Status Updates From Sairas ja viallinen: Naiset...

WHAT Mary Shelley (Frankenstein author) was Wollstonecraft’s daughter!!

“Wollstonecraft [and a late 18th century feminist visionary who worked as a governess and teacher and wrote a feminist book] saw how the private domestic education of middle-class girls stunted their intelligence and encouraged the infantile, frivolous qualities valued as marriageable.” She instead wanted equal education.

How lucky we are now that our education isn’t solely focussed on making women amiable

According to syndenham, women ‘easily imagine they are liable to all miseries that can befall mankind…presaging the worst evils to themselves.’
“Syndenham expanded the definition of hysteria to such an extent that it became a diagnostic dumping ground for any illness in any woman that was even slightly tricky to explain.”

Many anatomists didn’t discuss female genitalia because it would be shameful and improper to discuss such a private thing, holding back knowledge and progress in women’s health, and continuing the idea that our anatomy is shameful and should be shrouded in secrecy, whereas male anatomy is not so.

The clitoris was first medically ‘discovered’ in the 1550s. But for centuries it was misunderstood, believed to be an inferior version of the male penis and excluded from diagrams of female anatomy. Named clitoris - Ancient Greek for little hill. Only in 2005 (!) was it discovered by a female urologist (Prof Helen O’Connell) that the clit extends into vulval tissue, reaching over 7cm in length. Wishbone-shaped

Hysteria comes from the Ancient Greek word for uterus: hystera.
Hysteria linked to a diseased uterus for much of history.

The women scapegoated for bad events (those accused of witchcraft) were often those involved in healing, eg midwives. If a midwife (which weren’t legal) was involved in a birth and the child died, then the midwife killed it satanically and is a witch who must be punished.
Keeping women out of healthcare.

Fear of witchcraft was huge, with tens of thousands of people killed, mostly women (15-17th centuries). Any negative event could be blamed on a woman, who was accused of channeling Satan. She would be inspected for bodily marks that prove Satan has contacted her (blemishes, birthmarks etc!) and tortured for confession, and sometimes killed.
Women’s inferiority making them more susceptible to the devil

Keeping women out of medicine (eg barring from universities, making medicine an official practice hence women can’t legally do it etc) was to keep the myths alive and so to control women. If women were involved, they would probably very quickly reveal that the myths written in books about their bodies were not true to their experience at all

“Since [women’s] sole purpose was to bear and raise children, women’s health was entirely defined by their uteruses. Medical ideas reflected and legitimised society’s control over the female body and its precious procreative power.”

For a very long time, female ill health was always believed to be related to the womb. Gives some examples from Hippocrates.
How funny that we still control women’s uteruses