Theory of Gendered Digestion

For my GWSS class today, we had to read a chapter from Elizabeth Wilson's book Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body about the links between the Central Nervous System (CNS) and the Enteric Nervous System (ENS), which is made up of all of the nerves in your gut and regulates everything between the stomach and the rectum, and is often referred to as the "brain in the gut" or "second brain" because of how closely it resembles the CNS.

The article was more scientific than theoretical, and dealt with the relationship between ENS and CNS, specifically which one is more in charge when it comes to how out gut feels, and which way the feedback loop runs. I thought it was fairly interesting, if for no other reason than it included some really interesting facts about the ENS, including that we have more neurons in our gut than our spinal cord, and that the neurons in the ENS are more similar in structure to the CNS neurons than the those in the rest of the peripheral nervous system.

The article was interesting in it's own right, but it was also a fairly big departure from what we have been reading, given that it is an example of feminist science practice rather than feminist science theory (which kills me, because science is science, dammit, but academic feminists don't seem to like that line of reasoning). The feminist theory was implied in how Wilson approached the relationship between the ENS and CNS, saying that there wasn't a hard and fast division between the two, rather than explicitly stated, which threw some members of the class for a loop.

Prior to class starting, I overheard a couple of other students discussing the text. One of them was saying that she couldn't really see where the feminism came into play, and the other was telling her basically what I just told you, imaginary readers, to which she responded "I guess it has to do with the stomach being so closely associated with women." And the other student agreed with her.

What?

Since when has the stomach been associated with women? I can buy into some of the stuff we've read about women being associated with nature and sexuality and blah blah blah, but with digestion? I was under the impression that neither gender is more or less associated with that particular bodily function. I should say that this was a student speculating before class, and not anything the instructor said or that was stated in the text, but still. Is this actually a thing that I've just never encountered before? Or does this seem as crazy to you, imaginary readers, as it does to me?