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+--- Thread: Should female body parts be renamed? + Breast cancer killed by woman's own immune sys (/thread-5473.html)
Should female body parts be renamed? + Breast cancer killed by woman's own immune sys - C C - Jun 5, 2018
The case for renaming women's body parts
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180531-how-womens-body-parts-have-been-named-after-men
EXCERPT: . . . The truth is, men are all over women’s bodies – dead, white male anatomists, that is. Their names live on eponymously, immortalised like audacious explorers for conquering the geography of the female pelvis as if it were terra nullius. The gods are engraved on women too. [...] When it comes to science and medicine, men (and gods) have left their mark all over the place. They have stamped their names on thousands of creatures [...] After all, until the last century, women were almost excluded from academic medicine. But the continued use of these mostly male eponyms not only reflects the gender bias in our medical knowledge base. It may continue to perpetuate it.
The controversial question of whether language shapes thought has long been debated. Still, plenty of examples exist where describing something in a certain way changes our perception of it. Ghil’ad Zuckermann, professor of linguistics and endangered languages at the University of Adelaide, points out that in languages where the word for ‘bridge’ has a feminine gender, people describe bridges as elegant. But in languages where the word for ‘bridge’ has a masculine gender, people refer to bridges as sturdy. It raises the question of whether our perceptions of the body, and its conditions, are also skewed by gender biases without us realising.
[...] Gender bias in the teaching of anatomy and physiology to medical students was examined in a 2013 study by Susan Morgan and her colleagues. In textbooks used to instruct students, they found that “male anatomy and physiology are often represented as the norm, with women being underrepresented in non‐reproductive anatomy. The impression is gained that the human body is male and that the female body is presented only to show how it differs.” If many medical terms embody a patriarchal history, the question is how much it matters today....
MORE: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180531-how-womens-body-parts-have-been-named-after-men
Woman's breast cancer wiped out in experimental immune system treatment
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-05/us-womans-breast-cancer-wiped-out-in-test-treatment/9835600
EXCERPT: A US woman with advanced breast cancer is healthy again after taking part in an experimental treatment, using her body's own immune system to wipe out the tumours. Key points: (1) Woman with advanced breast cancer now healthy after experimental treatment; (2) "I feel miraculous," the 42-year-old woman told media; (3) The research was published in Nature Medicine.
Forty nine-year-old Judy Perkins, from Florida, had advanced breast cancer which had stopped responding to chemotherapy and other treatments. [...] Researchers took a small sample of Ms Perkins' tumour and studied the DNA mutations in it. Then they extracted immune cells from the tumour and grew billions of them, finding those which would be the most effective to kill her cancer....
MORE: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-05/us-womans-breast-cancer-wiped-out-in-test-treatment/9835600
RE: Should female body parts be renamed? + Breast cancer killed by woman's own immune sys - Syne - Jun 5, 2018
So women are worried about what their doctor calls their lady parts? Because I'm pretty sure guys aren't going to change what completely unrelated and informal terms they use.
I would prefer bridges be sturdy than elegant, of I had to choose. Are science/medical terms biased just because who coined them? I seriously doubt it.
Textbooks likely just follow the older norm of not unnecessarily exploiting the female body. Just like human autopsy was once taboo, and some people still consider it disrespectful, males dissecting female bodies likely had a long-held stigma. And god forbid a textbook manage to use "too many" depictions of female anatomy.
It only matters today to the histrionic.