‘And she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man’: androcentrism and the creation of knowledge-driven ignorance

Abstract

In this paper, I critically analyse biomedical clinical studies and literature reviews regarding the physiological phenomenon known as female ejaculation to demonstrate a process by which androcentric bias, which positions the male body as the scientific ‘standard human’, produces what I term as knowledge-driven ignorance. I show how even though knowledge about female ejaculation has expanded, its biomedical ontological status remains vague and controversial. The production of ignorance in this case does not result from active erasure or concealment, but rather from unintentional disregard, and is a by-product of knowledge-creation itself. As such, it is not only the narration of the scientific story that has the power to abject and exclude certain bodies from culture, but also what is untold and unknown.