The Making Of Our Bodies Ourselves

The book Our Bodies, Ourselves is a feminist success story. Selling more than four million copies since its debut in 1970, it has challenged medical dogmas about women’s bodies and sexuality, shaped health care policies, energized the reproductive rights movement, and stimulated medical research on women’s health. The book has influenced how generations of U.S. women feel about their bodies and health. Our Bodies, Ourselves has also had a whole life outside the United States. It has been taken up, translated, and adapted by women across the globe, inspiring more than thirty foreign language editions. Kathy Davis tells the story of this remarkable book’s global circulation. Based on interviews with members of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, the group of women who created Our Bodies, Ourselves, as well as responses to the book from readers, and discussions with translators from Latin America, Egypt, Thailand, China, Eastern Europe, Francophone Africa, and many other countries and regions, Davis shows why Our Bodies, Ourselves could never have been so influential if it had been just a popular manual on women’s health. It was precisely the book’s distinctive epistemology, inviting women to use their own experiences as resources for producing situated, critical knowledge about their bodies and health, that allowed the book to speak to so many women within and outside the United States. Davis provides a grounded analysis of how feminist knowledge and political practice actually travel, and she shows how the process of transforming Our Bodies, Ourselves offers a glimpse of a truly transnational feminism, one that joins the acknowledgment of difference and diversity among women in different locations with critical reflexivity and political empowerment.

The definitive consumer health reference for women of all ages and ethnic groups, this book encompasses such controversial issues as managed care and the insurance industry; breast cancer treatment options; recent developments in contraception; and much more. 150 photos. Charts & graphs throughout.

Throughout the 1970s & 1980s, women argued that unless they gained information about their own bodies, there would be no equality. Wendy Kline considers the ways in which ordinary women worked to position the female body at the centre of women's liberation.

This breathtakingly broad, interdisciplinary reader demonstrates how widely feminist thinking has spread, how deeply it has shaken settled assumptions in the disciplines and how much new light it throws on contemporary controversies. - Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin-Madison "A timely intervention and highly engaged, thoughtful and scholarly analysis of the state of gender and women′s studies in the West by three eminent feminist scholars... Highly cognisant of the central issues that have fractured, blocked and enhanced western feminism." - Bev Skeggs, Goldsmiths "The comprehensiveness and the interdisciplinary range of themes are impressive, and they make the Handbook into a wonderful tool for teachers and students of women′s and gender studies." - Nina Lykke, Linkoeping University Gender and women′s studies is one of the most challenging fields within the social sciences - the dynamics of gender relations and the social and cultural implications of gender constructions offer a lively forum of debate. The Handbook of Gender and Women′s Studies presents a comprehensive and engaging review of the most recent developments within the field, including the study of masculinity, the feminist implications of postmodernism, the ′cultural turn′ and globalization. The authors review current research and offer critical analyses of women′s and gender studies in work, the welfare state, family, education, religion, violence and war and feminist global politics. Edited by three leading academics from Europe and the United States, and with 25 chapters written by scholars based throughout the world, the Handbook situates the most important debates in the field within a uniquely international and interdisciplinary context. The Handbook is a useful introduction to gender theory and an exciting starting-point for fresh debates.

THE BESTSELLING WOMEN’S HEALTH CLASSIC—INFORMING AND INSPIRING WOMEN ACROSS GENERATIONS Hailed by The New York Times as a “feminist classic,” this comprehensive guide to all aspects of women’s sexuality and reproductive health—including menopause, birth control, childbirth, sexual health, sexual orientation, gender identity, mental health, and overall wellbeing—changed the women’s health movement around the world and remains as important and relevant as ever. Providing detailed and empowering information on women’s reproductive health and sexuality, this latest edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves shows how to find and access health information and offers additional resources and stories to educate women about health care injustices and inspires them to work collectively to address them. Including the latest vital information on: -Changes in the health care system—especially how health care reform affects women and how to get the care you need. -Safer sex—how to engage in pleasurable, satisfying sexual experiences while protecting your health and the health of your partner. -Environmental health risks—including minimizing exposure to everyday pollutants that endanger reproductive health. -Body image—resisting negative media stereotypes and embracing healthier approaches to looking and feeling good. -Local and global activism—using social media and organizing tactics to build community and advocate for policies that improve women’s lives. -As well as crucial information about gender identity, sexual orientation, birth control, abortion, pregnancy and birth, perimenopause, and sexuality and sexual health as we age. Together with its companion website, OurBodiesOurselves.org, Our Bodies, Ourselves is a one-stop resource that belongs on the bookshelves of women of all ages.

From award-winning poet Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives—winner of the Kirkus Prize and the Stonewall Book Award—is a “moving, bracingly honest memoir” (The New York Times Book Review) written at the crossroads of sex, race, and power. One of the best books of the year as selected by The New York Times; The Washington Post; NPR; Time; The New Yorker; O, The Oprah Magazine; Harper’s Bazaar; Elle; BuzzFeed; Goodreads; and many more. “People don’t just happen,” writes Saeed Jones. “We sacrifice former versions of ourselves. We sacrifice the people who dared to raise us. The ‘I’ it seems doesn’t exist until we are able to say, ‘I am no longer yours.’” Haunted and haunting, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir about a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence—into tumultuous relationships with his family, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one another—and to one another—as we fight to become ourselves. An award-winning poet, Jones has developed a style that’s as beautiful as it is powerful—a voice that’s by turns a river, a blues, and a nightscape set ablaze. How We Fight for Our Lives is a one-of-a-kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed Jones as an essential writer for our time.