Ehrenreich & English:

selections from

Complaints and Disorders: The

Sexual Politics of Sickness

Reflection #2:

• Which tropes (figurative language) and/or ideologies surface in Ehrenreich & English’s retelling of medicinal history from Merchant and Keller’s readings last Friday?

• List some examples of which medical theories “actually [justified]…women’s social role[s]” (E&E, 26). How did they accomplish this?

Classic “second-wave” text:

• 1973• “They have us, so to speak, by the

ovaries” (84)• “The trouble is that whatever we say

can be, and is, used against us” (88)• “Hysterics don’t unite and fight” (41) • Top-down model of power/oppression

“Medicine’s prime contribution to sexist ideology is to describe women as sick,

and as potentially sickening to men” (5).

NatureReal

InnateEssentialObjective

CultureUnreal

LearnedConstructed

Relative

“what was female hysteria, really?”

• “[Our] bodies are not the issue. Biology is not the issue. The issue is power, in all the ways it affects us” (88).

• “It is not our biology that that oppresses us—but a social system based on sex and class domination” (89).

On women’s agency:

• “The oppression is real; the resistance is real; but the sickness is manufactured” (87).

Our Bodies OurselvesThe Boston Women’s Health Collective

• Collective began as 12 women in 1969

• 1970: First pamphlet published… an underground success

• 1973: First OBOS book published• 1979: Best seller• Banned across the country

(condemned by Jerry Falwell as “obscene trash”)

OBOS introduced these key ideas into the public discourse

on women’s health:That women, as informed health consumers, are catalysts for social change

That women can become their own health experts, particularly through discussing issues of health and sexuality with each other

That health consumers have a right to know about controversies surrounding medical practices and about where consensus among medical experts may be forming

That women comprise the largest segment of health workers, health consumers, and health decision-makers for their families and communities, but are underrepresented in positions of influence and policy making

That a pathology/disease approach to normal life events (birthing, menopause, aging, death) is not an effective way in which to consider health or structure a health systema health system