

Give up ! What have you noticed ?

Oh I was right !

Used a different search engine, but not a female body in sight.

I guessed that would be the case before I looked ! Given that this is the feminism section !

Start a petition

Why are they all men shaped ? There's no real need is there ? A human body can be demonstrated without making it all muscly !

I googled human bodies and wiki came up first with both male and female

I had a feeling that's where you'd be going with that one, OP. And you're right - it is something to be worried about, because it's not just google images, it's an attitude which is pervasive and means drugs, surgical procedures, diagnostic techniques are all predicated on the male body as default, with the result that women often don't get adequate treatment, and in some cases have their lives put at risk (it's only in the last ten years, for instance, that there's been an education programme around the fact that heart attack symptoms present completely differently in women).

I noticed it shortly after starting to take Anatomy classes. Female bodies are usually shown only when there are anatomical differences (goes from systems to bones). My teacher is female, so her slides are better balanced, but the books are merciless.

What worries me is that besides the male body being default, I wonder if it's also that a naked woman's body is seen as obscene in a way that men's aren't.

I'm not sure that a view of a woman would be "obscene" but we're all aware of pornography, and people who put medical teaching materials together might deliberately avoid pictures of women, just so nobody accuses them of using too many pictures of women.

Now that I'm thinking about, I wonder if the underlying issue is that a male body is just a body, but we can never take a female body for granted, there are always issues connected with how it's presented. Yet another item on the list of feminist concerns.

1 really bizarre article online talked about why human childbirth is such a nightmare in evolutionary terms. Which was all scientifically until it used pics of a male body while describing womens' hips!!!

Human childbirth sure would be even more of a nightmare if women had male hips ...

I wonder how many women have died over the years because all medical research was based on men.

It is a form of femicide that's even more invisible than forcing women to give birth. They can always shrug and say "Oh, no, how unfortunate she didn't know she was having a heart attack!"

And with medication that's only ever been tested on men ... women may suffer side effects or die and it is declared an accident, the only time it was visible was with the contergan scandal when it affected babies ... male babies, too, which might have made the difference.

Makes me really angry that shit.

It really annoys me that women are the majority of the population, but treated as the other, not the default. It's totally illogical & inaccurate - things that women are accused of being, but men have done this.

Oh my god OP I never really comment on the feminism board but this has literally blown my mind. Isn't it funny relatively little things like this just pass you by until someone points it out and then you wonder how it took you so long to notice it!
Thank you

All medical research is based on men?
Where do these nonsense ideas come from?
Male and female patients are considered in clinical trials, in case there are differences in the populations.
Just look up any clinical trial results online, they'll include statistical analysis of male/female split, plus any risk factors such as smoker, diabetic, age, etc.
Clinical researchers aren't idiots you know.
Thalidomide (Contergan) wasn't not tested on women, it was perfectly fine for women for its original indication.
The scandal was the indication was extended to treat nausea in morning sickness without a trial.
And it wasn't male babies affected at all, it was all babies, male and female.

trofire.com/2016/12/13/decades-crash-tests-used-male-dummies-result-women-injured-killed-car-accidents/

My partner told me about the above fairly recently. Amazing how many places sexism has found to seep into.

deydo, you're right, it isn't just men that are used as test subjects for clinical trials. My understanding is though that it has only been fairly recently that women of child bearing age have been allowed to participate. I think there is also still a bias in the numbers of women recruited for these trials. There certainly seem to be a lot of studies and articles about this issue.

Re the point about male babies being affected, Vestal didn't say that it was just male babies, she said "male babies, too". So male babies as well as female.