- Dr. Jen Gunter explains some of the reasons why women who do it at home die even when abortion is free and legal.
- Virginia Sole-Smith wrote a frank and touching post about endometrial cysts, and why it’s important to talk about these things.
- Margaret Cho longs for the days when feminist consciousness raising included menstrual extraction.
- A brief guide for parents to helping adolescent daughters make decisions about and get started with tampon use.
- For the benefit of Gentile readers everywhere, Chaya explains in xoJane what women’s media should know about about Hasidic women. Of special interest to re:Cycling readers, is Chaya’s perspective that “mikveh is awesome”.
- Our own Chris Bobel published a smart response to Time magazine’s recent efforts to fan the flames of the so-called mommy wars: Why it’s easier to be a good daddy than a good mommy.
When you hear the word “impure,” it has a totally different meaning than the meaning it has in the context of Torah. In Torah, you’re dealing with states of being that are related to the service in the Beis HaMikdash (the Great Temple). It’s called “ritual purity” and “ritual impurity.” These states of being have nothing to do with being dirty or clean. . . .
Incidentally, Orthodox Jewish women have one of the lowest rates of cervical and other reproductive cancers because of…wait for it…these customs.
I read Margaret Cho’s post about menstrual extraction. It reminded me that The Birth Control Handbook published by the Montreal Women’s Press in the 70s included information on how to do menstrual extraction. It nearly lost the Calgary Birth Control Association, who used it as a resource, their funding from the city’s social services department because of it’s association with do-it-yourself abortion. Montreal Womens Press is now defunct, but I found a copy of the 1971 version, the first thing I picked up on the University of Alberta campus as a freshman in September 1971, selling on Ebay for $20. https://bit.ly/JWYuKm I posted the link on Cho’s site. Maybe she’ll buy it! I’ve got a copy hidden in my archives, too.
You should be aware that Chaya’s perspective on the “awesomeness” of her chosen lifestyle is not uncontroversial in the Jewish community. I direct interested readers to Deborah Feldman, a woman who left the Satmarer (also chasiddic) community: https://deborahfeldman.tumblr.com/post/23608309265/my-response-to-chayas-essay-on-xo-jane-titled
Thanks for sharing that link, Elizabeth. I certainly did not assume that Chaya’s perspective was universal, and I didn’t mean to convey that in linking to it. In the piece, it’s clear that she’s responding to Feldman.
I haven’t read Feldman’s book and was trying not to engage that debate, only to highlight the diversity of views on mikveh. But again, thanks for linking to Feldman’s Tumblr — I’m now more interested in reading her memoir.