Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee, All the Best. In the 1990s, an Australian medical

student named Helen O'Connell noticed that her anatomy textbook spent two full pages describing the penis,

while meanwhile, it barely mentioned the clitoris, just identifying where the tiny visible part was.

This textbook also described that the whole female anatomy was formed on a baby in utero

because of a quote-unquote failure to turn into male parts.

She underlined the word failure and thought, hmm, something is wrong here.

During medical school, O'Connell witnessed many penis-related

surgeries where great care was taken to avoid any loss of sexual function for the male patient.

But no one knew enough about female anatomy to do the same for women. And surgeries and even physical

therapy sometimes severely damaged or

even destroyed the function of the clitoris.

So Dr. O'Connell made it her mission to map the clitoris, and she became Australia's first

female urologist.

Her research finally mapped the clitoris accurately in, guess what year?

2005.

She found that the internal structure was ten times bigger than previously thought.

And why did it take until 2005 to map the clitoris?

And why was it a woman who finally did it?

Because of patriarchy, my friends.

The Greek physician Galen was considered one of the fathers of Western medicine, and he said that the clitoris was, quote, a stunted and immature organ with no real purpose. This was very much in

line with Greek thought. Aristotle famously thought

that females were mutilated males. In 1543, anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius claimed

...