I teach both human physiology and developmental biology — it would be entirely appropriate to ask my students to draw pictures of reproductive anatomy on an exam. Here’s a sample test in which a group of men were asked to demonstrate their knowledge of female anatomy with art work.
They basically failed.
Unfortunately, the test was made invalid by something that I’ve also encountered in similar questions in which I’ve asked students to draw something we discussed in class: most people can’t draw anything. They’re also really hard to grade when you get back this page with a tangled mess of random lines with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was supposed to be. It’s worse than trying to decipher some students’ handwriting.
They should have also done a complementary test in which women were asked to draw the male reproductive system. MISANDRY.
Send them to the group W bench.
Vagina? Was there some lab work prior to the exam? Or was it just an assumption that all kids know IT? :)
I can’t draw for shit (well, after four years of teaching my circles have started looking less like potatoes, but still), but I think that’s a vulva, not a vagina.
I doubt I could draw an ear or a good set of teeth, either.
Should a working knowledge of human anatomy (or any other bit of complex engineering with strange and recondite usage and maintenance requirements) necessarily imply highly accurate visual recall? Surely recognition and classification of the important bits when looking is the important thing.
I don’t know about you, but my ‘visual’ memory is quite an abstract sort of thing, and I do a terrible job illustrating things I think about. It also often requires observation of the subject in order to bring relevant information to the fore… I had no problem dismantling my dishwasher and replacing the pump the other day, because I could see where all the bits went and how they linked up and so could work out what they were and what I needed to do. I couldn’t tell you now what looked like or how they were laid out, though. Just a bunch of pipes and glands tucked away underneath, right?
To be fair, it’s really easy to draw a penis and testicles, and they’re just out there for anyone to see. Drawing the vulva’s a bit harder. Drawing a vagina? I guess that’s an invitation to draw vulva, since drawing just a fleshy opening is even harder. Of course, if you’ve seen a few diagrams, you ought to be able to dome up with a reasonable uterus and ovaries.
Huh, she says “female reproductive anatomy”. I’d definitely go for the uterus and ovaries diagram. But I guess I’m weird in that when I hear fairly technical terms, I go to the technical diagram.
Not being able to draw it i can understand, it’s one thing to have a concept in your head and quite another to turn it into a drawing. Also, drawing with a pen is not the best medium for everybody. However, what i find surreal is that grown men, adults for fuck’s sake, don’t know where the orifices in a vulva are or where and what a clitoris is…I can understand older people not knowing because naughty bits, lights off, shit like that, but with the amount of well-lit porn that people consume today, there really is no excuse. Use your fucking heads…
well, the same exercise should be proffered to women. I betcha women would not do any better.
Well, I’m a guy and *I* can’t remember which nut took the stupid route down.
@rabbitbrush (#9): Seriously? You think women can’t draw a penis and testicles?
B==>
There, I’ve just done a better job drawing the male anatomy than some of these guys did on the female anatomy. It’s kind of an unfair comparison.
What I find more interesting is that they mostly seemed to go straight to external genitalia, when the prompt was reproductive anatomy, most of which is internal, but well diagrammed in every sex ed, intro biology, and human anatomy text ever developed.
Here’s a fun diagram for anyone who hasn’t seen one: http://www.mattbors.com/blog/2012/09/24/the-avenging-uterus-vs-rush-limbaugh/
The strangest part is that so many are interpreting “reproductive anatomy” as referring to the vulva instead of the internal organs. I immediately think of that standard simplified internal diagram with the triangular uterus tapering into the vagina on the bottom and the fallopian tubes looping around to the ovaries from the top corners when I hear “reproductive anatomy”. Oddly, the article refers to the “vagina”, with Plank ironically perpetuating the exact problem the article and video are intended to highlight – that people don’t actually know shit about female reproductive anatomy and instead reduce it to one part via the persistent use of “vagina” as a synecdoche.
Those guys were pathetic. I figure I could do pretty well at that assignment. When my wife was pregnant the first time I bothered to learn all of this stuff in some detail. So I’d do three drawings. First, a cross section drawing at the sagittal or medial plane, second, a cross section drawing in the frontal plane to give the layout of the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus and the like, and then only at the end a front view of the vulva in all of it’s beautiful glory. But given the huge variation in the way women’s vulvas appear, that drawing could go a lot of ways. (No, I’m not in any medical profession.)
Apparently, some guys 1) don’t watch enough porn, and 2) have lousy art skills.
I suspect it’s mostly 2. :D
…as we learned in Season 2 of Orange is the New Black. It took a trans woman to set her fellow inmates straight.
To be fair, while some of them were awful, some of them did OK. Again, I think the larger issue is thinking of women’s reproductive systems as the external bits, rather than the very important internal bits. There were a couple of decent drawings of the external bits, including one that basically had everything in the right place and drawn extremely well, but just mislabeled the clit as the g-spot and the vagina as the “baby hole”, which I assume was a joke. I also assume this is the guy she told “you’re doing better than the straight guys”. There was some misplacement of the urethra, which is not unexpected, and there was one halfway decent drawing of absolutely everything.
Its understandable, my education of female reproductive anatomy was essentially a grey foggy area labeled “Here be dragons and the source of human sin.” I have since educated myself a fair bit, but I still couldn’t make a recognizable drawing because I can’t draw anything more complicated than a stick person. I’d like to see how well they did if asked to label a standard anatomy diagram instead. Not that I think it would turn out a whole lot better. The state of sex ed on this continent is abysmal.
As my trivia group learned while discussing with pens in hand a question about Scandinavia, you can draw a pretty accurate penis without even meaning to.
I was never asked to draw anything when I was tested on anatomy. Which was good thing. Frank Netter had nothing to fear from my art skills.
both.
And guys wonder why women have to fake orgasms …
Keep the light on, when in doubt about anything, ask. Try to follow the 3 -2-1 rule at a minimum – you give her 3 before, 2 during and 1 after.
My first thought was that I do know what the female reproductive system includes and basically what it looks like, but I’m shaky on the male system. I am the inverse of those guys!
#11– I meant give that same exercise to women, that is, have women draw the female reproductive anatomy. I betcha women would do no better than men drawing that.
rabbitbrush #23
Are you joking?
@rabbitbrush (#23): Oh, I see. Sorry, that makes sense. In that case, I expect if you did it as a study, with an adequate sample size, the women would do somewhat better on average, but not a lot and you could easily find women to make a video just like this one with.
Have none of these guys ever seen a Dodge logo?
I think every biology exam, at high school level or higher, should contain pictures of a spermatozoon, an ovum, and a zygote. Each will be marked with the same question: “True or false: This is a human being. Circle one: TRUE / FALSE” Any student who circles “TRUE” should be required to repeat the course, regardless of the grade on the rest of the test.
Moggie @1:
I’ll take father-rapers for $200, please-
Thanks for that little skip down memory lane…
So, basically they’re familiar with the hole they want to stick their dick into. If we’re lucky they also remember that we mostly orgasm via the clitoris.
But yes, I remember that my husband got a serious increase in education once he got together with me and well, I talked about things like menstruations, cramps, pain in the ovaries, etc. And then there came all the anatomical details about pregnancy and childbirth.
No, we’re not Barbie. You canot just remove the outer part of our belly, take out the baby and replace it with a perfectly flat one again.
Susan Williamson. in “The truth about women”. New Scientist (1 August 1998). wrote:
The article at New Scientist seems to be behind a paywall, but there is what, from my memory, is an accurate copy at http://www.cirp.org/news/clitoris/
Then what am I misreading here?
It’s Ram tough!
In the diagram, one vas deferens is labeled “hypothetical.” Both actually follow the “actual” route in actuality. Everything’s pretty symmetrical down there.
The paragraph has a couple of confusing aspects. They use the singular ‘vas deferens’ throughout (plural is ‘vasa deferentia’). And I don’t know why it’s so specific to humans. The vasa loop over the ureters in all eutherians with descended testes afaik; certainly in all the male cats, minks, rats, and fetal pigs I and my students have ever dissected.
starskeptic, PZ does like to throw out that Alice’s Restaurant reference every now and then. It comes around on the guitar every few months.
/derail
Note to self: Read the captions.
Thanks.
Want to give them a real challenge? Ask them to draw a woman’s face.
back when I went to school the only thing that I was taught in the way of drawing was some drafting. I think my experience was not unusual at all. The lack of any training in even the basics in drawing must be at least as significant as anatomical knowledge in the results . Of course this is in no way a study it is a demonstration at best and could be just as easily totally scripted even if it illustrates a truth.
there is something else. I do not remember many drawings of the female anatomy in which the outside parts were clearly connected to all the inside parts they seem to be most often shown separately.
uncle frogy
@busterggi wins the thread.
ledasmom (#18)
I’ve seen that mentioned before elsewhere.
Interestingly, in marsupials the scrotum is in front of the penis (which I knew) and the vasa do not loop around the ureters (which I just learned). Evidently descent of the testes evolved twice. huh.
@busterggi Well, I was a biologist, and I used to be a decently accomplished artist at the same time. Even today I would still be able to draw somewhat accurate diagram of female or male reproductive system off memory.
Drawing a face, however, is another kettle of fish completely. Especially face that has recognizable typical female features. That is something even artists have trouble to do from memory. That is why identikits do not generally go “draw us the suspect you saw”.
I get the humor intended (I think). This is just my inner pedant speaking.
@40 Chas
Not necessarily. The ureters develop as outgrowths from the Wolffian duct and migrate down to join up with the bladder. Whether the vasa loop around the ureters or not may have more to do with where the ureters are forming relative to where the vasa are forming than independent evolution of testes descent.
“most people can’t draw anything”
Which is no more reason to avoid drawing questions on biology exams than their inability to write is reason to avoid essay questions!
Moggie –
Great! All I have to do is wait for it to come around again –
– on the guitar…
I think it might be a movement.
Even the research of Williamson & Nowak has had since 1998 to be reported and it still hasn’t penetrated public consciousness. Here’s a a href=”
https://books.google.ca/books?id=T5P_5UwqYhoC&pg=PA106&lpg=PA106&dq=clitoris+williamson+nowak&source=bl&ots=rXPYKL-sT3&sig=aMiRmDqkvifyDg8H_9jpbDkbf2I&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UNaZVOfEI5egyATC5YKwAw&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=clitoris%20williamson%20nowak&f=false“>diagram of the clitoris after Williamson & Nowak and here’s a paper about it showing several views.
Sorry about the borked link format. It works, though: just scroll up half a page for the image.
“Here’s a sample test in which a group of men were asked to demonstrate their knowledge of female anatomy with art work.”
“female anatomy”? When you mean “vaginas”, say “vaginas” and stop being cissexist. It’s really disappointing seeing you continue to make these mistakes, PZ.
Not just twice! Both afrotherians and eulipotyphlans lack the descent, AFAIK; one placental clade where descent has evolved is even called Scrotifera.
Well, to be fair male reproductive anatomy is more conspicuous, while female organs are more out of sight.
If we asked people to draw or name the inside of the mouth we wouldn’t get much different results.
I hope you’re joking, since much of this thread detailed the many other parts of the female anatomy than the vagina. How is it “cissexist” to talk about female biology in inclusive terms?
@51, Artor
*facepalm* that’s not the point. The person you are responding to is objecting to the use of the word “female” to describe any specific variety of genitals at all. Basically, they just gave “vaginas” as an example.
I was also surprized I didn’t see any similar complaints before post 48.
@ applebeverage Problem “female anatomy” covers the whole area including secondary sex characteristics. Whilst Female genitalia would be more specific using vagina to refer to the whole shebang is horribly wrong. Using vagina in this way misinforms by failing to use the correct term for the external genitalia (vulva) and ignores the uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries.
Okay, what was the desired answer – the external genitalia or the system from ovaries to vaginal opening, or a 3D rotatable model with full and togglable transparency, or this?
How many of you can draw just the clitoris? Try and then check your results here. If the picture shows with the link, don’t look and cheat.
http://www.arte.tv/fr/le-clitoris-ce-cher-inconnu/387780,CmC=387788.html
Artor @51 & Intaglio @53: You’re thinking along the wrong lines. Refer to brianpansky @52; my complaint is that because there are men with vaginas and women with penises, by referring to vaginas as “female anatomy” PZ (and many commentors in this thread) is erasing/invalidating trans people.
@56 applebeverage
How would you propose referring to the anatomical structures in question?
chris61@57:
Did you not read apple’s initial post? You can refer to a vagina or a penis without specifically labeling them as being unique to either gender. I don’t think applebeverage was proposing that we invent some new term for the actual structures but to recognize that those structures aren’t always unique to males or females. This really isn’t that hard to get.
@58 nich
PZ is a biologist and from a biological perspective a vagina is a female anatomical structure and a penis is a male structure. Whether referring to them as male or female structures erases/invalidates transgender people depends on whether or not you believe gender is determined by biological anatomy. If it isn’t (which I thought was the current thinking on the matter) then I don’t see the problem. Women can have male anatomical structures and men can have female, the structures themselves are still identifiable as male or female.
chris61@59:
And an atheist is just somebody who doesn’t believe in god, amiright?
@60 nich
If and when atheism is identified an anatomical structure I’d be happy to discuss the question with you but as it is, I consider your comment a non sequitur.
I was obviously referring to your insistence on harping on definitions but nice try.
Keep in mind biology applies to more than just human beings. Most mammals have some version of these structures.
There are organisms out there that are said to have both male and female organs. Earthworms are hermaphroditic, if I remember correctly.
I’m sure that PZ as a cisgender biologist meant it without any offense intended and probably in the biological sense of the term. However, intent is not magic and as a few have pointed out labeling a human vagina as a uniquely female anatomical feature or a human penis as a uniquely male anatomical feature might rub transpeople the wrong way. If we were having a discussion about, say, a beaver’s sex organs, then yes, it might be useful to label them male or female for the sake of those ignorant of non-human anatomy. But as most here probably have little trouble envisioning a human vagina or a human penis, adding male and female to the discussion seems unnecessary and might just push buttons that get pushed a little too often.
@65 nich
On the other hand, arguing that human beings are unique among mammals could be said to be playing into the whole religious/creationism argument. In any case this discussion makes me very happy that I don’t teach human physiology.
@58 – The assignment posed in the video was to draw the “female reproductive anatomy”. I thought the interesting part of the video was that several people seemed to focus on the external genitalia rather than internal anatomy. This point would be lost if the participants were asked to draw specific organs (i.e. vagina) rather than the “reproductive anatomy”.
I’m a trans person, and I personally don’t find the term female reproductive anatomy to be offensive. I agree with chris651 @57 – if “female reproductive anatomy” is offensive, then we would need some other word to call the organ system.
O.o what sort of vaginas have you been encountering?
I’m a cis-male (new to the terms so if I’m screwing it up please correct me). I could see being irked if somebody told me that what was between my legs was “female” and I’m guessing that for a trans person that button gets pushed constantly. However, I hadn’t watched the video as I am at work and the topic is vaguely NSFW. I took a chance and clicked it and I can see how it might be necessary in this case to use female to avoid confusion, so point taken. At any rate thanks for a response that was more than just “WELL WHAT WOULD YOOOOU CALL IT!”
nich,
In the phrase “labeling a human vagina as a uniquely female anatomical feature” it’s you who are injecting the word (and concept) “uniquely”. I suspect that many, if not most, transgender people, use the general categories of male/female characteristics in the process of deciding how they want to present.
I do sympathize with the argument that sometimes language should be reviewed to address inherent bias, but this case (male/female anatomy) is extremely impractical because whatever we use will take on social baggage no matter how we phrase it.
And if you’re referring to the entire set of what was normally called “the female reproductive anatomy” you could refer to “the uterus, cervix, vagina, inner labia, outer labia, fallopian tubes, ovaries, clitoral glans…” [10 minutes later] “…and bartholin’s glands,” with a similar (possibly shorter) list for “the male reproductive anatomy.”
…err, I’d meant to type “formerly” rather than “normally.” Dafuq?
Or, more precisely, on whether you recognize “male” and “female” as referring, in any context, to anything other than gender identity.
@73 Azkyroth
Male and female are routinely used to describe the reproductive organs of non-human species that sexually reproduce. Are you suggesting human beings should have a special set of terms to refer to a reproductive system that is clearly related to those of related species?
Why was this directed to me? I was holding my nose and partially agreeing with you.
@75
Apologies. I obviously read something into your comment that you didn’t intend.
I didn’t read all the comments but I did watch the video…the woman in the video didn’t specify if she wanted the internal or external parts drawn (maybe the guys should’ve asked)? Also, was labeling part of the “test”? I’d like to see the test given to females and see what the results are…I believe most people are ignorant of basic human anatomy, not just men.
I’m not at all sure that my hands can draw what they felt more often than once, but my eyes have never been allowed to see in detail. It’s not that my lovers have opened their legs for my eyes to explore.
I’ll read the corrective horde’s comments tomorrow. Let’s see if MSO objects to anything suggestive of modeling her FRO to me.
As for the external vs. internal issue, who would draw or know where the seminal vesicles are in a man if asked to draw the “male reproductive anatomy”? I have them and have no idea past ‘lower lumbar area’. So if someone doesn’t know where the ovaries or Fallopian tubes are, that’s surely not sexism. I agree with most commenters that many people are A. ignorant of anatomy; and B. bad illustrators.
This comic is NSFW for textbook-style genital anatomy drawings
http://www.robot-hugs.com/anatomy/