Women as Wombs

Women as Wombs PDF Author: Janice G. Raymond
Publisher: Spinifex Press
ISBN: 9781875559411
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Annotation. Renowned scholar and feminist activist, Janice Raymond, delivers a passionate expose and uncovers the alarming ethical, legal and political implications of high-tech biomedical reproductive technologies. She argues that these technologies are neither liberatory nor an issue of reproductive "choice". Rather, they violate the integrity of women's bodies, perpetuate prostitution and an international trafficking in women and children, and are a threat to women's basic human rights. Women As Wombs is a scathing feminist analysis which contributes groundbreaking insights to the raging debate over reproductive technology.

Women as Wombs

Women as Wombs PDF Author: Janice G. Raymond
Publisher: Spinifex Press
ISBN: 9781875559411
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
Annotation. Renowned scholar and feminist activist, Janice Raymond, delivers a passionate expose and uncovers the alarming ethical, legal and political implications of high-tech biomedical reproductive technologies. She argues that these technologies are neither liberatory nor an issue of reproductive "choice". Rather, they violate the integrity of women's bodies, perpetuate prostitution and an international trafficking in women and children, and are a threat to women's basic human rights. Women As Wombs is a scathing feminist analysis which contributes groundbreaking insights to the raging debate over reproductive technology.

The Wombs of Women

The Wombs of Women PDF Author: Françoise Vergès
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478008865
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
In the 1960s thousands of poor women of color on the (post)colonial French island of Reunion had their pregnancies forcefully terminated by white doctors; the doctors operated under the pretext of performing benign surgeries, for which they sought government compensation. When the scandal broke in 1970, the doctors claimed to have been encouraged to perform these abortions by French politicians who sought to curtail reproduction on the island, even though abortion was illegal in France. In The Wombs of Women—first published in French and appearing here in English for the first time—Françoise Vergès traces the long history of colonial state intervention in black women’s wombs during the slave trade and postslavery imperialism as well as in current birth control politics. She examines the women’s liberation movement in France in the 1960s and 1970s, showing that by choosing to ignore the history of the racialization of women’s wombs, French feminists inevitably ended up defending the rights of white women at the expense of women of color. Ultimately, Vergès demonstrates how the forced abortions on Reunion were manifestations of the legacies of the racialized violence of slavery and colonialism.

Wombs in Labor

Wombs in Labor PDF Author: Amrita Pande
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231538189
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Surrogacy is India's new form of outsourcing, as couples from all over the world hire Indian women to bear their children for a fraction of the cost of surrogacy elsewhere with little to no government oversight or regulation. In the first detailed ethnography of India's surrogacy industry, Amrita Pande visits clinics and hostels and speaks with surrogates and their families, clients, doctors, brokers, and hostel matrons in order to shed light on this burgeoning business and the experiences of the laborers within it. From recruitment to training to delivery, Pande's research focuses on how reproduction meets production in surrogacy and how this reflects characteristics of India's larger labor system. Pande's interviews prove surrogates are more than victims of disciplinary power, and she examines the strategies they deploy to retain control over their bodies and reproductive futures. While some women are coerced into the business by their families, others negotiate with clients and their clinics to gain access to technologies and networks otherwise closed to them. As surrogates, the women Pande meets get to know and make the most of advanced medical discoveries. They traverse borders and straddle relationships that test the boundaries of race, class, religion, and nationality. Those who focus on the inherent inequalities of India's surrogacy industry believe the practice should be either banned or strictly regulated. Pande instead advocates for a better understanding of this complex labor market, envisioning an international model of fair-trade surrogacy founded on openness and transparency in all business, medical, and emotional exchanges.

Women as Wombs

Women as Wombs PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781925581898
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
In Women as Wombs leading feminist ethicist Janice Raymond's scathing analysis of high-tech biomedical reproductive techniques contributes groundbreaking insights into the raging debate over reproductive technology and its ethical, legal, and political implications. Raymond asserts that far from being liberatory issues of 'choice', these techniques - including in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, and sex selection - are a threat to women's basic human rights.

The Flaming Womb

The Flaming Womb PDF Author: Barbara Watson Andaya
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824864727
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
"The Princess of the Flaming Womb," the Javanese legend that introduces this pioneering study, symbolizes the many ambiguities attached to femaleness in Southeast Asian societies. Yet despite these ambiguities, the relatively egalitarian nature of male–female relations in Southeast Asia is central to arguments claiming a coherent identity for the region. This challenging work by senior scholar Barbara Watson Andaya considers such contradictions while offering a thought-provoking view of Southeast Asian history that focuses on women’s roles and perceptions. Andaya explores the broad themes of the early modern era (1500–1800)—the introduction of new religions, major economic shifts, changing patterns of state control, the impact of elite lifestyles and behaviors—drawing on an extraordinary range of sources and citing numerous examples from Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Philippine, and Malay societies. In the process, she provides a timely and innovative model for putting women back into world history Andaya approaches the problematic issue of "Southeast Asia" by considering ways in which topography helped describe a geo-cultural zone and contributed to regional distinctiveness in gender construction. She examines the degree to which world religions have been instrumental in (re)constructing conceptions of gender— an issue especially pertinent to Southeast Asian societies because of the leading role so often played by women in indigenous ritual. She also considers the effects of the expansion of long-distance trade, the incorporation of the region into a global trading network, the beginnings of cash-cropping and wage labor, and the increase in slavery on the position of women. Erudite, nuanced, and accessible, The Flaming Womb makes a major contribution to a Southeast Asia history that is both regional and global in content and perspective.

The Wandering Womb

The Wandering Womb PDF Author: Lana Thompson
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615925430
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
A provocative tour through religious, medical, and social history, "The Wandering Womb" pinpoints the humorous, outrageous, and hair-raising beliefs, practices, and longstanding falsehoods about women which have permeated human culture. Illustrations.

Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health

Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309132975
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
It's obvious why only men develop prostate cancer and why only women get ovarian cancer. But it is not obvious why women are more likely to recover language ability after a stroke than men or why women are more apt to develop autoimmune diseases such as lupus. Sex differences in health throughout the lifespan have been documented. Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health begins to snap the pieces of the puzzle into place so that this knowledge can be used to improve health for both sexes. From behavior and cognition to metabolism and response to chemicals and infectious organisms, this book explores the health impact of sex (being male or female, according to reproductive organs and chromosomes) and gender (one's sense of self as male or female in society). Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health discusses basic biochemical differences in the cells of males and females and health variability between the sexes from conception throughout life. The book identifies key research needs and opportunities and addresses barriers to research. Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health will be important to health policy makers, basic, applied, and clinical researchers, educators, providers, and journalists-while being very accessible to interested lay readers.

Wombs and Alien Spirits

Wombs and Alien Spirits PDF Author: Janice Boddy
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299123138
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Based on nearly two years of ethnographic fieldwork in a Muslim village in northern Sudan, Wombs and Alien Spirits explores the zâr cult, the most widely practiced traditional healing cult in Africa. Adherents of the cult are usually women with marital or fertility problems, who are possessed by spirits very different from their own proscribed roles as mothers. Through the woman, the spirit makes demands upon her husband and family and makes provocative comments on village issues, such as the increasing influence of formal Islam or encroaching Western economic domination. In accommodating the spirits, the women are able metaphorically to reformulate everyday discourse to portray consciousness of their own subordination. Janice Boddy examines the moral universe of the village, discussing female circumcision, personhood, kinship, and bodily integrity, then describes the workings of the cult and the effect of possession on the lives of men as well as women. She suggests that spirit possession is a feminist discourse, though a veiled and allegorical one, on women's objectification and subordination. Additionally, the spirit world acts as a foil for village life in the context of rapid historical change and as such provides a focus for cultural resistance that is particularly, though not exclusively, relevant to women.

Jesus in Our Wombs

Jesus in Our Wombs PDF Author: Rebecca J. Lester
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520938205
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
In Jesus in Our Wombs, Rebecca J. Lester takes us behind the walls of a Roman Catholic convent in central Mexico to explore the lives, training, and experiences of a group of postulants--young women in the first stage of religious training as nuns. Lester, who conducted eighteen months of fieldwork in the convent, provides a rich ethnography of these young women's journeys as they wrestle with doubts, fears, ambitions, and setbacks in their struggle to follow what they believe to be the will of God. Gracefully written, finely textured, and theoretically rigorous, this book considers how these aspiring nuns learn to experience God by cultivating an altered experience of their own female bodies, a transformation they view as a political stance against modernity. Lester explains that the Postulants work toward what they see as an "authentic" femininity--one that has been eclipsed by the values of modern society. The outcome of this process has political as well as personal consequences. The Sisters learn to understand their very intimate experiences of "the Call"--and their choices in answering it--as politically relevant declarations of self. Readers become intimately acquainted with the personalities, family backgrounds, friendships, and aspirations of the Postulants as Lester relates the practices and experiences of their daily lives. Combining compassionate, engaged ethnography with an incisive and provocative theoretical analysis of embodied selves, Jesus in Our Wombs delivers a profound analysis of what Lester calls the convent's "technology of embodiment" on multiple levels--from the phenomenological to the political.

Policing the Womb

Policing the Womb PDF Author: Michele Goodwin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110703017X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
In Policing the Womb, Michele Goodwin explores how states abuse laws and infringe on rights to police women and their pregnancies. This book looks at the impact of these often arbitrary laws which can result in the punishment, incarceration, and humiliation of women, particularly poor women and women of color. Frequently based on unscientific claims of endangering a fetus, these laws allow extraordinary powers to state authorities over reproductive freedom and pregnancies. In this book, Michele Goodwin discusses real examples of women whose pregnancies have been controlled by the law and what has led to the United States being the deadliest country in the developed world for a woman to be pregnant.