Our Bodies, Ourselves had a place of honour on my bookshelf in 1973. Now I have the latest edition, completely updated to reflect our changing bodies.

When I first got my copy of Our Bodies Ourselves it was 1973, and I was young and timid. I didn’t stay that way for long. Armed with a few chapters from OBOS, I challenged the medical domination of my pregnancies and ended up in a wild argument with my doctor almost punching him on the way out.

That was the best about the book, it gave me a feeling of power, power that came from better knowledge of my own body. It still amazes me how accepting I was, how accepting we all were, of medical intervention.

It was reading OBOS back then that makes me cautious now, and skeptical of medical claims for ‘cures‘ for menopause. The Boston Womens Health Book Collective is a nonprofit organization committed to education about women and health, not an exercise to sell us products. Inside you’ll find candid discussions on a variety of issues concerning our health and our bodies.

As the authors told it then :

“It all began in the spring of 1969 at a women’s liberation conference held in Boston. At a workshop on “Women and Their Bodies,” we discovered that every one of us had a “doctor story,” that we had all experienced feelings of frustration and anger toward the medical maze in general, and toward those doctors who were condescending, paternalistic, judgmental, and uninformative in particular”.

” As we talked and shared our experiences, we realized just how much we had to learn about our bodies, that simply finding a “good doctor” was not the solution to whatever problems we might have. So we decided on a summer project: we would research our questions, share what we learned in our group, and then present the information in the fall as a course “by and for women.” We envisioned an ongoing process that would involve other women who would then go on to teach such a course in other settings.”

Latest edition

A second edition was released in 1988 with a lot more information on subjects such as HIV, and now this latest edition has an expanded coverage of menopause and ageing, innovative medical information, updated stories from different womens’ groups and perspectives on emerging women health issues.

In short, completely updated to reflect our changing times.

Our Bodies, Ourselves : A New Edition for a New Era

Our Bodies, Ourselves is a must, you will be referencing it again and again. I can’t encourage you enough to obtain this classic.

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