Describing the female body using male language

[JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff]

Sort of inspired by the wonderful vagina facts thread.....

I have often wondered about the implications of the fact that women's bodies are described and mapped by men. For example, Braxton Hicks cx are named for a male doctor in the 1870s who first noticed them.

Only, I'm fairly sure women had been 'noticing' them for some time before he happened along

And the oft-cited fact that vagina means scabbard, obviously labelling a key female organ in terms of its use value for men.

What other egs are there are of our bodies being mapped and appropriated by men like this? And what are the ramifications?

I saw an article about this yesterday...

www.bbc.com/future/story/20180531-how-womens-body-parts-have-been-named-after-men

It was definitely an interesting article, thanks! Does all this labelling of women with men's names constitute a kind of colonialism?

God I’d never even thought of this! Just when you think your eyes are all the way open, some new hellish surprise comes along!

It’s the claiming of “discovering” women’s body parts that gets me the most, why is this even still written as fact when it’s clearly a load of bollox! The arrogance still surprises me.

Interesting article

When I was growing up the family Oxford Dictionary (so would have been from the generation before I think) defined the clitoris as a "rudimentary penis".

Hmmmmmmm. I'd say that definition would be from a man. Who knew very little about what to do with a clitoris when presented with one.

I am sure Bartholin or Skein were not women - will check

Alexander Skene (sorry, wrong spelling above) and Caspar Bartholin the Younger.

I can’t get too worked up about Gabriel Fallopian and his ilk tbh.... that’s just the way it is in medicine- islets of langerhans, Hodgkins disease, Golgi body, Eustachian tubes....the list of body parts and diseases is endless. It’s not the world was awash with medical women in the medieval times and beyond!

But scabbard..... does make me SEETHE

I ended up ranting about this recently, I am more than the sum of my voids!

The Pouch of Douglas is my personal favourite.

Weird tbf lots of places that were colonised by Westerners in the C19th and named accordingly have been renamed nowadays, even though imperialism was "the way it was" then. Genuine Q, why is this different? It is the fact that there were not medical women (well not in formal structures like universities) that produced this structural inequality. Men's reproductive organs aren't named for Jessica Jones or Sadie Smith.....

Maybe they should be. I hereby rename the scrotum "The Pouch Of Pauline". (After my Auntie. God rest her soul. She'd laugh at that.)

Wow the Beep are going full on with their “Hear her” aren’t they? Bloody marvellous.

More attention needs to be given to the clit IMO as that’s where most of the action happens for women.

There’s a difference though between the horrible white man strutting in and renaming something, and a scientist who has the comparatively small reward of putting his name to whatever he discovered. That it happens all over chemistry, medicine and biology really means it’s not sexploitative IMO

Hmm okay

I respectfully disagree because I think that the removal of women from the vast majority of scientific endeavour is a huge historical injustice with ongoing consequences, and the cherry on the cake is that women's bodies are permanently labelled using terminology imposed on them by exploitative men. Exploitative because they used the female body to stake a claim to scientific glory whilst being unwilling to accept women as their intellectual peers. That is why it is also a biy different to naming a new crustacean.

Also, cf the horrible history of much gynaecology.....

But the whitewashing of women’s contribution to science is not necessarily the fault of dr Golgi, or dr eustachian et al.

I agree with what you’re saying in a wider sense but just think it’s a separate issue.

I don’t feel so bothered about the naming of body parts. Yes it would have been nice if fallopia was a Greek goddess..... mind you Demetria was the Greek goddess of fertility wasn’t she?

Take a look at these revision questions from my Call the Midwife 1950's midwifery textbook.
Of course the fact is that practically all anatomy, early medical procedures, & lots of surgical instruments are named after men because women weren't allowed to be doctors until comparatively recently.
Even now, when we have far more women in practice, women outnumber men in some areas, I can't think of a single medical fact/procedure that has been named after a woman but I'm sure there must be some. Please enlighten me, name them if you can!

^en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_anatomical_parts_named_after_people^

Well, it's wikipedia, so not going to be comprehensive, but this is a big long list of body parts named after people, and unless I've missed it, not one is a woman.

Disturbingly. I guess that sums it up.

Really I see it as a matter of historical fact and I'm more disturbed by people changing and appropriating our language or demanding we use stupid euphemisms like "top" "bottom" surgery etc.
That's where the argument should focus now imo.

NonSuch, I guess for me it is all a continuum - this argument is like fighting a hydra!

So, many popular sources will say (to reuse the eg from my op) that "John Braxton Hicks first noted/ noticed/ described" BH cx.

But, he didn't. He can't have. It is a lie which erases thousands of years of women's history.

Also using medical terminology like vagina is to me a huge gaslighting exercise. To be taken seriously, maybe even to be understood, when I go to the dr about a women's health problem, I need to name my body in terms of a misogynistic word that only conceptualises it for how it is useful to men : a hole to stick things in. Exactly the way TRAs conceptualise the vagina btw.

Am I going to go to the GP and say I think I have a prolapse in my cunt? No, I'll say vagina like a sensible middle aged middle class lady and thus be complicit in seeing my reproductive organs through the prism of their fuckability by a man.

WeirdScenesInsideTheGoldmine

"There’s a difference though between the horrible white man strutting in and renaming something, and a scientist who has the comparatively small reward of putting his name to whatever he discovered. That it happens all over chemistry, medicine and biology really means it’s not sexploitative IMO"

I've been reading about women's history of the middle ages and a LOT of medical history (especially gynecological/obstetric) really is the history of men stealing credit for women's accomplishments and knowledge. For example, the earliest books about which herbs are useful for which diseases were written by men, but those men seem to have gotten that information from the female midwives and healers who had painstakingly discovered and carefully preserved it over centuries. Tell me again why the bloke should get the credit? Cause he was rich and worked for a university, and was really good at stealing credit?

In terms of body parts it really is offensive. For example the G spot is named after the man who "discovered" it in 1950. Call me nuts but I'm PRETTY SURE some women knew about it before then. So why wasn't it written about in a medical book in the 1940s? Or the 1800s? Or the 1100s? Cause no one gave a fuck about what women reported. Women's views and experiences aren't worth writing down. Tell me again why blokes should get the credit for it?

Actually you’re right. But isn’t more
Of a reflection of lack of women in academia?

I mean if there was (and of course there was) institutionalised sexism it shouldn’t detract from the individual scientists who were first published or acknowledged should it? Isn’t it symptomatic of s problem rather than the fault of the individual
Men?

Actually you’re right. But isn’t more
Of a reflection of lack of women in academia?

I mean if there was (and of course there was) institutionalised sexism it shouldn’t detract from the individual scientists who were first published or acknowledged should it? Isn’t it symptomatic of s problem rather than the fault of the individual
Men?

departments.kings.edu/womens_history/trotula.html
What about Trotula of Salerno though? History isn't a simple linear progression of women gradually getting more rights, there have been women writing about obstetrics at times when it was easier for women to practice, and then quietly erased in the intervening times.

departments.kings.edu/womens_history/trotula.html
What about Trotula of Salerno though? History isn't a simple linear progression of women gradually getting more rights, there have been women writing about obstetrics at times when it was easier for women to practice, and then quietly erased in the intervening times.