A wonderful hour-long radio documentary that features interviews with founders of Our Bodies Ourselves alongside vivid recordings from the early feminist movement.
Listen to the full documentary: Our Bodies, Ourselves: A BBC Radio 4 Production
At one point, Sanford remembers, the speaker held up a lifesize picture of a woman, with legs apart, to show the location of the clitoris, and to explain how, contrary to Freudian thinking, it is the major organ of female sexual pleasure. “Who knew this before?” she asked the group, who sat largely blank-faced. “That’s my point,” she told them. “We should know these things. These are our bodies.”
Read the full story: The Clitoris, Pain and Pap Smears: How Our Bodies, Ourselves Redefined Women’s … More
In 1973, Simon & Schuster published the first commercial edition … and by 1976, it was “recognized by the American Library Association’s Young Adult Service Division as one of the best books of the decade,” according to the website.
Carried in many schools and libraries (including the Newton Free Library) across the country, Swenson said “It was the most stolen book they ever had” and was a target for censorship by conservative figures including lawyer Phyllis Schlafly and televangelist Jerry Falwell.
In a time when “wellness” has become synonymous with “health,” it’s not difficult to wonder why a book dedicated to bringing rigorous, collaborative, untainted medical information to women would be phased out. What good is a resource like Our Bodies, Ourselves when the whole Internet—from brand-commissioned “studies” on women’s health to the omnipresence of WebMD to the hugely profitable wellness “space”—exists at our fingertips?
Read the full story: Our Bodies, Ourselves Was a Radical Manual for a Generation of Women. In the Era of Misinformation, We Need … More
Panelists at the May 10, 2019 celebration of Our Bodies Ourselves include, from l – r: Suffolk student Sabrina Dias, Suffolk student Queen-Cheyenne Wade, OBOS board member Mariya Patwa, OBOS founder Norma Swenson, OBOS founder Miriam Hawley, and host and moderation Amy Agigian, founder and director of Suffolk University’s Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights.
On May 10, 2019, three generations of feminists came together to celebrate the legacy of Our Bodies Ourselves (OBOS) and look forward to the future of women’s … More
In this podcast, OBOS cofounder Judy Norsigian talks about the fight for women’s reproductive rights in the United States and how recent court decisions make the struggle to uphold Roe v. Wade particularly important today.
Listen to the full story: Boston Sunday Review: Judy Norsigian
The June 2019 issue of the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) features reflections by cofounder Judy Norsigian on the women’s health movement and Our Bodies Ourselves, as well as comments from Cynthia Pearson of the National Women’s Health Network, David Sundwall, a physician and public health advocate, and students in the AJPH Think Tank.
The articles are available to read at the AJPH website:
This is how movements get started: There’s a little conversation here, and another in another community, and people get connected somehow — it almost happens spontaneously, as different people find themselves asking, “What’s going on here???” and start thinking new things. The time was right for us to be talking about how we were treated as women.
Out of those conversations, in the spring of 1969, we set up the first women’s conference at Emmanuel College. For my contribution, I put together a workshop titled … More
As members of the anti-abortion movement have sought increasingly extreme restrictions on the procedure — and have rolled back access to contraception and other health services — their justifications have become further removed from science and fact. It would be naïve to think that giving every elected official a copy of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” would change that.
But facts do still matter. And it sure wouldn’t hurt for more people in power to learn about the bodies they’re trying to regulate.
Read the full story: More
That sense of history, the fragility of progress, and the need to continue to work to move forward permeate “Our Bodies Ourselves,” the latest exhibit at the Ely Center for Contemporary Art, running now through April 10.
Read the full story: Ely Exhibit Revisits “Our Bodies, Ourselves”