Imogen Learmonth
9 Sept 2020
Women (defined here as both female-identifying people, and people with wombs) have always found it much harder than men to have their bodies defined in the medical sphere.
Women (defined here as both female-identifying people, and people with wombs) have always found it much harder than men to have their bodies defined in the medical sphere. Given that histories are recorded and circumstances dictated by men, it’s not surprising that womanhood is ‘othered’ in our self-definition as a species – pushed to the boundaries of experience – but this sense of alienation is particularly prevalent when it comes to our physiognomy.
The female body has long been admired and feared by artists, writers, theologians, and scientists alike. For all recorded history we’ve been seen as boundaryless, apocryphal, excessive, and sinful; capable of divine acts of immaculate conception as well as wild and untameable; connected to the moon and the tide, bleeding and overflowing and seductive. Read full article here