Elinor Cleghorn: The Sacrifices Behind Women's Health

About this episode

Dr. Elinor Cleghorn discusses the historical context and myths surrounding women's health in relation to contemporary issues.

Simplify is back! When you leave the doctor with a protocol for what ails you, do you wonder where the knowledge behind your prescription came from? In fact, we know how to treat today's woes thanks to the bodies of people who suffered—and nowhere is that data more inexact and editorialized than in women's health. Feminist cultural historian Dr. Elinor Cleghorn, who specializes in women’s health and its history, is just the person to set the story straight. Her book, Unwell Women, demystifies myths around women’s health—stories about what women's bodies are for, whether pain is just a necessary side effect of being a woman, and why women's bodies have been policed and traded as political capital, yet we still have to fight to be believed about our own bodily experiences. Women's bodies aren't mysteries—they are our own to care for and make decisions about. In this episode, Caitlin Schiller talks with Dr. Cleghorn about the relevance of this history today, as women's sexuality and reproductive freedoms are being redefined in response to a threatened patriarchy and budding pronatalist movements across the west. In the Bookend, Ben and Caitlin make reading recommendations and…

People in this episode

Hosts: Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler

Guest: Elinor Cleghorn

Topics covered

• women's health
• feminism
• history of medicine
• reproductive rights
• cultural history

Keywords

• women's health
• feminism
• reproductive rights
• cultural history
• medical history
• pain
• patriarchy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Simplify

Books & works: Unwell Women, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution, The Confessions of Frannie Langton

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