Jessie Daniels, PhD

Graduate Center and School of Public Health-CUNY

Berkshire Conference of Women Historians - May 24, 2014

Our Blogs, Our Bodies, Ourselves:Women’s Health Activism in Digital,

Global Context

Twitter: @JessieNYC

#Berks2014 #fem2

medicine a tool of empire

“pioneer” in gyn surgery

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women’s health activism

in the digitally augmented present

One mention of “Internet.”

Zero mentions of “digital.”

websites, blogging, twitter

feminism and anti-feminism

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14

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historical precedents

argues that the Black Panther

Party’s focus on health care was

practical and ideological and that their understanding of health as a basic

human right was prescient

had a huge impact on the way women thought about their bodies – began in the US but has become global

DC Feminists Demonstrate in Congress

contemporary transnationalism

Which feminist movements become ‘transnationalized’ and by whom?

Is the control of one’s body a form of middle-class-feminism-for-export?

A movement? Or a product? Both?

“We work for free and then pass this on... (to younger women). We must create a new culture of work, a virbant, feminist economy.”

~ Vanessa Valenti & Courtney Martin, The Future of Online Feminism

“Maybe we can just be ‘weekend feminists’ with day jobs managing other websites or driving taxis, but when writing about feminist issues is what we want to do for a living, why shouldn’t we be able to?”

~ Elizabeth Daley

raises a set of questions

is women’s health activism labor?

is online feminism digital labor?

Does framing women’s health activism as labor forestall discussions of race & colonialism in feminism?

Twitter: @JessieNYC

#Berks2014 #fem2

Thank you!

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