April 3, 2013

  • Incompetent What?

    The principal occupational hazard for an ethicist is the tendency to get really riled really easily.

    Today, I’m annoyed–really, really annoyed–at insensitivity and latent misogyny in medical terminology.

    Why do men have erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation but women have incompetent cervices?  Why couldn’t it be called premature effacement and dilation?  Why hasn’t it been?  Is it because there are no profitable medications to treat the condition, like there are for erectile dysfunction, and therefore no pharmaceutical spin doctor to guard over the terminology?

    Why is slow growth in an otherwise flourishing baby called “failure to thrive”?  How does that make a mama feel?  Why aren’t such feelings taken into consideration?  Why has the replacement of discomfort-causing and even blaming terminology for female medical concerns so lagged behind the pace at which male medical concerns have been euphemized?

    How would men feel if all the female doctors got together and started renaming their reproductive conditions the way male doctors have been naming ours all these centuries?

    How much Viagra could you sell if we started calling it “incompetent penis”?  Forget the gentle-sounding “low sperm count” or its very technical (and thus exceedingly safe) “oligospermia.”  Let’s start calling it “incompetent testicular production.”  Instead of “decreased sperm motility,” let’s call it “incompetent flagella.”

Comments (3)

  • oh yes, there’s a long tradition within biology and feminist circles of critiquing the loaded gendered language of science. I’ve actually written some about this and could point you to some references.  

    For starters, look up Emily Martin’s 1991 article, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles,” about the active sperm and the passive egg, etc. and so on. 
    Fascinating and FRUSTRATING stuff.  :) 

  • Thanks, Dr. Tiff!  I can’t wait to read that!

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