WGS200Y5 Chapter Notes - Chapter 11: Gynaecology, Andreas Vesalius
Document Summary
Our perceptions and interpretations of the body are mediated through language and in society, the biological functions serve as the main language. As scientists construct reality, the naturalistic view of the body does not exist and instead it is created by scientists as the object of scienti c investigation. Medical texts from the ancient greeks described female and male bodies as fundamentally similar, with the only difference being that females has the genitals on the inside of the body and males on the outside. This is referred to as the one-sex model, which states that the female body was the male body turned inside out, and a lesser version of the male body. The one-sex model dominated biomedical discourses for thousands of years to the point that there were not names for the organs in the female body (ex. an ovary was referred to as a version of the male testicle)
