The female body is a work of art. Sculptors and the world’s best painters have long admired it, attempting to capture its grace and beauty on the page for as long as we’ve had the tools to make and record art. But while we can recognise the beauty in the female form in every shape or size, there is one glaringly obvious problem: female body parts continue to honour male scientists.
If you’ve never really stopped to consider the inner workings and terms that refer to the parts of the female pelvis, a cursory review of the region brings to light the fact that it’s inundated by a number of terms that take their cues from male scientists. Think of Alcock’s canal, the fallopian tubes and Bartholin’s glands. As the New York Times suggests, the names of these body parts take their cues from the men who are thought to have discovered them and, as a result, take us back to a time “when the female body was considered terra incognita for great minds of medicine to explore, stake out and claim.”
Thankfully, times are changing and these terms are on their way out when it comes to medicine. It’s largely due to the fact that anatomists find the idea of naming parts after people questionable for a number of reason, not least the fact that such a thing is useless and offers little information about what the given body part actually does. But perhaps most importantly, in perpetuating the idea where body parts are named after those who have discovered them – which in most cases, remains to a large degree male – it gives the impression that medicine is an old boys’ club and in this instance, that the female pelvis is too.
So, why do we still use such terms even after they were officially banned from medicine in 1895? A lot of it has to do with the fact that annoying as they might be, they’re still instantly recognisable and memorable and, when it comes to clinicians, they’re familiar. Should you want to erase the gendered terms from your own vernacular though, there are some alternatives you can use. Here are some examples.
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Fallopian tube
Named after Gabriele Falloppio, a Catholic priest and anatomist, the Fallopian tubes were discovered at a time when scientists were still unsure whether women produced eggs or “female sperm.” The official name for them however, is uterine tube.
G-spot
The most infamous of all female body parts, this was named after Ernst Grafenberg, a German gynaecologist who described a particularly sensitive area about halfway up the vagina and deemed it a “primary erotic zone, perhaps more important than the clitoris.” You can refer to the g-spot as the internal clitoris.
Kegel muscles
Named after Arnold Kegel, an American gynaecologist who recommended exercising them after childbirth. These muscles are vital for urination and orgasm, but are otherwise known as pelvic floor muscles.
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