Historically, the body has been seen -- in medicine at least -- as a male being. Longhurst provides Vesalius and Galen as examples to this end, and indeed, research projects have consistently focused on the "70-kg male," and then extrapolated their findings to females, minorities, etc.
Similarly, Longhurst supports that culturally, the body is also a male being:
"The body [humanist geographers] refer to here is ... a man's body. ... They do not want a body that is messy, incomplete, out of place and not possessing clear boundaries. They do not argue for the menstruating, birthing or lactating body -- that which is associated with the feminine." (p. 16)
Longhurst's implied feminism here made me curious: how do we think about the woman's body, particularly if the disease affects this "male/female" dichotomy. In "Wit," Emma Thompson is diagnosed with stage IV (disseminated) ovarian cancer. Losing the ovaries (literally, or in terms of function) is clearly a defeminizing process, yet we don't see it as masculinizing. Does this get in the way of the dichotomy Longhurst seems to see in baby diapers and cultural history?
More significantly, Longhurst's continuing discussion on the interface between mind and body also seems relevant here. How does the mind deal with a failing body? Emma Thompson confronts this challenge in the scene, excerpted below.
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