Introduction To Beyond The Natural Body By Nell Oudshoorn

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“Introduction to Beyond the Natural Body” written by Nelly Oudshoorn and “The egg and the Sperm” written by Emily both emphasize the idea of a woman’s body being examined through a social construct instead of a science classification.
In the 1970’s, the female body was explained in terms of how the male body was perceived, for example: in texts written by the Ancient Greeks would refer the female genitals, the ovaries as the “female testicle”, as it used the male organs to lead every description. The illustrations that were shown of the female genitalia very closely resembled the male penis and someone could believe that there really is no difference between the two genders, as they were trying to make it the “one-sex model” (Laquer 1990).
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The definition of social construction that can be drawn from this article is that the female body was being told in terms of how society viewed their body, not scientifically. In addition to this, in the nineteenth century there were hormones introduced which were sex hormones for male and females. These sex hormones were to put the stereotypical roles and function on a certain gender type. In brief, biologists were using trying to use biological determinism to explain how a male and female body should act from the ideas of social construct put together.
Biological determinism explains why the body is the way it is, reducing their full energy only to their biological differences to explain what they are and the only thing they can be is: male or female. An example of biological determinism can be seen from the reading, “The Egg and the Sperm”, which explains in detail how medical texts interpret the reproductive system in both male and female. The first thing I had noticed was that the only positive thing that was mentioned about the woman’s eggs was that they were able to give birth but when it came into term of their menstrual cycle, it was
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there is a lot of sources that still build upon on these gendered roles. The theories from Nelly Oudshoorn and Emily Martin both argue about how the female body is always seen in the negative aspect unless she is giving birth. These theories that were dated from the 1970’s to the nineteenth century were new to me but I also was not surprised with the things that were put into medical texts for years for us to believe that the male body was far more superior than the female body. A social construct I realized as I was going through high school was that girls would get lusted over by these boys but shamed at the same time by the same boys because she shows too much skin in her pictures or has had too many sexual encounters. Boys in this case would be seen in the positive outlook since he gets many girls and it builds his reputation. Social construction has a very useful approach because, how we act and feel should not be defined by just our gender. Biological determinism should not be able to tell someone how they should behave or what a real man, woman looks like. Social construct can be challenged by someone who has lived with these traits their whole life, for them that is what they are used too and for them to transition is very hard. For instance, in my own household my grandmother tells my sister and I that we should behave more like boys, we should be more “strong” and

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