Sao lâu vậy?

-----

Few biologists thought the snake clitoris (âm vật) was anything worth studying. For more than a century, reptile (loài bò sát) researchers have spilled plenty of ink about the anatomy (giải phẫu) and function of the sexual organs of male lizards and snakes, structures known as the hemipenes. Meanwhile, the female equivalent, hemiclitores, were not described in truly scientific detail until 1995. Even less was known about the anatomy of intersex reptiles. Any structure other than the male hemipenis was assumed by men in zoological fields to be vestigial or to only act as additional stimulation for male reptiles. “You often see scientists make assumptions that female genitals are simple, uniform and generally uninteresting,” says journalist and Vagina Obscura author Rachel E. Gross, “when the reality is that no one has systematically looked.”

The first attempted description of hemiclitores in lizards and snakes dates all the way back to 1886, when they were described as little more than “shallow invaginations” on the reptiles. Decades of silence followed, even as biologists continued to pontificate on the significance of hemipenes in male lizards and snakes, closely related reptiles collectively called squamates. A 2014 review of studies focused on animal genitals, for example, found that researchers focused on male genital anatomy alone in more than half of the sample studies between 1989 and 2013, with less than 20 percent considered female genital anatomy alone during the same period. Even more recently, less than a decade ago, biologists continued to insist that the hemiclitores of female lizards and snakes served little to no function, just as experts on human anatomy long ignored the clitoris and assumed that whatever biological relevance it has is secondary to cisgender men’s anatomy.

Bài trước: Là chuột hay người