Removing the ‘Part of Shame’ from the Female Anatomy


In 2019, Dr. With Broadfield’s support, Ms. Draper began searching for an article arguing that pudendum was inappropriate as a medical term and should be removed. “It was a fascinating project,” he said. “I just had to go all the way.”

Initially, shame did not know sex. First-century Roman writerspudendumrefers to the genitals of men, women and animals. But it was women who were stuck with shame.

In 1543 the word was a weird illustration In an anatomical atlas by Andreas Vesalius, a Flemish doctor sometimes called the “father of modern anatomy”. The image clearly looks like a penis, despite being labeled a human womb, but with a tuft of curly pubic hair on the side of the head, reflecting the idea that women are just men with flawed, internal body parts. (Also, remember the scarcity of female corpses.)

A century later, a Dutch anatomist named Regnier de Graaf emphasized the role of the clitoris in female sexuality. “If these parts of the pudendum were not endowed with such a perfect sensitivity to pleasure,” she wrote, “no woman would be willing to take on the tedious nine-month job of pregnancy, the painful and often fatal process of expelling the fetus and raising a child,” he wrote. donor duty.”

In 1895, anatomy officially recognized the pudendal region in both males and females. But 60 years later, only the “pudendum femininum” – the part of women’s shame – remained on the list. It would later be simplified to “pudendum” and used as a somewhat more formal synonym for vulva. Today, the word appears in almost every medical textbook, including the recent editions of “.Gray’s Anatomy”“Williams Obstetrics,” and “Comprehensive Gynecology.

Miss Draper wasn’t the only one bothered by these roots. in 2014 Bernard MoxhamHead of anatomy at Cardiff University in Wales, Dr. Susan MorganTo examine gender bias in anatomy teaching from the same university. They found that most medical textbooks show the male body as the standard and only expel the female when it’s time to show her reproductive system, genitals, and breasts.



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