Papers in Women's and Gender Studies

Review of Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction by Cynthia R. Daniels

Rose Holz — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:15:51 PDT

To begin with, although Daniels's work could be categorized as political science, part of this book's appeal is that it addresses what we historians might call a massive hole in the historiography--in this case, regarding men's health. In other words, we just do not know very much about this topic, nor do we know much about its history. Ironically, this dearth of knowledge stands in stark contrast to the wealth of information about the history of women's health--something that might seem a bit odd given the feminist argument that history has more often been about men than about women. However, part of the explanation for why the interest in women's health has trumped a focus on men's health lies in history itself: The desire to understand the history of women's health arose in the late 1960s and the 1970s, precisely when second-wave feminism, women's history, and the women's health movement--which, in 1973, produced Our Bodies, Ourselves (Boston Women's Health Book Collective), the groundbreaking work about women's health-were all picking up steam. Add to these factors the concurrent push within the field of history to engage in social history--a trend that medical historians translated into accounts focused more on patients and society and less on great doctors, scientists, and medical discoveries and what emerged was a vibrant new body of scholarship about the history of medicine, health, and society. Given its intellectual and activist heritage, this social history has, for the most part, been rooted firmly in the experiences of women and, in particular, their reproductive health.

In writing this book, therefore, Daniels, along with other historians such as Leslie Reagan (1997), is looking to fill what has for too long been a rather large, gaping hole in the history of men's health. Furthermore, she does so in a way that resonates with what sociologist Michael Kimmel (1996) called upon scholars to do: to apply the tools and methods feminists developed for understanding women and femininity in order to understand (paradoxically enough) men and masculinity. This shift, it seems to me, is important because, as Kimmel himself thoughtfully-- and with full awareness of the irony--noted: "American men still have no history in part, I believe, because we haven't known what questions to ask (p. 2)."

Nurse Gordon on Trial: Those Early Days of the Birth Control Clinic Movement Reconsidered

Rose Holz — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:38:21 PDT

It is a story many of us know well. As historian Linda Gordon explained nearly thirty years ago, in the early days of the teens Margaret Sanger was a radical. She talked about sex. She talked about revolution. She criticized doctors. She even opened a clinic in overt defiance of the law. And in this clinic she exercised her skills as a nurse and educated women about birth control. But then, as Gordon’s story also goes, by the 1920s Sanger shifted tactics: she softened her critique and she put a doctor in charge of her new facility, with the message that only physicians were qualified to fit women with the diaphragm, though she knew full well how to do it on her own. And so, there ended the radicalism not only of Margaret Sanger but of the birth control clinic movement itself.

But what if this were only part of the story? What if there were other birth control clinics out there which did not adhere to this newly emergent medical model: clinics which used nurses; clinics which used Irregular practitioners; clinics which even had direct ties with the commercial contraceptive world. Furthermore, what if those clinics, which operated in association with the increasingly physician-dominated American Birth Control League, still occasionally threatened to rupture into radicalism themselves, or at least to blur seemingly effortlessly into the world I just described above. And finally, what if Sanger herself continued to dabble in her old habits as well by lending her support to those whom she supposedly should not? As these and other such questions suggest, what I argue here is that it is perhaps time we set aside (for the moment at least) Gordon’s brilliant yet oft-told tale so that we might cast our gaze anew upon those early days of the 1920s and ‘30s. For what I believe we will find as a result is an even richer story, one which reveals not only the breadth of the birth control clinic movement but also the American Birth Control League’s efforts to contain it.

“I Work to Produce Stories That Save Our Lives” — Toni Cade Bambara

Barbara DiBernard — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:19:28 PST

Toni Cade Bambara is a writer of responsibility and hope, a writer who sees violence, injustice, and oppression, but who believes in the ability of human beings to transform themselves and their situations. In her two collections of short stories, Gorilla, My Love and The Sea Birds Are Still Alive, and the novel, The Salt Eaters, Bambara shows us the possibilities for laughter and transformation by oppressed people, especially the Black community of which she is a part.

Karen Thompson

Barbara DiBernard — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:51:51 PST

Karen Thompson’s lover Sharon Kowalski was severely injured in November 1983 when a drunk driver crashed into her car. Sharon is now paralyzed from the waist down and has serious brain damage. The two women had exchanged rings, bought a house together, made each other beneficiaries of their life insurance policies, and made a lifetime commitment to each other, but were extremely closeted. When Karen, at the suggestion of a counselor, came out to Sharon’s parents after the accident, the Kowalskis reacted with anger, denial, and hatred. “They said I was sick and crazy and they never wanted to set eyes on me again,” Karen Thompson says. A legal struggle began which resulted in Donald Kowalski being appointed Sharon’s legal guardian, and Karen being prevented from seeing her lover for 3½ years, even though after the accident she had worked with Sharon 8–10 hours a day, during which time Sharon made significant progress in communication, movement, and skills. In March 1989 Karen was able to see Sharon again, by court and medical order, and it appears that she will be able to continue doing so, although she has to drive several hours to the Medical Center where Sharon currently lives.