women's health

Orgasm Inc.

barbara — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:00:00 +0000

The orgasm. Feminists laud it, good lovers work hard to give it, pharmaceutical companies make it a business model. The inability to experience an orgasm is thought to be as devastating as the inability to delight in the joy of wine, sunrise, spring flowers, and other wonderment. But this is hardly an overstatement. Last week in London, I had the sheer privilege of attending a hugely popular talk by a doyenne of second wave feminism, Shere Hite. Her most well-known publication, The Hite Report, was a groundbreaking feminist version of the Kinsey report, a comprehensive study on female sexuality in '70s America that overturned all taboos of its day.

Hite contends that the traditional model of sexual intercourse privileges male pleasure and disregards any sense of pleasuring women to the point of orgasm. Not climaxing is tantamount to self-abnegating one self's right to wholeness, and women have long been denying their selfhood by committing to the patriarchal rituals of sex, argues Hite. She does have a point of course about the significance of pleasure, but her assertion that the “lack of sexual satisfaction is another sign of oppression of women” poses serious implications on how women must rethink sex. Woe betide the women who feel inadequate when they have difficulty getting sexually aroused, much less with orgasm during intercourse.

And so the many women who were once frustrated, frigid and unfulfilled are now medically certified as casualties of a new epidemic—female sexual dysfunction (FSD). But in a pill-popping culture such as the U.S., help is at hand and pharmaceutical companies are quick to exploit cultural expectations and women's most intimate insecurities. In Orgasm Inc., by first-time documentary film-maker Liz Canner, we are treated to the dizzying unravelling of pharmaceutical businesses devoted to the “female Viagra” and its role in creating, as it were, female sexual dysfunction (FSD). Canner is initiated into the shams and often shambolic world of drug companies through an invitation to edit an erotic video used during a clinical trial conducted by Vivus, a company dedicated to developing a cream for sexual arousal.

But when Canner delves deeper into Vivus's business plan, some things are amiss. Women on both active drug and placebo appear to be equally aroused when subjected to erotic videos, but Vivus goes ahead anyway pushing to get themselves on the market. Not that Vivus's drug was initially designed to treat male impotence really mattered, as the researchers placed their bets on a hunch that it can turn women on as well. It appears that the business of discovering a cure for the purported female sexual dysfunction is masculinist and penis-centred at best, one that is isolated as a problem related to the sexual organ and a matter of hormonal imbalance. There is little reference to how women get on with their partners in the bedroom, the happiness or lack of it in relationships, history of abuse, and lack of self-esteem. Furthermore, cultural expectations which are mistaken as "universal" sexual norms prescribe that sex without orgasm is a sign of abnormality.

Canner interviews other pharmaceutical companies that have also been founded on dubious science and run by “research” consultants who aren't able to explain in definitive terms what FSD is and react as if they are assailed by trick questions. When promoted by drug company-backed doctors and scientists who frame sexual inadequacies in often obtuse and intimidating language, lay persons beset with perceived medical disorders are like putty in their hands. The stage is thus set for a no-nonsense competition—a race—to win FDA approval and multiple million-dollar glory.

Soon companies dropped one-by-one off the race like flies due to unconvincing science, including a strong contender, Intrinsa, a trans-dermal testosterone patch. It did not, however, stop Instrinsa from being sold in the European Union. Fallacies poised to eternally discredit FSD notwithstanding, very few could stand in the way of the monstrously indomitable spirit of pharmaceutical companies. Like Hite's grand manifesto, much of drug research posit that desire and pleasure are like a switch within an autonomous body. I raised my hand to ask Dr. Hite about women who were unable to experience orgasm yet live happy and fulfilled lives, to which she struggled to offer a coherent answer other than there are no two ways about how important sexual satisfaction through an orgasm is.

Suffice to say, I felt equally dejected by her response and the outcome in Canner's thought-provoking film as the mystery of female sexuality is thrown further into abyss. How helpful is the medicalisation of perfect sexuality when desire, pleasure, and fantasy are made to fit a disease model, a model designed to reinforce crude normal/abnormal typologies? Yet we are besotted by medical science but unaware of its cultural and moral underpinnings that are adept at demonising “bad” bodies. Canner's film peels away much of the objectivity purported by pharmaceutical science, sexology, and medicine, and invites us to reassess the social values of health and happiness in radically new ways.

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, March 9th 2011

Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life: Achieving Optimal Health and Wellness through Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, and Western Science

barbara — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Claudia Welch

Da Capo Press

Though I enjoy a good yoga session as much as any middle-class white woman my age, my natural state is one of tooth-chattering anxiety. Anyone who knows me well could tell you that my yin and yang are not harmonious, but now I have the endocrine profile to prove it—a set of chromosome repeats in my DNA that has manifested itself in serious hormonal disruption, a.k.a. premature ovarian failure, a.k.a. early menopause. Luckily, my family is complete, so my problem is not infertility but the addition of hot flashes and potential bone loss to my list of daily worries.

Enter Claudia Welch's Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life, which promises I'll soon be “achieving optimal health and wellness through Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, and Western science.” Welch applies the Chinese concepts of yin and yang to a woman's sex hormones and stress hormones, respectively. The typically revved-up Western woman's stress hormones tax her sex hormones, causing the Fred Astaire-like progesterone (Welch's analogy, not mine) to stumble, not waltz, with her Ginger Rogers-like estrogen. And once a woman's sex hormones get out of whack, she's dancing her way to ill health—or, to quote a chapter title, she's just “Feeling Crummy.”

To me, a woman whose hormonal problems are rooted in genetics and a not uniquely American malaise, the real balancing act in Welch's book is the eternal push-pull between Western science and Eastern wisdom. I know that Big Pharma has a vested interest in selling me hormone patches, yet there is evidence that hormone therapy is appropriate for women like me who are not undergoing the “change of life” as part of the natural aging process. Still, Welch's advice to adopt dietary and stress-reduction strategies as the first line of defense is rooted not only in Eastern philosophy but also in common sense. More quinoa, less coffee—I got it.

Things get really woolly in the chapters “Birth Control” and “Fertility and Conception,” making me extremely glad that my health concerns lay outside those areas. Asks Welch: “if older women increase their chances of breast cancer, heart attack, strokes, and dementia by consuming synthetic hormones for menopausal symptoms, why is it okay for younger women to take these drugs?” A good question, particularly in light of Welch's observation that hormonal contraceptive tests on men were halted when the subjects' testes shriveled up. “If women's ovaries were on the outside of our bodies, and the negative side effects were actually cosmetically visible,” Welch writes, “would we be less tolerant?”

Welch backs off the patriarchy all too soon, however. Two pages later she's advocating for Natural Family Planning, which she claims lacks the “inconvenient to tragic side effects of most other forms of birth control.” Just ask Michelle Duggar! Her balance must be flawless, because as Welch writes, “establishing reproductive health consists of regulating the cycle and the hormones, having good quality and quantity of yin in the diet and lifestyle, and good quality and quantity of exercise and mental activity to support healthy yang.” I don't watch 19 Kids and Counting, but I can guess that neither yin nor yang come up much.

The takeaway? This book is full of sensible advice for generally healthy (and Quiverfull) women wanting to stave off crumminess. Women with more serious health concerns should probably skip it—reading this book would freak out their yang, which even Welch knows should be strenuously avoided.

Written by: Shannon Drury, March 9th 2011

Birth Control on Main Street: Organizing Clinics in the United States, 1916-1939

beth — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Cathy Moran Hajo

University of Illinois Press

This past May, the birth control pill celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. News outlets all over the country covered the story, yet the early years of the birth control movement were seldom mentioned. A lack of academic research has led to the history of the early birth control movement being plagued by misinformation, myth, and appropriation by the right, particularly regarding the history of the movement’s founder, Margaret Sanger.

Birth Control on Main Street by Cathy Moran Hajo seeks to shed light on the history of a movement that was so successful that contraceptive access is something most Americans, even those on the right, take for granted.

It is the suffrage movement that is seen by feminists as the early movement to idealize, yet as Hajo points out, in reality, the birth control movement led to much more meaningful reforms. The birth control movement more directly allowed women to pursue careers and personal goals, greatly improved the health of countless women, increased women’s longevity, and led to societal sexual enlightenment, further equal rights, and allowed women to enhance their roles as mothers and partners.

While Birth Control on Main Street is about the movement as a whole (covering years 1916 to 1939), Hajo recognized the importance of providing a fact-based analysis of Margaret Sanger’s career to give a proper foundation for the rest of the movement’s history. As associate editor at NYU’s Margaret Sanger Papers Project, Hajo is the perfect expert to provide such an exploration.

What is perhaps most important for women to know about the history of the early birth control movement is that it was begun and maintained almost exclusively by laywomen activists. Men dominated the medical establishment at the time and were unsupportive of reforms that would encourage women to have fewer children. Control of the clinics remained with female activists for the first decades of the movement, despite their strong desire to work with medical professionals.

No comprehensive history of the birth control movement would be complete without a frank discussion of eugenics, and Hajo does a great job exploring both the realities of the eugenics movement itself and the actual ideologies that brought some birth control activists to involve themselves with eugenicists, including Sanger. Despite what some radicals on the right may say, for Sanger and most of her colleagues, the eugenic question of what made a woman “fit” to bear children was a question of environment, not race.

According to Hajo, the notion that early birth control activists were concerned with reducing the black population is highly misleading. In reality, states Hajo, the true shortcoming of the movement was neglect of the black population. Instead, the true study and focus should be on the unwillingness of early clinic activists to work with black communities at all. As is now well known, this was a conflict eventually overcome and the women’s movement became the most inclusive of social movements in U.S. history.

If there is one thing that is unknown about the early birth control movement, it is the actual work that went on inside the clinics. Hajo devotes a large part of the book to exploring the exact work, interactions between activists and patients, interactions between activists and birth professionals, the demographics of patients, the attitudes and ideologies of activists, admission requirements, and conflicts between local and national leaders. Birth Control on Main Street is the perfect read for any enthusiast, as well as any feminist activist who wants to know more about the collected history we share with our foremothers.

Written by: Janice Formichella, September 29th 2010

All of Us

annette — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

Directed by Emily Abt

Pureland Pictures

Emily Abt's emotionally stirring documentary, All of Us, takes us not just on a journey from the South Bronx to Ethiopia and back, but to a place deep within ourselves. The film follows Dr. Mehret Mandefro, as she embarks on a mission to uncover the truth behind the startling statistics regarding women of color and HIV infections in the United States. According to the film, African-American females compose approximately 12% of the population, yet according to the 2005 CDC report, a staggering 66 % of this minority accounted for new infections with the virus in the United States. The dynamics of power, control and domination play a role in the rising rate of HIV infections. However, other crucial factors are also explored including social roles, the exploitation of women and a prison culture that allows the epidemic to thrive.

The film takes us into the personal lives of two HIV positive women struggling with not just their health but with the effects of being a disadvantaged minority. Chevelle, an addict since she was a teenager, is recently clean, raising a family and looking forward to her upcoming wedding. Positive and motivated, she is determined to get an education and to share her life experience with young African-American women who may be about to follow the same destructive path that she once did. Tara, on the other hand, is not just battling HIV but also cervical cancer. However, her deepest personal struggle may be her inability to say no to her partner given her painful past experiences of sexual abuse and rape. Her relationship is on the rocks as her fear and frailness do not hinder her boyfriend from pressuring her to have sexual relations as she is recovering from surgery.

Perhaps the real power struggle confronts the viewer when we see Dr. Mandefro herself become vulnerable in her personal life. Not just this experience but also her visit to her home country, Ethiopia, a country that has the sixth largest AIDS infection rate in the world, as well as a 'truth circle' with her privileged friends leads her to the conclusion that strong educated women are also facing a silent power struggle in the bedroom. This may be one of the most significant aspects of the film, as it emphasizes that this is not a social class issue as it may initially be perceived to be. The reality is that young, educated, empowered women are also vulnerable and risk infection because of the dynamics that thrive in their personal relationships.

All of Us is not about a young Ethiopian-American doctor, nor is it about HIV-positive women residing in the South Bronx. It is about us as women. It is the story of every woman, what we know versus what is expected of us, and ultimately, the decisions we make given the circumstances that society and culture have thrust upon us. At the core of this film is a moving realization of empowerment. It is the reality that regardless of social status, education or economic advantage we all still live as women in a society where men may have the final say not just in how we live, but rather in how we die.

Written by: Aneesa A. Baboolal, September 23rd 2010

In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play (8/29/2010)

annette — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

Washington, D.C.

“Please turn off anything that beeps, buzzes, or vibrates.” And with that comic admonishment to the audience, Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer Sarah Ruhl’s play about the advent of vibrators began.

The setting is Dr. Givings home, where his living room is located next to, and within earshot of, the “surgical theater.” Here, Dr. Givings (played by Eric Hissom) treats hysteria, a “medical ailment” dating back to about 300 BC, when Hippocrates thought women’s madness stemmed from their womb. Meanwhile, back on stage, the good doctor’s wife (Katie deBuys) wonders why patients come in with symptoms of anxiety and leave, only anxious to come back again—and soon.

Above the noise of “oh-ooh-oooh,” Dr. Givings himself groans about the bygone days of manual stimulation: “It was like a child’s game–trying to rub the head and the stomache at the same time.” Why, the procedure could take up to an hour! With the electric massager, “paroxyms” can be had within three to five minutes time and, if they don’t, um, come, Dr. Givings hands the tedious task over to his competent assistant Annie (played by Sarah Marshall).

While patients such as Mrs. Daldry (Kimberly Gilbert) and a male patient named Leo Irving (Cody Nickell) make it clear their emotional needs are not being met–Mrs. Daldry cannot have children and Mr. Irving cannot find the passionate love that his creative soul desires—the doctor steadfastly believes their symptoms can be treated with the latest technology of the day, the electromechanical vibrator for her and the anal dialater for him.

So the new device makes patients happier—so happy that Mrs. Givings breaks into the room and tries it out herself for her own hysteria–feeling unfulfilled in her marriage and inadequate in nourishing her newborn—but, alas it’s not fixing the problems.

Aside from having unmet emotional needs, women’s sexuality is still not recognized and even feared, as the men highlight in their joke about a friend that thought women looked like marble statues you see in a museum—and then ran like a mad man from his wife when he saw she had beastly hair “down there.” Only the wet nurse Elizabeth (played by Jessica Frances Dukes) hired to feed Dr. and Mrs. Givings’ baby, understands the connection between the vibrator and sexual pleasure. Otherwise, the technological wonder is thought to produce a confusing mixture of pain and pleasure. So confusing it brings them back daily to figure out if they like it or not!

Behavior like this and many other comedic opportunities make director Aaron Posner’s In the Next Room a humorous, but not insensitively so, play about the history behind the medical use of vibrators. It subtly and sometimes not-so-subtly highlights the utter lack of knowledge and understanding of women’s physical bodies, sexual desires, and emotional needs. It beautifully portrays women’s roles, relationships, and subordination to men during Victorian times and reminds us that even today, we still grapple with some of these issues. However, the play about vibrators will make an historical imprint itself—made many years after we laughed about the link between masturbation and mental illness in men-and will stimulate discussion of female sexuality for years to come.

Written by: Joan Dawson, September 22nd 2010

New Blood: Third Wave Feminism and the Politics of Menstruation

brittany — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000

By Chris Bobel

Rutgers University Press

When I first picked up New Blood, I immediately thought about Sarah Haskins, the feminist comedienne who does the segment ‘Target Women’ (on Current TV), in which she uses humour and sarcasm to draw attention to ridiculous media representations of women and female stereotypes. Watch ‘Target Women: Your Garden’—in which she exposes commercials that dare not name ‘lady parts’ and you’ll understand why I thought of her and now, after reading New Blood see in her a great representation of the contemporary feminist movement.

In New Blood, Chris Bobel, an associate professor and chair of women’s studies at the University of Massachusetts and the author of The Paradox of Natural Mothering, shines a timely and important spotlight on the small menstrual activist movement. Borne out of divergent feminist leanings that shape contemporary menstrual activism, it is based on the effort to speak openly about menstruation, the bleeding body, and to rebel against the notion of period as a ‘dirty little secret’ as well as to act against negative campaigns and build an environment in which alternative, environmentally sustainable and body-positive feminine health care is mainstreamed.

Bobel’s research for this book brought her in contact with two strands of menstrual activists: feminist spiritualist who celebrate the inherent female experience of menstruation (think: red-tents, menarche rituals at moonlight); and the radical menstruation activist who, choosing the term ‘menstrator’ to replace ‘woman’ to free themselves of the sex/gender dichotomy and resist the exclusivity of static gender identity. Bobel calls them ‘revolutionary’; (think: radical cheerleaders; anti-corporate rallies, eco-warriors, and dressing up as Tampons to cause stir in campuses across the US).

Though Bobel spends much time on charting the development of today’s menstrual activism, she also reviews the history of menstrual activism, its manifestation and different approaches (i.e. working to lobby the FemCare Industry and government to improve the safety of disposable products rather than today’s radical menstrual activists, who have turned their back on such products and the corporations completely) during the 1970s and 80s in the times of the ‘Toxic Shock Syndrome’ scare. Furthermore, Bobel’s underlying message goes out to all those of today’s 'Third Wave Feminism' to not dismiss its ties with the ‘Second Wave’ (of the 1960s, 70s and 80s), whose tactics and some messages and efforts were very similar.

What struck me most, when reading this book was that there is a dearth in literature that so eloquently combines the scholarly theoretical developments in feminism with the practical, human, and material activism as New Blood does. What I furthermore particularly liked about Bobels material was that she has made a great effort here to question the demographic (overwhelmingly white, middle-class, though in the case of radical menstrual activists, mainly homosexual/genderqueer) of this movement and provides an important and interesting hypothesis that accounts for the absence of larger numbers of women of colour in this movement and the apparent complete lack of trans-identified participants.

Written for an ‘undergrad/general public’ audience, this book is an important and interesting read for anyone who wonders what’s going on with feminism today, wants to know about its relationship with its recent past and has ever felt that ‘bleedin’ is everyone’s business’. Let’s just say that this feminist went online yesterday to buy a Mooncup and not just because it’s all the rage. Last year, The Guardian’s Kira Cochrane said: Menstrual activism is ‘having a moment.’ Lets hope that it is not just a fleeting apparition on the left-wing media landscape but, like Bobel advocates, continues to be used to ‘interrogate the material body and identity, the cultural and the biological, and the social and the individual…to be better equipped to make profound change.’

Written by: Anna Matussek, September 13th 2010

Willing and Unable: Doctors' Constraints in Abortion Care

admin — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Lori Freedman

Vanderbilt University Press

Ninety-three percent of all abortions are done in abortion clinics. Only three percent of non-metropolitan counties in the United States had an abortion provider in 2005, while thirty-one percent of metropolitan counties had at least one. After completing their residency, half of physicians who plan to perform abortions as part of their practice actually do so.

These startling facts prompted Lori Freedman to embark on the study summarized in Willing and Unable: Doctors' Constraints in Abortion Care. Freedman is a sociologist working for Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH), a collective of researchers and scholars at the University of California, San Francisco. Through this study, she “primarily wanted to find out what keeps physicians who feel positive about providing abortion from doing so.” She interviewed thirty ob-gyns—twenty-two women and eight men—who graduated between 1996-2001 from four residency programs in which abortion training is routine. The interviews, along with historical context and analysis, make up the core of the book.

While some may assume that doctors don’t “have the guts” to do abortions or are primarily afraid of violent retaliation—which is understandable given that eight abortion clinic workers and/or doctors have been murdered since 1993—the reasons are more complex and wide-ranging. The reasons Freedman uncovers include the managed care currently regulating doctors’ services, the stigma attached to being labeled an “abortionist,” the fact that abortions do not often result in a significant amount of revenue, the efficiency and quality of care provided by abortion clinics, and the extent to which physicians see providing abortion as a professional duty.

Willing and Unable begins with the introduction of Freedman’s research question and methods, establishes the various factors influencing physician autonomy, and provides context for the debate over abortion. Most notably, Freedman points out that the loss of fetal life is not, in fact, the most morally offensive element of abortion for those who rabidly oppose it—despite their propensity to wave around graphic pictures of aborted fetuses—since many support abortion in the cases of rape, incest, and fetal anomaly. Rather, the element of abortion that rankles many anti-choicers is “the notion that women can shirk the mother role. Deeply embedded in American society is the belief that women who have sex implicitly become obligated toward parenthood more so than men.” Therefore, any woman who avoids this responsibility is assumed to be irredeemably selfish.

From here, Freedman’s book covers a wide span of topics. The next five chapters trace the history of abortion care in U.S. medicine, the various ideological reasons why doctors are willing or not to provide abortions, the choices surrounding “learning, doing, and having abortions,” the various manifestation of the “institutionalized buck-passing of abortion care,” and the dynamics of miscarriage management within Catholic-owned institutions. The concluding chapter recaps Freedman’s main points and outlines ways to increase the number of abortion providers and integrate abortion into mainstream practice, both of which would lessen the stigma attached to abortion.

Freedman’s balance between analysis and physicians’ interviews is highly engaging. In chapter four, she teases apart the variety of choices involved in abortion care—not simply a woman’s choice to have an abortion or not—through the prism of Dr. Rina Anderson’s experience. After initially opting out of abortion training, Dr. Anderson chose to re-enter the program, then chose to perform abortions in private practice primarily in the case of fetal anomalies, and finally, chose to carry her own pregnancy to term despite the fact that her baby had a fatal condition and would die soon after birth. Dr. Anderson’s story is not only moving but also reveals the layers of choice involved in abortion care for both provider and patient, especially when they are one in the same.

While Freedman’s book explores a unique perspective within the abortion debate, I couldn’t help but want more—more interviews and information pertaining to a wider sampling of physicians. Perhaps I wanted more because what Freedman provides is so compelling. These are memorable portraits of physicians who find themselves confronted with the “choice” of either providing abortions or practicing obstetrics and gynecology, which—like the options available for many women faced with an unwanted pregnancy—isn’t much of a choice at all.

Written by: Dr. Jennifer A. Smith, August 21st 2010

Beauty Shop Politics: African American Women’s Activism in the Beauty Industry

admin — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Tiffany M. Gill

University of Illinois Press

In Beauty Shop Politics, Tiffany M. Gill documents the central role that Black beauticians played in the struggle against Jim Crow laws. Beauty shops were one of the few industries that offered Black women some economic stability and upward mobility in the face of segregation. The industry also offered Black women a respectable alternative to domestic labor, as well as a chance to not work for White people. As political tensions rose, civil rights organizers increasingly turned to Black beauticians for disseminating social and political information.

Initially, White English and French men dominated the hair care industry. Black men slowly worked their way in, serving as hairdressers for White women, but that period was short-lived, as the stereotype of Black men as sexual predators began to emerge. During the antebellum period, Black women began to emerge as hairdressers in greater numbers; the early twentieth century saw the emergence of Black female entrepreneurs, namely Annie Malone and Madame C.J. Walker, who played an integral role in expanding Black beauty culture.

Through hard work and sheer perseverance, the women fought for beauticians to gain the respect of the general public. The women had to fight charges that they were inhibiting racial uplift, particularly because their products appeared to straighten Black women’s hair at a time when it was culturally looked down upon. Still, the women fought to have beautician courses established at Black colleges, arguing that the industry provided Black women economic stability. They also fiercely promoted themselves to the public by contributing to various philanthropic causes.

In times of economic hardship, the beauty industry offered Black women an opportunity to enter a respectable profession that entailed a steady income and entrepreneurial opportunities. On the national level, women worked to create a national organization that would legitimize their profession. In 1912, Madame Walker argued that “hairdresser” was a derogatory term, and insisted on the use of the term “beauty culturist.” With their economic and professional status now in place, beauty culturists were quickly gaining a strong foothold and establishing their place within their communities.

Because the Black beauty industry was owned and supplied by Blacks, and catered to the Black community, Black beauticians had some insulation from the economic hardships that their peers faced. Thus, they were able to participate in civil rights activism without the fear of losing their jobs or their customer base. Some, for instance, established literacy schools so that their students would be able to pass voter registration tests. Others distributed information through their beauty shops, which had become central locations for community organizing. Gill also extends her research to the present day, noting how the focus has now shifted from civil rights to women’s health initiatives.

Perhaps the best thing about this book is its accessibility to a wide audience. Gill writes in a clear and engaging style that makes the book an excellent choice for a non-academic reader who is interested in the subject. She includes noted figures in Black women’s history such as Madame Walker, Annie Malone, and Septima Clark, and uses compelling anecdotes about women such as Mahalia Jackson and Anne Moody, author of Coming of Age in Mississippi. Most importantly, Gill introduces the reader to a roster of lesser-known figures who also played important roles during this period. The book is an invaluable resource for women’s history and African American history scholars.

Written by: Melissa Arjona, July 6th 2010

The Uterine Health Companion: A Holistic Guide to Lifelong Wellness

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:44:00 +0000

By Eve Agee

Celestial Arts

In The Uterine Health Companion, Eve Agee brings her training as a medical anthropologist and as a holistic healer to bear on the subject of life-long uterine health. She begins the book by explaining both holistic health and the structure and function of the uterus to her readers. Then she outlines a plan for optimal uterine health, with chapters on emotional/spiritual and mental health, the power of nutrition and the importance of a strong body.

In part three, Agee discusses what she calls “Uterine Health Conditions” and these span from menarche to menopause and beyond. This is a book for women at every stage of reproductive life. This is also a book for Western women specifically.

Agee’s training in Africa has led her to question the disproportionate distribution of uterine maladies from a global perspective. Without ever insinuating that western women have their menstrual woes all in our heads (so common to masculinist approaches to women’s reproductive health, as I’m sure most of you are aware), Agee asks why it is that PMS, endometriosis and hot flashes (to name some examples) are so prevalent in the west but comparatively minimal in the non-western world. Agee indicates that dominant western attitudes about women’s bodies and women’s reproductive systems and abilities have actually contributed to menstrual, reproductive and menopausal illness in the western world. I found that to be the most interesting thing about her book.

I can’t say I learned much about the nature of uterine health conditions or about things to do for optimal uterine health, but I’m a reproductive health geek, so I came to the book with a fair amount of knowledge. Still, the reminder to eat my orange and red veggies was a good one and encouragement to keep up on exercise is always appreciated. The part I just couldn’t do was the holistic bit: I just couldn’t bring myself to do the guided visualizations. Certainly, that had more to do with my own comfort zones. Still, I just wasn’t prepared to enter my uterus and talk to the people/things I met there (though it was fun to tell my mother do to so).

Agee’s style is engaging and easy without being overly simple. A quick read, enjoyable and timely.

Written by: kristina grob, July 1st 2010

Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Sandra Steingraber

Da Capo

In the original 1997 edition of Living Downstream, Sandra Steingraber was the first to compare data on toxic releases with data from U.S. cancer registries. In the last ten years since this edition was published, there has been rapid growth in the understanding of environmental links to human cancer and new published findings that corroborate the evidence Steingraber compiled in 1997. With a Ph.D. in biology and a Master's degree in creative writing, Steingraber has been the recipient of many awards, including Chatham College's Rachel Carson Leadership Award in 2001 and a Hero Award from the Breast Cancer Fund in 2006. Living Downstream is both a personal story of Steingraber's battle with cancer and her investigation into the potential sources of carcinogens released into the air, land, and water in and around her hometown of Normandale in West-Central Illinois, as well as in other areas of the United States.

Thirty years ago, when Steingraber was a twenty-year-old college student, she learned that she had bladder cancer and was surprised when her urologist asked her whether she had ever been exposed to textile dyes or worked in a tire factory or the aluminum industry. The author later learned that bladder cancer was considered a quintessential environmental cancer. In other words, there was more evidence linking it to toxic chemical exposure than to any other type of cancer. However, although bladder carcinogens had been identified, they continue to be used by industry even today. The obvious question, of course, is why have these chemicals not been banned. The reader quickly discovers that cancer causation is complex, as is proving the source responsible for this disease.

The author reminds her readers that of the 80,000 synthetic chemicals currently in use in the U.S., only about two percent have been tested for carcinogenicity and only five have been banned under the U.S. Toxics Substances Control Act since 1976. We also learn that the U.S. environmental regulatory system does not require exhaustive toxicological testing of chemicals before they are marketed. Legal limits are set on chemical releases, but, as we recently learned with bisphenol A (BPA), trace amounts can be more harmful to humans than higher doses. Moreover, we are often exposed to many contaminants simultaneously in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we ingest, and the land where we live and work.

Often compared with Rachel Carson, Steingraber makes some compelling arguments in favor of the precautionary principle, or the better-safe-than-sorry approach to chemicals. She also advocates the principle of reverse onus, which holds producers responsible for proving that their products will not harm the public, as is the case for pharmaceutical companies.

Sandra Steingraber has the expertise in science to give her the necessary authority to present an investigation of this scope and the impeccable writing to make it accessible to a wide audience. Although some environmental texts can be dry, Steingraber's writing and personal story make for a compelling read. Her drive and commitment to finding the missing pieces of the cancer jigsaw puzzle are humbling. I only wish that she had included a map of Tazewell County, Illinois, which we repeatedly visit throughout the book. A few diagrams of some the atoms she describes would have also been nice.

In short, if you have ever thought that the environment may have played a role in the death of a loved one and would like to know more, this is the book for you.

Written by: Heather Leighton, June 9th 2010

Lifting Depression: A Neuroscientist's Hands-On Approach to Activating Your Brain's Healing Power

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Kelly Lambert

Basic Books

"Depression hurts," chimes the television announcer. Most people have been depressed at some point in their lives, whether from a life-changing event or simply a bad patch of circumstance. I am willing to wager that if you haven’t been there yourself, you know someone who has suffered from depression. The pharmaceutical industry is now doling out pills to treat depression and a large portion of our population is taking them, some with marked results, some going from pill to pill searching for the perfect cocktail that will relieve them of pain and anxiety, fear and restlessness.

In her book Lifting Depression, Kelly Lambert explores the reasons why people born in the middle of the twentieth century are ten times more likely to suffer from major depression compared to people born in the early twentieth century. Why, in our modern day convenience-filled society, do people seem to be so ill at ease? Dr. Lambert is the chair of psychology at Randolph-Macon College and President of the Behavioral Neuroscience Society, and her research has been featured on ABC’s World News Tonight and in Scientific American Mind.

In one experiment she conducted with rats, some had to work hard for rewards while others, dubbed the "trust fund rats," were simply given the treats. After five weeks, the hardworking rats were sixty percent more persistent in trying to work on a new task. She describes this as "learned persistence," and theorizes that coming from our agrarian roots, the human brain receives stimulation from doing concrete tasks like working with our hands, and accomplishing something you can hold as the fruit of your labor, "effort driven rewards."

Lambert's studies find that engaging the effort driven rewards circuit of your brain appears to be equivalent to taking a dose of the most powerful antidepressants. With this in mind, she suggests that something like "behavioral activation therapy" can work to retrain your brain to be happier in the long term. With this form of therapy, a person learns how to alter their behavioral responses to situations and even change their environments to stimulate the brain into feeling more rewarded and therefore relieving the subject of their depression.

Lambert is not advocating the end of pharmaceutical intervention to lift someone out of a lethargic and depressed state. But she maintains that without some other form of therapy, or alteration in activities, a person could simply remain on these drugs, without ever being able to get out of the cycle completely.

Lifting Depression is not only a valuable addition to the field of psychology in an academic sense, but it is also a readable guide book that I would recommend to anyone struggling with depression or seeking to understand how they could offer better guidance to a person who is.

It seems so simple, to engage in exercise, to take up knitting or woodworking as a way to engage the brain in a new rewards program that will assist in finding happiness. But if it is so simple, (and inexpensive!), then why are most people advised by their healthcare providers to just pop the pill and carry on as usual?

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, June 7th 2010

Dispatches from the Abortion Wars: The Cost of Fanaticism to Doctors, Patients, and the Rest of Us

admin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Carole Joffe

Beacon Press

Maybe I’m wrong, but in my understanding of war, combatants will do whatever it takes to destroy the opposing side. And that’s not what has happened in the conflict over abortion. Instead, one side, the anti-abortionists—from the Army of God to the Lambs of Christ, from Operation Save America to The National Right to Life Committee—have organized a multitude of campaigns to stop what they call “the murder of innocents.” Diverse tactics, from the ballot box to the bullet, have been used.

The damage has been horrific: Eight people (half of them doctors) have been killed since 1993 and there have been 17 attempted murders, 175 arsons, and 41 bombings since 1977. In the first four months of 2009—before the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas—the National Abortion Federation logged in 1411 harassing emails, phone calls, and letters; three bomb threats; five suspicious packages; 40 instances of trespassing; and 11 attacks by vandals.

Then there’s the legal stuff. Legislation has been passed in virtually every state to limit when abortion is permissible and require clinics to jump through a multitude of hoops to offer services. This has made the procedure hard to access, especially for women not living in or near major cities. Add in a constant barrage of ballot measures to outlaw the procedure or give personhood status to the fetus, and it’s not surprising that the antis have made inroads in getting people to question the efficacy of the procedure.

And providers? For their part clinicians have defended their turf, obtaining court orders to bar protesters from screaming in patient’s faces, installing state-of-the-art security devices, and working to pass legislation to protect reproductive freedom from further incursions. But war? Not even a skirmish. Instead, the lion’s share of clinicians have dedicated themselves to offering high quality medical care to women, not on retaliating against the anti’s for their belligerence and menace.

Indeed, not a single anti has been assassinated (yes, anti-abortion protester James Pouillion was killed in Michigan last September, but his murder was part of a shooting spree by a deranged gunman) or harmed by pro-choice forces. Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPC) have not had their locks glued shut or been attacked with butyric acid. They have not received letters filled with white powder claiming to be Anthrax. CPC staff have not been followed and berated as “murderers” while buying milk. Their children have not been taunted in the schoolyard because of their parent’s vocation. So I take issue with Carole Joffe’s conception of the “abortion wars.” What we have, instead, is mono-dimensional, a one-way fight aided by religious dogmatists hellbent on imposing their worldview on women and families.

Despite this fundamental disagreement, Dispatches from the Abortion Wars is often riveting. Joffe’s insights into popular culture, alongside her analysis of the recent barrage of ballot initiatives, are spot on in explaining the growth of negative attitudes about abortion. As she notes, the continuous introduction of restrictive legislation reinforces the idea that the surgery is contentious. What’s more, when something is seen as controversial, people tend to back off, fearing schisms they’d rather avoid. “It is a fear of controversy, more than actual moral opposition, that mainly accounts for the stigmatizing situation of abortion today,” she concludes.

If that’s true, it’s time for pro-choice forces to take the offensive, not in war—we can’t descend to the anti’s level—but by defending abortion as the sound moral choice of more than one-third of U.S. women of reproductive age.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, February 17th 2010

Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank

admin — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Randi Hutter Epstein

W.W. Norton

When researching medical or social history, one of the things that often becomes apparent is the level of mystery that surrounded women’s bodies and bodily functions. This mystery and speculation is the subject of Randi Hutter Epstein’s Get Me Out. As the title suggests, Hutter Epstein, a medical journalist, presents an overview of ideas related to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth spanning from antiquity to the modern day. While it is easy to laugh at some of the mistaken notions from the past (and some of them are, indeed, hilarious and/or terrifying), Hutter Epstein also makes sure to note the unknowns that still surround these processes today.

One thing that Get Me Out makes very clear is the way in which pregnancy and childbirth—and, therefore, women’s bodies—have continuously been the subjects of experimentation. This has sometimes been to women’s benefit, but all too often to their detriment. Early medical texts were written by monks who were not only excluded from the delivery room due to their gender (only women were allowed to attend childbirth) but were also likely completely unfamiliar with women’s bodies, leading to a lot of guesswork. Hutter Epstein describes disturbing experiments on female slaves that did eventually produce positive results, but at unknown cost to the women experimented upon. Another type of experimentation Hutter Epstein recounts is pain suppression during childbirth. Get Me Out describes the contradictory views of women towards drug use during childbirth over time: from these drugs being a part of women’s liberation to the drugs being a tool of subjugation.

The key strengths of Get Me Out are the fascinating nature of the information it provides and the book’s readability. Get Me Out is incredibly engaging. As Hutter Epstein notes in the title, this is a history; she does not attempt to tell the history. This approach allows her to describe some of the high (or low) points of ideas and processes from antiquity to the nineteenth century in the first few chapters, and then focus the rest of the book on the twentieth century. Even with the volume of material presented, I appreciated that Hutter Epstein did not rigidly confine herself to the topic at hand. The book is peppered with footnotes that provide additional, often tangential, information. At one point, the author uses a footnote to discuss the differences in the sperm trade between humans and thoroughbred horses. It is clear that Hutter Epstein has a very curious mind, which has led to her creating an interesting, funny, illuminating, enjoyable book.

Written by: Erin Schowalter, December 27th 2009

make/shift: feminisms in motion (Issue 6)

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:34:00 +0000

Edited by Jessica Hoffmann, Daria Yudacufski

Make/Shift aims to thrust the ignored populations into the greater recognition. Native Americans living in urban settings rather than rural reservations tend to be invisible in our nation’s consciousness. Society shies away from the combination of disability and sexuality, and when it comes to women’s prisons, many question the validity of empowerment through peer education health programs. The Fall/Winter edition of Make/Shift explores these and a wide variety of other social issues. It highlights individuals working to improve the world on personal, local, international, and virtual levels through social action or artistic ventures.

A letter from the editors tells readers that the theme of the issue is movement, but some of the articles that follow move more efficiently than others. A few of the more personal pieces struck this reader at a trifle tedious. A piece about losing one’s ethnic identity by using a certain hair product makes about as much sense to me as the belief that using spray-on tanner would force me to concede my Whiteness. An article entitled “Vocabulary Lesson” questions the queer world’s borrowing of the word wife from mainstream society when that word has many negative historical connotations attached to it, but the execution came off condescending, and seemed to push for the continued separation of the two groups.

Many stories move quite fluidly, however. A tale about a formerly battered woman’s journey into professorship hits the mark, as does a story about a Haitian lesbian’s encounter with a skinhead on a train. A collage piece on kitchens examines how this politically charged space changes depending on the occupants and attitudes. A series of segments on health focus on specific issues concerning women’s health, such as environmental hazards connected with work traditionally performed by females.

Another focuses on the push to provide health care for transpeople. As a health care provider featured in the article puts it, “If someone has a cervix, they need gynecological care,” yet many trans people harbor fears of discrimination and simply discomfort with entering a clinic. A piece on immigration explores how the nation’s policies affect those in the queer community.

The magazine doesn’t focus long on any one issue or demographic. Make/Shift strives to reach out to all who identify as female, no matter what their origin or back story, and there is a tidbit for everyone—hopefully more, if you’re willing to learn something.

The design would benefit from more art and photographs to further connect readers to the subjects of the articles. This shouldn’t be difficult, considering that this is a magazine that celebrates artists. I don’t know if the lack of image distribution is a reflection of the magazine’s relative newness, a lack of resources, or failure to see the need, but either way, the need is evident.

Written by: Kelly Palka Gallagher, December 2nd 2009

The Blue Cotton Gown: A Midwife’s Memoir

admin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:10:00 +0000

By Patricia Harman

Beacon Press

By the time Patricia Harman finished writing The Blue Cotton Gown, she was no longer working as a midwife. Instead, soaring malpractice fees had caused The Women’s Health Clinic of Torrington, West Virginia, a practice Harman runs with her husband, Dr. Tom Harman, to provide only general obstetrical and gynecological care to the patients it serves.

Harman is a nurse-practitioner and her memoir tracks a handful of women for approximately a year, zeroing in on the many variables that impact their health and well being: rampant drug and alcohol abuse, poverty, violence, mental illness, and inadequate information about staying healthy, among them. It’s a gripping account. At the same time, the book is as much a meditation on aging, marriage, and parenthood as it is a look at the obstacles and challenges endemic to the provision of healthcare in the U.S. This makes it both intensely moving and intensely, if obliquely, political.

Harman describes herself and her spouse as former hippies, people who found their professional calling in their thirties, after years of organic farming and communal living. Their countercultural impulses have made them compassionate, and their work is motivated by love of medicine, not love of the dollar. Not surprisingly, these tendencies have led to managerial problems. To whit, an inattention to finances—and way too much trust in accountants who could care less about the Harman’s ethos of providing the best care for the best price—led to monetary miscalculations that threatened to shutter the practice. When the IRS came calling, tensions built and the Harmans and their ten-person staff had to work tirelessly to forge a survival strategy. They did—the practice was saved—but not without both dents and dings to numerous personal relationships.

Meanwhile, they had patients to deal with and their own personal crises to address. Harman calls it “running in front of a plague of locusts.” There is Nila, pregnant for the eighth time, who fears that her ex-husband is molesting her four-year-old. There is Heather, a teenager pregnant by a nineteen-year-old drug addict, and Holly, a forty-five-year-old menopausal realtor whose bulimic daughter is perched on death’s window ledge. And there’s Rebba, worried because she has never had an orgasm, and Shiana, a college student who needs to have a condom extracted from behind her cervix.

Closer to home, the elderly parents of staff get sick and Harman, herself, becomes ill. Within the span of a few months she needs to have a gangrenous gall bladder removed and has a complete hysterectomy.

Throughout, there are constant money troubles—big ones—and the tension and stress are palpably presented. To her credit, Harman is not looking for either sympathy or accolades but her matter-of-fact descriptions of how difficult it is to provide high quality, patient-centered care is simultaneously enraging and shocking. While she never discusses the need for a national health plan—she also barely mentions abortion as an option for her oft-pregnant patients—her chronicle of the trials and tribulations of one nurse practitioner is riveting.

Yes, The Blue Cotton Gown could have been more politically prescriptive. Nonetheless, readers will find their immersion in the daily affairs of this off-the-beaten-track health center emotionally engaging, engrossing, and inspiring. Indeed, in an era of rampant medical discontent, the determination and persistence of Harman and her Torrington colleagues seems almost miraculous.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, June 17th 2009