The ghost of anatomies past

Simulating the one-sex body in modern medical training

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4367184
AutoresEricka Johnson (0000-0001-5041-5018, Linköping University, autor correspondente)
Ano2005
Volume6
Fascículo2
Páginas141-159
Data de publicação2005-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoFeminist Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1464-7001 • E-ISSN: 1741-2773
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1464700105053691
OpenAlexW2161828281
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas11
Referências citadas31

An examination of the use of medical simulators shows that they contain traces of the one-sex body model found in pre-Enlightenment anatomies. The simulators present the male body as 'male including female' rather than 'male, not female'. Only when female sex organs are relevant to a practice, as in gynaecology, does a simulator need to become 'female, not male'. The widely held modernist understanding of sex and gender as binary categories is actually masking local practices which allow varied sex and gender paradigms to coexist in simulator use. This analysis applies the discussions of Laqueur, Schiebinger and Faulkner to simulator practice. The consequences of recognizing the presence of the one-sex body are two-fold. Firstly, seeing that the reification of medical knowledge can still be haunted by conceptual paradigms of the past forces a more nuanced understanding of the variety that localized medical practices contain. Secondly, observing the ease with which the reified knowledge of a one-sex body is embraced by subjects who also exist in a world of binary gender points to the complexity our subjectivities can embrace and forces the researcher to acknowledge the implications of the simulations' context

Binary opposition · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Politics · Sociology · Computer Science · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Psychology · Social Psychology · Artificial Intelligence