Welcome to our discussion of the reproductive system this portion of this course is necessarily
going to be a little bit longer than its counterparts of gastrointestinal and endocrine
because we're gonna have to discuss organs that are specific to the two different sexes
and we're gonna have a whole discussion on the difference between the terms gender and sex in
a subsequent PowerPoint but before we get started I just wanted to point out that even though the
terms sex and gender are not necessarily binary we will be discussing the typical reproductive
anatomy system of a male and a female in this particular course all right so I just want to
give an overview really quickly of what we're going to discuss and we're going to discuss both
female and male genital organs both internal as well as external a lot of times when you hear
the terms for external genital organs you hear genitalia so we'll have discussions of both female
and male also in terms of female we'll discuss the specifics in terms of the reproductive cycle now
as we continue our discussion we're going to talk about the pelvic cavity and what it is what makes
up the pelvic cavity in terms of the muscles and the ligaments that are really important in terms
of the protection of the organs we'll continue with the discussion of the perineum and in terms
of where the boundaries are for the perineum these can differ wildly depending on which source you're
talking about so we'll talk about the most up-to-date categorizations as we go lastly
we're talk about the neurovascular and lymphatics and the development of the reproductive system but
before we move on I really want to talk about some terms that are going to come up over and
over again and we want to kind of get these out of the way so the rest of the the powerpoints
and the discussions will make sense so first is the term gonads gonads are another word for
gametes or they're gonna produce gametes which are your haploid cells and so when we're talking
about gonads for the female we're talking about the ovaries and when we're talking about gonads
for the males we're talking about the testes so we'll talk about these and more specifics
individually as we move on both male and female reproductive Anatomy include a system of ducts
this is particularly more frequent when we're talking about the male anatomy accessories sex
glands these are going to secrete fluids that will play a role in terms of the protection
of the gametes or the fertilized ovum as well as lubrication which is important as well and
lastly supporting structures specifically we're going to talk about the muscles and ligaments
that play a role in terms of the pelvic cavity in the perineum and lastly it's really important
to talk about the medical disciplines that are really focused in these areas when we're talking
about gynecology this is in terms of the female reproductive system so these are physicians that
are specialized in that type medicine and a lot of times you'll hear the term OB GYN which is
kind of a combo of gynecology and obstetrics obstetrics is specific to pregnancy as well as
delivery and then postpartum so a lot of times physicians will be trained in both gynecology
and obstetrics urology is going to be the study of the urinary system we're not going
to discuss all the specifics of the urinary system that's discussed in another another
part of the course however when we're talking about the male reproductive system these are
very much intertwined and often times if you have some type of disorder with the urinary system it
will also affect the reproductive system of males so they'll really be physicians that are trained
in terms of both so we're going to continue the discussion of each one of these individual organs
that we talked about but before we move on to that let's talk about the terms sex and gender