everything below the waist by jennifer block

And Kimball she might as well have ripped out her bloodied womb and thrown it on the table. This woman asked her the usual question, “Do you have kids?” And she honestly said, “Well, actually, I’ve just had my.” I can’t remember whether it was her third or fourth miscarriage. She was sat a table next to a woman who she’d never met before. , Canadian feminist journalist Alexandra Kimball being at a social event with her partner. Yet, I’ve had journalists or approach me quite gingerly and ask, “Is it okay if I ask you this question?” Quite a few people have whispered the title of my book to me. Let’s think and talk about in normal terms. Julia Bueno: I’ve written a book that actually says, “Let’s talk about this,” and the whole thrust of my book is prizing it out of the shutters. That juxtaposition has an impact on the conversations we have with each other and our providers about these issues. Miscarriages, infertility, endometriosis, and even periods are all so ubiquitous, but still so stigmatized and taboo. I talked with Block and Bueno about reclaiming narratives about our reproductive health, understanding our options, and approaching reproductive healthcare with the nuance it deserves. So many of us are unwilling participants in a racist, sexist, and transphobic culture of care that measures our worth based on if we’re able to reproduce. Both books examine how we’re censored, shamed, and then given a menu of false medical choices that won’t actually help us get well. Their new books, Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution and The Brink of Being: Talking About Miscarriage, respectively, unpack how medical misogyny, conservative politics, and stigma back those seeking reproductive healthcare into a corner. Journalist Jennifer Block and psychotherapist Julia Bueno want to change that. Discussing reproductive health with our providers, our friends, our family, or are peers is often uncomfortable periods gross people out and conversations about miscarriage are discomfiting to many people. This is especially true for those of us seeking reproductive healthcare. The truth is, however, that reducing health issues to reductive binaries patronizes patients, limits our options, and helps to strip us of our agency. Healthcare often exists in dichotomies: over-medication and knife-happy doctors versus pseudoscience, fetuses versus babies, and reproductive technology versus midwifery and home births. A transgender woman in a hospital gown being treated by a doctor, a transgender man (Photo credit: The Gender Spectrum Collection)

Everything below the waist by jennifer block