Cervical Self-Exam and Fertility Awareness to Burning Man 2012!
PROMOTIONAL VIDEO:
What an inspiring and successful week at Burning Man! Here’s the report back:
Dancing….Flying…Playing…Honoring…
Dressed in various incarnations of the Super Shero costume (depending on weather), I approached women and nearby men and struck up conversations about cervices, women’s sexual anatomy, fertility awareness, self-exam, and sexuality. I had long, in-depth question and answer sessions that broached a lot of material. I gave elaborate self-exam tutorials, with laminated photo instructions and model pelvis demos. And sometimes, I just gifted the self-exam kit, like a yoni-fairy flittering by dropping empowerment seeds into the open hands of lucky women.
Gifting a self-exam kit…
The reactions to this offering ranged from polite rejection to huge hugs, awkward giggling to photo ops, excited interest to tears of gratitude. One woman even said it was her favorite thing she’d experienced at Burning Man!
I pedaled around with the cervix mobile bike trailer stocked full of kits and clipped the laminated 'Entire Cycle' book to it so folks could look through it when I was parked somewhere. I danced in costume and prayed at the temple for the health of our bodies and spirits. It felt so satisfying to share resources and knowledge! Many people commented that they were glad education was being integrated into the Fertility theme of the event.
Speculum Power!
I was surprised how many of the women answered “Yes” when I asked them if they’d seen their cervix, and I am grateful to our feminist foremothers and progressive practitioners who are getting out the mirrors during pap smears. That being said, I encountered many women who didn’t even know exactly what their cervix was or that you can’t just see it from putting a mirror between your legs.
There are a few leftover kits, which I will send to women who contact me through www.beautifulcervix.com.
I feel so grateful for your support and encouragement and I know the women who received these kits are as well. Thank you for being part of this empowerment ripple effect!
My Super Shero sidekick, Amy, and I riding in the Critical Tits Parade, where 4000 women ride topless, celebrating their bodies exactly as they are! We gave out many kits that day to women eager to get to know themselves on a deeper level.
Daily or weekly commentaries on current events or on political ideas and subjects of interest to feminists by a radical feminist activist of many years who has a different, less conformist slant on our struggle against patriarchal society than mainstream feminists.
I came into the second wave of feminism after being married and having six children. I became active in the abortion movement and the women's health movement. After our health center in Los Angeles closed in 1985, I became an attorney. Although I am working on writing a memoir and/or a history and/or a theoretical book on feminist theory, I still represent people at immigration interviews. I am fortunate to have a great family (including many grandchildren), a very compatible partner, my husband, Frank (recently deceased) and many, many feminist friends.
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