Gyn Anatomical Terms: function not eponym
The original image below said “decolonized” in the place of “function not eponym.” After I shared the image purporting eponymic language change as decolonization, I heard from Indigenous midwives and scholars who showed incredible kindness in challenging my use of the word.
Disavowing white cis men’s supposed discovery and subsequent naming of body parts is not decolonization. To use that term in an off-handed way reduces the incredible depth, intention, and change required for its true action. As a white person I should, must, and will reconsider whether or not it can be a term that I can use appropriately or accurately.
If you have shared the image that uses the word “decolonized,” please consider deleting it or reposting it with the corrected image below. If you are a white person who embraced my use of the term, consider how you might encourage people to read the work of the Indigenous scholars whose links I shared in the original email and share again below for your access.
I continue to be grateful that I have built a platform with which people feel they can critique, challenge, engage, and question my work and know that I will welcome those conversations without defense. My commitment to self-critique is part of my own efforts to be humble in my profession and in my advocacy, and work diligently toward alignment and embodiment of anti-racism.
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I first came across the term “decolonize” thanks to Professor Yvette De Chavez who originally received criticism within her own institution for not including any white authors in a syllabus on the American Literature. What I have come to understand is in its application toward academics, or birthwork, or advocacy, it is a focus on intentionally disentangling whitewashed histories, including/dominating people of color on the reading list and diversifying discussions outside of the white narrative, and imagining what a decolonized movement or work could look like if realize. There are steps toward a decolonized goal, but the use of the word itself does not alone reach said goal.
In this essay by Nayantara Sheoran Appleton the following are outlined as initial steps toward decolonization without misappropriating the word and work:
Here are some alternative suggestions to talk about the work we are doing now, while thinking of a decolonized sovereign nation future. To really keep it simple, I even suggest words start with the letter D [1].
Diversify your syllabus and curriculum
Digress from the cannon
Decentre knowledge and knowledge production
Devalue hierarchies
Disinvest from citational power structures
Diminish some voices and opinions in meetings, while magnifying others
All of this allows for anti-colonial, post-colonial, and de-colonial work in the academy; but not make claims to a ‘decolonized programme,’ ‘decolonized syllabus,’ or a ‘decolonized university.’ It allows you to be honest – about who you/we are and how you/we are situated within certain privileges.
More at her link above for broader, systemic changes that work toward a decolonized future.
Then I further learned about decolonizing work through Cherokee scholar and activist Rebecca Nagle, who was part of the group who created the Elizabeth Warren syllabus with two other citizens of the Cherokee Nation, Adrienne Keene and Joseph M. Pierce, which “was meant to not only address Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s claims to Cherokee ancestry but to contextualize the history of such claims by non-natives to Native ancestry.”
There is a challenge to really understanding decolonization and how it can be violent, like in this essay by Liboiron, and not using “decolonize” as a quick metaphor for ways we want to improve diversity in areas of our lives, described well in this essay by Tuck and Yang.
We must reconsider the anatomical and physiologic language we have acculturated which ultimately assigns white cis male terminology to others’ bodies. Examples and synonyms as follows:
