Learning about Our Bodies
Experiences from India and Brazil
Cecilia Simonetti
I was reading an article in Manushi no. 7, 1981, called " R e claiming our Energies", which talks of discussions the group has had with other Indian women on sexuality, and I remembered similar situations when I had been with women's groups In Brazil. Together with four other women researchers from the Carlos Chagas Foundation I took part in meetings every two weeks with women from working class suburbs of Sao Paulo, over a period of 18 months. Our task was to produce several brochures on sexuality which could be used by these women, who were generally poor and had no other access to information.
The Manushi article begins with a question which I think all of us have when we start to understand our bodies: "Why are we as women kept in ignorance of how our bodies function? Why is this ignorance defined as innocence, given a moral stamp of 'virtue'?"
it relates how women from Manushi formed a group to work around health issues and decided to begin with menstruation, "an experience common to all women, and often a traumatic experience which shapes our view of ourselves as inferior and unclean". They started by each one saying what she knew about menstruation as a biological process and "what in the attitudes of those around us, in the ideas we imbibe from religion, education, literature, myths, had made us think our sexuality was something at worst to be hated, at best to be Ignored or hidden?" One of them said, "I started menstruating at about age 13 and I knew nothing about it at all except that as a small child I had seen the sanitary towels of my aunts lying around. I didn't tell my mother. I just clamped up. That was one period of my life when I felt totally isolated. On the third day my mother noticed that my pants were stained and she asked me.
" All she said was that I wouldn't grow any taller now, and this was at an age when I wanted to grow taller. After that, there was a long period of estrangement from my mother. I found terrible hatred against her welling up in my mind. Nothing explained. A terrible negative feeling about myself as a woman, about my body, began then. Almost as if I had done something shameful. This persists even today...".
The women I worked with in the Sao Paulo suburbs said almost the same thing. I remember one woman saying to me, "I didn't know anything about my body, about my periods. When I started menstruating I was 12 and the only thing my mother said to me was that I should no longer let a man get anywhere near me. I was so scared that even now, at 28 years old I have never had a boyfriend. And I still know nothing about my body!".
Contrary to what the Manushi women did — "after having located our areas of ignorance, we decided to try and findlocated our areas of ignorance, we decided to try and find out more together, and so we began by reading aloud from Our Bodies Ourselves" — we decided, in Brazil, to make 5 pamphlets written in simple language because the women with whom we met could hardly read. In our meetings we each spoke of our own experience, our feelings, and afterwards we tried to syntheslse this and put it in the pamphlets. The choice of theme was made by these women and they were actively involved in the development and preparation of the pamphlets, which were finally published in June 1982. (See references at end of article.)
Seeing Through Our Own Eyes
One very moving experience was the self-examination session we did together at the suggestion of the whole group. One woman volunteered to be examined while the other looked and commented. "Before having seen her vagina I was scared. I thought that vaginas were ugly. Perhaps it wasn't fear but shame"; another said, "It's all pink and clean. We are really very beautiful there!" The whole atmosphere was one of discovery, where something very important was happening for all of us. We were filled with curiosity, and then admiration when we discovered how beautiful our vaginas are.
This is not very different from what one of the Manushi women felt and talks about in the article: "I had tried examining myself when I was alone, but could see nothing except my anus. I didn't know the lips would come apart. I had never done this, not even to wash myself. I had no idea what my vagina looked like. I had not even seen a small baby because I don't have younger sisters or cousins. So the experience was very, very interesting and useful for me. I was amazed when the inner lips parted. I feel much more confident now. A t first when we undressed I felt nervous but after that, the way F (the woman who showed us how to do it and who is herself a nurse) did It, I felt absolutely fine. It was nice to see that we are differently made and yet it doesn't matter, we are all the same."
The Recognition and Acceptance of Our Bodies
The most difficult pamphlet to do was the first one, on knowing our bodies. To make the discussion easier, we brought along some drawings, also taken from Our Bodies, Ourselves. The reaction of the Brazilian women was almost the same as the Indian women from Manushi: ' T h e diagrams seemed remote and unfamiliar, because the picture we had in our own minds of what our body looks like was so unclear. We could see different organs in the book and learn their names but would we be able to recognize them in ourselves?"
In another session we decided to bring photos along instead of drawings. We were rather worried that the photos might shock the women. Not in the least! They thought the photos were much better than the diagrams because it was easier to recognise one's own body and to identify with the picture. One woman of 55 said, "Before I never dared to look in the mirror at myself. I didn't know what my sex looked like even though
I very much wanted to know. I didn't look because I was sure I would be ugly. After our meeting, and especially after seeing the photos, the first thing I did when I got home was to look at myself." There were two women — a grandmother of 55 and another women of 45 — who told us that they wanted to be photographed. "It is very important for us to show other women what we're like — because our bodies are not the stereotypical ones you see in advertisements and films. We know that most women simply don't have this "perfect" body of the models. But since we never see our mother's body, or our friends' bodies — other women's bodies in general — we are ashamed to even look at our own bodies. And then when we make love, we are Inhibited because we think our bodies are ugly, too fat or too thin. This all makes pleasurable sex very
difficult."
When we published the photos of nude women, with big breasts, big legs, the scars from cesarian births etc. many women were amazed because they were not used to seeing this kind of photograph in a magazine or brochure. This led us to talk a great deal about beauty, and the acceptance of our bodies...
References
5 Pamphlets on Sexuality
Fundapao Carlos Chagas's Researchers: Carmen Barroso,
Cristina Bruschini, Elisabeth Meloni Vieira, Maria Jose de
Araujo and Cecilia Simonetti
Address: Av. Professor Francisco Morato, 1565, CEP05513,
Sao Paulo, Brazil
No 1 — Entendendo Nosso Corpo
No 2 — Sera que eu quero ser mae?
No 3 — Quando os f ilhos perguntam certas coisas...
No 4 — O Exame Ginecologico
No 5 — Muito Prazer
Manushi no. 7 1981 CI/202 Lajpat Nagar 1 First Floor New Delhi 110 024 India
resources
For Ourselves. Our bodies and sexuality from women's point of view. Anja Meulenbelt, Joahanna's daughter Sheba Feminist Publishers 488 Kingsland Rd , London E8 England 1 £4.50 (plus 75 p for postage).
A book on sexuality from a different perspective: that sexuality isn't a matter of 'technique' but of our relationship to our whole body; that our sexual experiences are not separate from the fact that we live in a man's world; that sexuality belongs to us, that instead of taking men as the starting point, this book is based on what we experience, what we want. The book includes diagrams and photographs of our anatomy and the various birth control devices (the book mentions too a little talked-of method called "making love differently", i.e. without Intercourse), as well as sections on menstruation, menopause and breast cancer. All of which one would expect in such a book. But there are other chapters: on being your own best friend, loving yourself — eating, drinking, smoking, exercise, and making love to yourself; making love with another person — lesbianism, bisexuality, heterosexuality; the right not to have sex, which all contribute to making this book something special. Also includes chapters on rape, pornography, and how the theories of sexuality - including the 'sexual revolution' - have been used to oppress women. From Freud's "mature" vaginal orgasm to obligatory simultaneous orgasms to pressured extramarital sex, women have been told what they ought to feel. This book tries to describe not only what we no longer want,
but also to explore where to go from here. Also contains bibliographies and wonderful graphics. Available by mail from above addres
Our Bodies Ourselves THIRD EDITION Boston Women's Health Book Collective Box 192 West Somervllle, M A 02144 USA.
This basic book on women's sexuality, which can now be found all over the world, in more than 14 languages, is currently being completely revised, re-organized and updated, to be published in the Autumn of 1983. This edition represents the fourth incarnation of the work, which first appeared as a selfcovered newsprint edition published by the New England Free Press in December 1970. The first commercial edition was published in 1973, and a revised edition appeared in 1976. An "update" was also printed in 1979.
The new book reflects the work of many distinct movements which make up the broader US women's health movement: reproductive rights, women's occupational health, violence against women, self-help, and other specific issue-oriented groups. The voices and experiences of many women — women of color, lesbians, "older" women, disabled women — are included throughout the book. A l l the topics of the previous edition are covered, and several new themes appear: health and healing, an overview and critique of alternatives to conventional western medicine for women; women and aging, an examination of the health and life issues for women over 40; new
reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization and sexpreselection — an explanation and analysis of their impact on women —; and environmental and occupational influences on women's health.
In addition to continuing to de-mystify conventional western medicine and documenting its abuses of women, the book also raises new challenges to the presumed scientific basis on which modern medicine rests. It summarizes the lack of genuine scientific evidence on which most modern medical practice is based with special emphasis on such women's concerns as childbirth, contraception and cancer.
Finally, detailed practical information on organizing techniques and strategies are included, with special sections on international women and health issues and on the politics of women's health — how policy is made at the governmental and research levels, and how women are attempting to influence it in many different settings.
The new book will be longer, and alas more expensive, but more comprehensive than any editions to date. Discounts will continue to be available to certain groups and special arrangements may be made.
A New View of a Woman's Body Federation of Feminist Women's Health Centers Simon & Schuster Rockefeller Center 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, N Y 10020 USA. US$8.95.
The Federation of Feminist Women's Health Centers is "an organization of women—owned, women-controlled feminist clinics across the United States. Based on self-help, the clinics participate locally and nationally in many feminist health-care projects and issues". This book, published in 1981, is startling for the beauty and detail of the illustrations which indeed show a view of a woman's body which is not to be found anywhere else. Perhaps one of the most fascinating parts is the section of photographs of women's genitals and of their cervixes; fascinating because they clearly show how incredibly different our bodies are, that there is no "norm" of how a woman looks.
One of the major contributions of the book is the chapter called "the Clitoris: a feminist perspective" which attempts to examine the physiology of women's sexuality in depth, and to dispel the many and varied myths about women's sexuality which are perpetuated by the medical profession, sex educators and sex therapists. The authors did extensive research and the result is a chapter with totally new illustrations and a text which completely redefines the clitoris as a whole complex organ. This clearly has wide-reaching implications, some of which are discussed, but in a somewhat cursory way.
Other chapters deal with: self-examination, woman's reproductive anatomy, a well-woman exam, universal health problems of women, birth control, menstrual extraction, feminist abortion care, serious health problems — surgery, a self-help clinic. It includes a bibliography and a list of women's health projects in the USA.
It must be added that several women from different cultural backgrounds with whom we discussed this book felt that the illustrations disclose too much about women's bodies: almost like a pornographic work. This is always the danger with such an explicit book, but it seems likely that the positive aspects — making this information available to women — outweigh this negative one.
Prazer e Revolucionario Grupo de Trabalho Sexualidade e Politica ; Rua Cardeal Arcoverde 2109 CEP 05407 Sao P a u l o - S P Brazil.
This is a brochure on sexuality published by the Sexuality and Politics Group of Sao Paulo. Its aim is " to be a kind of dictionary of information on health and sexuality for the mass of women who, until now, have never been in contact with this kind of information and approach". The group worked with women who were organised in neighbourhood associations in the poor suburbs of Sao Paulo, to discuss women's bodies, reproduction, sexuality, contraception, abortion, pregnancy and
childbirth, breastfeeding, menopause, self-examination, etc... All these themes are dealt with in the brochure which is a record of these discussions as well as a source of information which can be updated and changed by women. According to the Sexuality and Politics Group, "we want these women to go on with the work, and produce another brochure themselves, with their own ideas and the information which they think necessary"