Sensory homunculus

[JellySlice]

I was discussing the sense of touch with dd, and Googled sensory homunulus to show her, because an image is worth a thousand words.

And then I realised that the sensory homunculus is always male. I have never seen a sensory homunculus of a female body. Adding female to the search term just brings up male sensory homunculi with lipstick and nail varnish, or sexualised cartoonish female images.

It won't take a thousand words to explain its absence, but surely someone, somewhere, must have created a sensory image of the female body?

This has male and female.

Not convinced. The eyes and lips should be much on both, and what about the clitoris!?

I see the clitoris has been missed out whereas he has an enormous dick!

... much bigger on both.

Tbh, I had to Google what a sensory homunculus was just now, so am by no means discerning enough to know what it should look like.

MissingLinker
Looks like the female in the picture is from a typical male perpective.

For a start, I would make the genital area bigger and the roundness of the belly around the navel much more fruitful looking and prominent.
The nipples should be larger as well.

On a female obviously

JellySlice
If it was my job to draw this, I would be slightly embarrassed to present my representation of a female homunculus to a male editor.
Or is it just me?

I'd never come across this concept before either. Googling gets me lots of pictures of what looks like Gollum with massive hands. Creepy. Sorry, I know that isn't helpful! Male-as-default is irritating and all too common, though.'

Apart from the male-by-default, WrathofFaeKIopp's comment is exactly what I thought might be the reason for the total lack of representation of the female sensory experience. The clitoris would be huge and protruding, which would make some people very uncomfortable. (But the male sensory homunculus makes people uncomfortable, anyway!) This excessive prudery is misogynistic IMO, a denial that women have their own sensuality.

Such a great question OP! It turns out someone has written a paper to answer it. Short version - the data doesn't exist to draw a female version. It's thought one of the reasons no one has tried is prudishness. This could be a great teachable moment for your daughter about the male-female data gap.

academic.oup.com/cercor/article/23/5/1005/797920

Towards the end they try drawing a female sensory homunculus, but they have to superimpose it on the male homunculus with just the genital region varying because even where women have been specifically studied only the genital/breast region was mapped.

Looks like the female in the picture is from a typical male perpective.

Bwahahhahaaaa

I reckon the nipples should be bigger, whereas the rest of the boob basically like the rest of the front torso.

Wiktionary
Etymology of the word "Prude"

"From French prude, from Old French prude, prode, feminine of prou, prod, prud (“good, excellent, brave”), from Latin. Related to proud but unrelated to prudent"

Prudishness is another word misogynists use to insult women, but women's prudish behaviour helps to protect themselves and young girls.

In a nutshell we don't broadcast the female homunculus for safeguarding reasons.

In a nutshell we don't broadcast the female homunculus for safeguarding reasons.

I think I'm missing a joke here? The prudishness referred to would have been prudishness of male researchers. There are definitely no safeguarding benefits to not researching the female body and brain properly.

Kantastic
Yes I see what you mean, this information should be out there.

Yes, there is a huge missing clit there, and the boobs/nipples are hopelessly small.

Why is the female's mouth so much larger? Do women have more nerves in our lips, or is that just because the artist thought it looked prettier?

MissingLinker
Looks like the female in the picture is from a typical male perpective.

I know, this was just the only one I could find that wasn't the male model with lipstick on.

Isn’t this just Jez and Superhans band?

Fascinating. Never knew about this.

This is a good artistic representation

www.methodquarterly.com/2015/02/the-femunuculs/

That certainly looks more like what I would expect.

But it is difficult to look at. The prudery is indoctrinated into me!

Thing is you probably do have to show women with legs akimbo to be accurate if where the sensory area are or you can’t see much.

I can't quite place what it is about this that makes me a bit meh.

I imagine it would titilate men who would just laugh at it.

The breasts on the one in the OP are almost perfect circles, but awkwardly placed. Not sure if whoever drew it that way did so because porn saturated or if they're doing that thing that used to happen in art where the artist had no idea what naked women looked like so they just drew male pecs, but bigger and rounder. In any case the nipples are much too small. I also feel like the ears should be bigger on both.

Yes, of course the ears.
I would like to see the mind/imagination being represented as well.
Not sure about the baldness though.