"Our Bodies Ourselves is the American Left's most valuable written contribution to the world." Linda Gordon
Breaking Silence About
Women’s Bodies
I
got my first copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves in 1971. It was a
new printing of what was originally called Women
and Their Bodies published in December 1970 and written by the Boston
Women’s Health Collective. I saw mention
of it in one or another of the underground women’s liberation movement
pamphlets I was reading in the fall of 1970. I don’t recall the ad for it, but
I was drawn to the idea of a feminist approach to women’s health and sexuality.
Pre-internet, I wrote a note, pasted on a quarter and a dime, and sent off my
request for a copy. Sometime later, a stapled newsprint copy arrived.
 |
| 1971 Edition |
With
silence and shame about women’s bodies as the norm, the photos and candid
discussions of sexuality, venereal disease (what we now call STDs-sexually
transmitted diseases), birth control, abortion, pregnancy and childbirth along
with an analysis of women, medicine and capitalism were subversive, eye-opening,
mind-blowing, and liberating. For
instance, in 1970, abortion was illegal in 49 states and in 1971, illegal in
44. Illegality didn’t stop women from getting abortions; it just increased the
chances that a woman would die from a botched abortion. Though most abortions
and deaths from abortion were not recorded, existing records in New York
indicate that abortion was the cause of death during pregnancy of one out of
four white women and one out of two nonwhite and Puerto Rican women (Gold
2003). Shocking and outrageous!
Challenging the Status
Quo
Can
you imagine what it meant in the midst of a climate of silence, secrecy, shame,
and desperation about unwanted pregnancy to read in Our Bodies, Ourselves:
· “Abortion
is our right—our right as women to control our own bodies.” (p.61)
· Women’s
personal stories of abortion
· Reproductive
decisions should be voluntary
· White women might
be prevented from choosing abortion and poor women of color might be forced to
abort or be sterilized involuntarily
· Until 100 years
prior, abortion was common and not treated as wrong—even by the Catholic
Church—and that in many countries abortion was neither a religious or moral
issue
· The details of
medical techniques for abortion, doctor-performed illegal abortions, methods of
an unskilled abortionist, self-induced methods
· Evidence-based
information about health and sexuality instead of hearing whispered information
based on sexist and racist beliefs
That’s
what I mean by subversive, eye-opening, mind-blowing, and liberating. What
amazes me is that so much of what I learned almost 50 years ago is still
radical in 2018. For example, although 21 states in the United States have been
proactive about protecting reproductive rights and expanding access, other
states continue to enact restrictions since abortion was legalized in 1973,
one-third of those restrictions have been enacted in the last 7 years and in
2017, the majority of women in the United States (58%) live in a state that is
hostile or extremely hostile to abortion rights (Nash
et al, 2018).
What are strategic lessons from Our Bodies, Ourselves?
The
Boston Women’s Health Collective’s approach to creating Our Bodies, Ourselves is an example of moving forward for decades even
when powerful forces are at work to maintain inequality and injustice. Their
approach represented the best of conscious-raising.[1] A group of women gathered
together, told each other their stories, expressed their feelings, and
discovered what mattered to them. Their analysis of their stories revealed
their collective ignorance about their own bodies and their collective anger
and frustration with the state of professional health practices. Their decision
to challenge traditional medicine and develop a women’s health course, and
eventually a book, grew out of that storytelling and their analysis of those experiences.
1. Create
spaces for people to tell their stories
Our
Bodies, Ourselves and the Boston Women’s Health Collective
were rooted in storytelling.
During a session on “Women and Their Bodies” held at a 1969 women’s liberation
conference, participants shared their “doctor” stories; stories where doctors
had been patronizing and uninformed about women’s bodies. Sharing these stories raised participants’
awareness of a bigger picture beyond their individual experience.
Critical to
sustaining social justice movements is creating and nurturing spaces where
people can share their stories. While face-to-face gatherings remain important
for story-telling, social media have expanded the possibilities of sharing our
stories and building support groups without limitations of proximity. For
instance, Pantsuit Nation
(#pantsuitnation) has a website
and Facebook
page
dedicated to people telling their stories, supporting and encouraging the idea
that we need to put human beings at the center of our social policies and
social change efforts. The #MeToo Movement invigorated
storytelling about women’s sexual assault experiences, leading to public exposure
of famous and not-so-famous men’s patterns of sexual assault and the
institutional practices that have allowed these patterns to continue.
Decades ago, I was
hearing from students in my Women’s Studies classes that they were not
participating in evening political meetings or taking jobs involving
independent movement because of their fears of sexual assault. These stories
were an important part of my motivation to take and then teach women’s
self-defense. Creating a nonjudgmental and supportive space for people to tell
their stories is integral to the Empowerment Self-Defense Movement as is making
sure no one feels pressure to tell their story.
2. Look for themes and variations
We
each can choose where we bring our energy and focus
(e.g. environment, global politics, health, housing, immigration, parenting, sexuality,
violence, work) but to be politically effective we can’t pick and choose which
stories we like and want to hear. Our analysis needs to account for a diversity
of experiences and we need grounding principles for that analysis. Our Bodies, Ourselves grew out of
women’s stories that when analyzed, revealed larger social structures shaping
people’s lives; for instance, a recognition that health care systems were
primarily defined by the needs of white, upper middle class men and, therefore,
were not serving the needs of women, poor people, and people of color.
To address the extreme imbalance of
dominant narratives, we need to analyze the stories of people at what INCITE
calls “the dangerous intersections,” prioritizing the stories of women, gender
non-conforming, and trans people of color. INCITE is an example of an
organization that not only focuses on analyzing the stories of people at the
dangerous intersections but also has a set of grounding principles, such as
focusing on places where state violence and sexual/intimate partner violence
intersect.
In my self-defense work, I’ve seen that
attention to the dangerous intersections increases our understanding of ways
that different groups are targeted for violence and how self-defense efforts of
different groups are framed. For instance, while white women’s
use of strikes and kicks in self-defense may be applauded; African-American
women may be defined as aggressors. An analysis that accounts for themes and
variations underscores that there is no “one-size fits all.”
3. Formulate
actions that address those themes and variations
Political groups can often get stuck at
analysis and argument. The Boston Women’s Health Collective didn’t stop at talking and theorizing. Our Bodies, Ourselves was a concrete result of political analysis,
providing information that was immediately useful and opened new doors for
women and girls. The information in Our
Bodies, Ourselves changed the relationships women had with their doctors
and other health professionals from passive and dependent to active and
informed. Our Bodies, Ourselves
provided women with information about health, reproduction, and sexuality that
not only transformed their relationships with health care professionals, but
also with intimate partners and, most importantly, with their own bodies. Armed
with a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves,
women had a foundation for understanding their own bodies, of knowing that what
they wanted from their sexual partners was not weird or unusual, and of feeling
supported when they walked into a doctor’s office with evidence and information
that they otherwise would have not had access to.
What does analysis suggest for
political action? Based on cases
and analyses where women have been arrested and
incarcerated for defending themselves, Survived and Punished has created a
toolkit for organizing defense campaigns for survivors of
violence who have been criminalized. The toolkit provides a concrete guide from
building a defense committee to supporting criminalized survivors to working
with lawyers, the media, and the public.
Empowerment
self-defense training grew out of storytelling and analysis, resulting in an
understanding that in addition to advocating for change in community and
societal norms about violence we also need to provide opportunities for
individuals to think critically about violence, experience nonjudgmental support
for their experiences and decisions to be safe, and to develop confidence and
skills in their abilities to maximize safety and freedom for themselves and
others.
4. Repeat
More stories grow out of actions
which leads to an expanded analysis, resulting in new actions and more
analysis, more actions, and so on. For instance, the Boston Women’s Health
Collective did not stop with their own stories but continued to gather personal
accounts from more and more women. New
stories broadened their analysis beyond the experiences of educated, white,
middle-class women and working with activists around the globe on translations
further broadened their analysis.
 |
| 1971 and 2011 editions |
As Gordon (Nation
2008) neatly summarized: “Challenging mainstream
medicine, made no sense to women who lacked access to medical care.” Putting
health care in a global perspective brought new stories to the forefront,
broadened the analysis of health and sexuality, and expanded the knowledge and
tools offered by Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Over the years I
have been involved in teaching self-defense, new stories continue to emerge,
resulting in the need to expand our analysis. Our analysis has been pushed
beyond sexism to address intersections of gender, race, class, sexuality, and
gender identity; beyond individual safety to community safety. Our actions have
expanded to include bystander intervention and developing programs for people
with disabilities, trans people, children, and men.
Our
Bodies, Ourselves is an example of transformation, resulting
from listening to people’s stories, developing and honing a political
perspective based on those stories, and engaging in actions that address the
realities of people’s lives and then continuing and expanding that process. Through
such a process, Our Bodies, Ourselves
transformed what we know about women’s bodies and had profound and positive effects on health culture in the United States and beyond. Let’s bring that process to our
political work.
Martha
Thompson
Thank you to Brooke
Johnson and Brett Stockdill for their comments on earlier versions of this
post.
[1]
For more about consciousness-raising, see Kathie Sarachild. March 1973. “Consciousness-Raising:
A Radical Weapon.”
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