In which The Lancet grieves for historically-neglected vagina bodies

When you're part of the problem you think you're critiquing.

Reminds me of old anatomy texts that referenced women's bodies only in pieces, and paid attention only to those 'parts' that were thought to differ from men: breasts, uterus, ovaries, cervix, vagina, etc.* If you wanted to come up with a concise expression of the dehumanizing way the medical profession has often viewed and treated women, "bodies with vaginas" is not bad. But don't fool yourself that it's progressive.

Strangely, we seem to be reverting to this way of seeing (arguably: not seeing) women: as body parts, functions, and sexual/reproductive services.

Medicine has always treated men as the default human, with the result that we still don't understand all the ways male and female bodies differ—down to the last cells in our bodies—and women's health has suffered at every stage of medical research, assessment, and treatment for this lack of knowledge.

A medical system that can't even name us** will fail to treat us as whole human beings, and rather keep treating us as defective males or sexual and reproductive machines.

*We'll save the part where doctors reduced women to body parts and sexual/reproductive services, and then cut out uteruses, cervixes, and ovaries to treat female deviance for some other time... we don't even have to go rummaging around in the dustbin of history for case studies!

**If you’ve come to the misguided conclusion that “woman” is a dangerous word, best reserved for the men who identify as such, why not say "female people," language that at least keeps the subject intact?