🌺 W O M E N ‘ S H E A L T H 🌺
We need a reframe on women’s health. So much of mainstream, modern, technocratic women’s health is simply male-centered, male invented, degradation, fertility erasure, disease management, and abuse cloaked in “women’s health/liberation/access,” etc.
WOMEN’S HEALTH IS NOT:
Mammograms
Pap smears
Pelvic exams
Technocratic, impersonal prenatal “care”
Hormonal birth control
HPV vaccines
Flu shot clinics
“Racing for the cure” (pink washing)
Sonograms
Xanax
Hysterectomies/Mastectomies
Abortions
WIC clinics that send pregnant women formula.
Nor is it having more access to a system that provides women with all the above mentioned…
When I say these things are not women’s health, I’m not saying that some of these things will never be necessary at any point for anyone (although I have chosen that they are never necessary for me and I do think most items on the list are not needed for women). What I am saying is that our cultural ideas of how we care for women is rooted in such rituals and practices that divorce us from our bodies, intuition, self knowledge, dignity, and ultimately and ironically our potential of true and vital health.
SO THEN WHAT IS WOMEN’S HEALTH?
-Knowledge, deep understanding and a resurgence of ancient wisdom of our own bodies. Retaining that power and not giving over to medical “authorities.”
-Self breast and lymph massage.
- Nature Based, organic, herbal, non gmo diets.
-Cervical awareness. Most women don’t know what their normal cervix looks like, is supposed to feel like, the changes it makes, etc. - Self directed prenatal care. Women deciding what care feels like to them. Abandoning the notion that women need and feel best when poked, prodded, fingered, splayed out on hard tables, feet in stirrups, have distant and unfamiliar care givers, wands up their vaginas, blood taken, forced to drink nasty orange garbage drink, told what to do, etc…
-Community women’s circles for DIY healthcare.
-Prevention Based lifestyles. - Natural family planning, FAM, teaching young girls how to track their cycles.
-Herbal/supplement abortions, self cervical dilation abortions, midwife/home based abortions, and of course creating woman centered solutions and communities where women feel supported which will decrease a woman’s need for abortion. So will women knowing their cycles. - Birth attendants who are allowed to serve women without state licenses that behold them to state birth regulations. Freedom in childbirth.
- Homes free of air fresheners, toxic cleaning products, make up, body care, perfumes, etc. Homes free of endocrine disruptors.
….add in a little herbal medicine, homeopathy, breastfeeding, sunlight, chiropractic care, EMF reduction, trauma healing, ancestry remembrance, Wild birth, women gathering, gardening, meditation, nature, movement, etc… This is just *my personal* short list 😉 Because even though this is a pretty legit list, ultimately yours will be personal to you, as it should be. Women’s health should be personalized and unique because every woman is unique. It should be women leading their own health, calling the shots. It’s not everyone lined up on a conveyor belt going through the same screenings, tests, exams, etc. Health is not the sterile, cold, impersonal rituals mainstream medical thought has taught us it is that we all must accept. And I don’t. Do you?
