Tuesday, March 11, 2008

"I Hereby Claim This Female Reproductive System in the Name of... Me!"

Time to learn stuff!

Braxton Hicks contractions are named after John Braxton Hicks, an English doctor who, according to
Wikipedia, "first described them" in 1872.

And also according to Wikipedia, the G-spot is named after the German gynaecologist Ernst Gräfenberg who "first hypothesized its existence" in 1944.

And the Skene's gland, the gland ostensibly responsible for the elusive female ejaculatory orgasm? Again we look to Wikipedia to learn that these glands are named after the physician who "described them first in Western medical literature," one Alexander Skene.


Note the operative word "first" in all these claims. Because I'm sure not a single woman in the history of humankind ever noticed any of these things about their own bodies until they were pointed out to them. They were probably too busy doing EVERYTHING ELSE.

11 comments:

landismom said...

What you didn't mention is that the penis was named by famed feminist doctor Lenore C. Penise. They took off the 'e' to masculinize it.

If only!

Tammy said...

Oh my god. You totally had me for a minute. Brava, landismom, brava.

Anonymous said...

Off topic, but ...

I really miss the book posts. I discovered this blog in August of 07 and read through all the past entries, which took me through about October. But there hasn't been a single new book in the 50 books posted about since then. Are you still pursuing the challenge, or should I stop looking for those sorts of posts at this site?

Anonymous said...

I would like to be in a position to wander around naming things after myself whenever I happen to notice them. How do you sign up for that job?

RandomRanter said...

And then we could copyright all the names - so that every time someone talked about their Jen they would have to pay you!

Tammy said...

Jen and Random Ranter: I like the way you guys think.

Amanda, yup, I plan to get caught up with the book posts as soon as my brain starts functioning in a reasonably normal manner again. I have, oh man, at least twenty or thirty books to write about. (And thank god I've actually been writing down the titles or else I'd be screwed right now.) I'm also thinking of starting a second site for all the posts about kids' books and kid-related stuff, so that this site can get back to being mostly about books for grown-ups. Again, as soon as I'm unstupid. Fortunately, I've got a year of mat leave ahead of me. Woo!

Anonymous said...

jen and randomranter, that reminds me of a joke I heard Steven Hawking tell the other day (!)

How often do you get to say THAT? Also, to clarify, Steven Hawking was on the TV and I was sprawled in front of it.

Anyway, he was talking about his theory of the universe and said he (and his cohort) should have patented the universe and then charged everyone for their existence. Ha!

(I like all the posts! Kids' books, not-kids' books, not books at all... They're all good!)

Lady M said...

This is totally unrelated, but have you seen the book/art links here?

http://mightygirl.com/2008/03/12/paper/

Tammy said...

Lady M, I did! Mighty Girl is one of my daily online stops. Which is pretty funny, since it's a shopping blog and I'm kind of a cheapskate.

The Writers Blog -- Joanne Nakaya said...

Well, thank goodness that they discovered those things, and how clever that they named parts of women's anatomy after men. After all they probably weren't even used until then (sigh). Maybe we can rename them ... after all English is always changing. Hmm, what could we call ....

RossK said...

There's something else that is problematic about this stupid method of naming things in this manner (not that I don't think the point raised here is a valid one).....It's that it does not tell you a single thing about what the thing actually is.

I mean why not just call Braxton Hicks Contractions what they actually are... which is 'short-lived contractions of the uterus'.

Simple as that.