Topics covered include the history of the organization and the need for its work (including the landmark book and newer initiatives), the PRIM&R conference Judy attended while in town, Senator Kennedy, health care reform, media portrayals of health reform proposals, the Stupak amendment, abortion, age discrimination, social justice and diversity, among others.

The show is archived online at http://tinyurl.com/yhadu9s (you may need to download RealPlayer to listen). Judy’s segment starts at about 1:32 of the 2-hour episode. No transcript is available, but you can get some quick text notes on the segment via Liberadio(!)’s Twitter updates from this morning.

Thanks to Liberadio(!), and to everyone who came out to the OBOS house party last night!

Jordan established the field of economic justice in legal theory, and she is well known for her work in financial services and civil rights. Her most recent book is “Economic Justice: Race, Gender, Identity and Economics.”

Jordan also knows something about Supreme Court confirmations — she was counsel to Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

Two widely discussed issues have been Sotomayor’s views on a woman’s constitutional right to abortion and her comments on ethnicity and gender. In her 17 years as a federal judge, Sotomayor has had limited experience dealing directly with abortion-rights cases, and Jordan said there’s “nothing decisive” to be gleaned from her decisions.

Referring to the oft-repeated line, made during a speech delivered at University of California Berkeley School of Law in 2001, that has become the rallying cry of some Republicans opposed to Sotomayor’s nomination — “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life” — Jordan said, “If you read the full transcript of her comment you will see that she was only offering an insight into her unique contribution and the wisdom that comes from her unique experiences.”

We’ll see if Republicans can appreciate context — because it’s truly an eloquent speech on the complexities and responsibility of identity and experiences. (Update: Obama is now saying he’s “sure [Sotomayor] would have restated it,” but he goes on to defend the speech and concludes in his remarks to NBC’s Brian Williams, “I think all this nonsense that is being spewed out will be revealed for what it is.”)

Here’s the rest of our interview with Jordan:

Our Bodies Ourselves: How does the selection of Judge Sotomayor fit with what we’ve heard President Obama say about a Supreme Court justice needing empathy as well as experience?

Emma Coleman Jordan: Judge Sotomayor represents the president’s commitment to excellence, above everything else. The nomination is consistent with what we have seen of his judgment in selecting the members of his cabinet. A Nobel laureate for energy secretary, who is also an Asian American; a Wellesley class president, former First Lady and presidential primary rival for Secretary of State, who happens to be a woman.

OBOS: Is this appointment a representation of Obama’s liberal principles or more a part of his pragmatic strategy?

ECJ: Remember that we are only four days into this nomination. With that caveat in mind, I would say that this represents the Obama brand of pragmatic progressivism. Remember that our biggest influence on the direction of the Supreme Court is our vote for president. In addition, when a president chooses a nominee he is engaged in art, not science.

OBOS: What might Sotomayor’s working class background bring to an understanding of economic justice and legal theory?

ECJ: She has spoken of feeling like an “alien” at Princeton. She indicated that she did not raise her hand, or utter a single word in class during her freshman year there. She later won the highest general prize for academic excellence for an undergraduate, graduating summa cum laude. She has referred to passing drug dealers in the stairwells of her apartment complex in the Bronx.

These transitional experiences would be powerfully formative to help her penetrate the complex and difficult constitutional, regulatory and economic puzzles that the Court must confront.

Each justice adds something unique to the mix of experience available among the nine justices.  For example, Justice Samuel Alito, also a Princeton graduate, told the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing that his father experienced discrimination against Italian Americans: “[a]fter he graduated from college, in 1935 in the midst of the Depression, he found that teaching jobs for Italian-Americans were not easy to come by, and he had to find other work for a while.”

All of these experiences give us human beings, talented Americans, who reflect the range of experience in America. Together, they provide the wide spectrum of experiences this nation needs for thoughtful judging of the hard cases.

OBOS: While a female candidate was expected this time around, real progress will be made when a third woman joins the Supreme Court. What are the chances Obama will nominate another woman if a second vacancy arises during his administration?

ECJ: I wouldn’t venture a guess on that, except to note that he is the only male resident of the White House, and he appears to be very comfortable surrounded by smart, confident women in his own family.

OBOS: President George H.W. Bush appointed Sotomayor to the federal bench. Will that have any neutralizing effect on Republican opposition? What will Republicans who want to derail the nomination focus on in their criticisms?

ECJ: The earlier Bush appointment to the district court helps defuse the unfair, partisan attacks.

OBOS: Obama’s announcement, which focused on Sotomayor’s personal story, echoed another “only in America” narrative. Sotomayor’s qualifications are evident, and we’ve heard how much she impressed Obama during her interview. Does dwelling on her personal story give her opponents an open door to challenge the selection and use her opinions to show she’s an “activist” judge who will champion the rights of minorities? Or does it help to build public support for a nominee whose life story is relatable?

ECJ: The personal story introduction is a standard Supreme Court nomination framework.  Every justice now sitting was introduced that way. The personal biography helps to humanize some of our most brilliant jurists and to make it possible for ordinary Americans to relate to these extraordinary Americans.

The lines of attack now being launched were formulated long before her name was made public.  These are standard opposition strategies that have long been used against any democratic judicial nominees, even for lower federal courts.

OBOS: You represented Anita Hill during her questioning before a then all-male Senate Judiciary Committee. What has the Senate and America learned from that uncomfortable experience — in a positive or negative way — and how did it later influence the treatment of women before the committee?

ECJ: Anita Hill’s testimony changed the nation’s understanding of the demeaning effect of sexual harassment and inappropriate sexual innuendo in the workplace. One lasting legacy of those hearings is that we have never again had an all male Senate Judiciary Committee. Since Judge Sotomayor is only the third woman nominated to the Supreme Court, she will be the first to face a committee with both male and female senators.

Our Bodies, Our Blog: Can you tell me a bit about what is covered in the book, in addition to the menstrual activism history covered in your recent article?

Chris Bobel: The book is written for an undergrad/general public audience with lots of lively examples of the very cool activism I encountered — and pictures, too. In short, the book is at once a history and sociological study of menstrual activism using this little-known activism to track changes in feminist thinking and doing over time. There’s a lot of debate right now about the future of feminism: Is the movement dead? Is there something new going on? Is it really new or just recycled?

The newest iteration of feminism (in the West) is called third wave and I wanted to find a concrete way to tease out what third wave is and how it both reflects the past of feminism and takes off in new directions. We talk about feminism in the abstract a lot and we lose people. I wanted to show what third wave feminism looks like on the ground.

And menstrual activism really fascinates me because it, on the surface at least, is populated by mostly white women (and some men) and many of the activists identify as LGBT and/or queer. I grew very curious about this demographic. I think the taboo nature of the topic presents both barriers and opportunities to people depending on their social location.

Women of color are doing menstrual health activism, but often in different forms and often within their own communities. Realities, past and present, of racism and ethnocentrism factor mightily into how activism gets done, the language used, strategies chosen and the linkages made between issues. Thus, we really should speak of menstrual activisms.

Many of the queer-identified activists told me they were already out there (yes, in more ways than one) doing risky, envelope-pushing work and menstrual activism was a natural next step for them. Their interest in challenging basic assumptions — right on down to the care and feeding of our bodies — led them to the politics of menstruation.

Here’s the summary: The book is an interdisciplinary, multi-method interrogation of a little known, but persistent presence in the feminist health, environmental and consumer rights movements. Menstrual activists resist the medicalized and commodified body when they question the safety and necessity of femcare innovations, the pathologizing and shaming of the natural menstrual experience, and most recently, menstrual suppression. See Seasonique, Lybrel, etc.

Study of menstrual activism, from the late 1960s to the present, offers insight into the changing and enduring nature of feminist thought and action, in particular the tensions felt between so-called second- and third-wave feminists and the implications of sharp ideological differences in feminist practice.

For example, while the feminist spiritualist wing of the movement resists the dominant cultural narrative of menstruation through an embrace of embodiment as a source of women-centered pride, the radical menstruation wing of the movement rejects this approach. In fact, many of the radical menstruation activists detach menstruation from the gendered body and refuse to speak of menstruation as a uniquely women’s experience. They, for instance, reach out to transmen and intersexed people who menstruate and acknowledge that not all women menstruate; they refer to “menstruaters” who menstruate, not “women” who menstruate.

They work to undo gender in a moment in feminist history where the feminist agenda of exploding gender categories is widely accepted in the abstract. But, I ask, what does this ideological position look like when we actually do feminist activism? How can we talk about menstrual taboos, for example, without talking about women as women — even with all the differences within and among women? At the same time, how can we not afford to incorporate a questioning of fundamental categories as we develop feminist agendas for the 21st century?

OBOB: Have you had any difficulties finding a publisher home for this work — or a publisher willing to do the appropriate promotion of the work — because of the topic?

CB: I did have some trouble. Some presses thought the topic was too narrow (read: weird, or maybe trivial). I also have had colleagues, over the years, suggest that an entire book on this topic was a stretch. Even among feminists, menstruation is not a central concern. Obviously, the cultural brainwashing runs deep and wide. One very respected colleague told me I should “write that little book and get on with it.” She didn’t think there was enough to say about menstruation.

On the contrary, I think I could fill volumes. There is a very rich and growing literature on menstruation, but it is not widely known. These attitudes are a shame, really, because menstruation is experienced by more than half of the human population, over a period of decades, and the amount of misinformation that circulates about this natural body process is stunning. There are lots of other reasons to engage menstruation as a serious scholarly and political concern. That’s just a beginning.

OBOB: What do you think are important areas of focus or goals for today’s menstrual activists? Is menstrual activism less necessary today, or do you see important areas of needed change?

CB: Absolutely as necessary today — perhaps more. While products are safer (the dioxin risk is much much less; the polyester in tampons is gone), awareness about existing risks associated with conventional products and alternatives available is still virtually nonexistent across the general public.

When I teach this information or give a lecture, people are shocked that they had no idea that there were any risks at all with pads and tampons. They hadn’t considered the environmental impact of single use products. They surely never heard of the keeper, the Diva cup, menstrual sponges or reusable cloth pads as alternatives. In short, they hadn’t looked at menstruation through a feminist, anti-capitalist lens and when they do, wow!

Then there’s the companion issue of menstrual shame, silence and taboo. It is still unacceptable to talk openly about menstruation, to make visible one’s menstruation. We are usually limited to homicidal PMS women jokes, or menstruation horror stories of the kind that teen magazines publish, and we socialize girls to expect to hate their periods, even before they have them.

Here’s an example very close to home: When I asked my daughter, then about 12 years old and not yet menstruating, what she expected menstruation would be like, she replied, without hesitation, “It will suck.” I asked why and she replied, “Cause everyone says it does.” Mind you, hardly any of her friends had started to menstruate at this point, and she is the daughter of someone who has a library about menstruation and talks openly about periods, including the possibility that they aren’t all bad.

I, for one, appreciate the cycle my body goes through and find when I work with it, instead of against it, I can learn a lot about myself. But my daughter had already internalized the notion that periods necessarily suck. It is true — they can suck and often do and hers might, but she didn’t even have a chance to develop her own impression of her own periods, to even imagine an alternative.

Finally, now that menstrual suppression — or, more accurately, cycle-stopping contraception — is widely available, we need more than ever to have very honest and well-informed conversations about menstruation and, more broadly, how our bodies work; that is, to develop what’s increasingly called “body literacy.” And this, as you know, is precisely what OBOS has been trying to make happen since the 1970s.

Many experts, including members of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research, are not convinced of the long-term safety of the continuous use of contraception merely for the purposes of avoiding menstruation in otherwise healthy women. See this statement which I helped to draft and I stand behind: http://menstruationresearch.org/position/menstrual-suppression-new-2007

The prohibition against talking about menstruation — shh … that’s dirty; that’s gross; pretend it’s not going on; just clean it up — breeds a climate where corporations, like femcare companies and pharmaceutical companies, like the makers of Lybrel and Seasonique, can develop and market products of questionable safety. They can conveniently exploit women’s body shame and self-hatred. And we see this, by the way, when it comes to birthing, breastfeeding, birth control and health care in general. The medical industrial complex depends on our ignorance and discomfort with our bodies, after all.

Who is going to call the companies and health care providers to account if we can’t talk openly about leaky, messy, authentic bodies? Who is going to say, hey, wait a minute, maybe the problem isn’t simply that menstruation makes our lives miserable, maybe the complex interplay of sexism and capitalism and hyper-consumption are at the root.

Maybe we don’t necessarily need more drugs and more high-tech products that produce tremendous waste, but we do need a culture that makes it safe to talk openly about our bodies, a culture that values and provides comprehensive reproductive health education that is more than a long commercial for Tampax. Menstrual activists are doing this work, but they need us all to join them.

Lisa Jervis, the founding editor and publisher of Bitch magazine, and Brad Perry, sexual violence prevention coordinator at the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance, take on popular perceptions of rape and what needs to be done to transform regressive attitudes toward sexual violence — in both the media and among young men.

In “An Old Enemy in a New Outfit: How Date Rape Became Gray Rape and Why it Matters,” Jervis deconstructs the latest blame-the-victim terminology. Perry’s essay, “Hooking Up With Healthy Sexuality: The Lessons Boys Learn (and Don’t Learn) About Sexuality, and Why a Sex-Positive Rape Prevention Program Can Benefit Everyone Involved,” revisits advice Perry received as a teenager and the more enlightened strategies he has encountered in his work.

Ultimately, they grapple with how to create an atmosphere for a healthy and empowering sexual experience for both women and men.

Please add your thoughts on the discussion, or your questions for Lisa or Brad, in the comments. And don’t miss the next stop on the “Yes Means Yes” virtual book tour: a live chat on Feb. 9 at Shakesville with co-editor Jaclyn Friedman.

Our Bodies, Our Blog: What is the allure of so-called “gray rape” for anti-feminists? How does it help serve a conservative agenda?

Lisa Jervis: The construct of gray rape does two things: it minimizes rape, seeks to make it seem like less of a big deal — if it was a “gray area,” can it really be that bad? — and it also justifies victim-blaming and its close friend, slut-shaming. This actually serves anti-feminists in two really different ways, though they’re both pretty much classics of sexism and misogyny.

The minimizing encourages an attitude of, “What are all those angry women complaining about now?”; and almost every feminist issue has been minimized at some point over the history of the struggle for gender equality.

The victim-blaming part is even more disturbing, as it updates and revitalizes one of the biggest obstacles to transforming rape culture. And it’s particularly insidious because of how it cultivates self-doubt and self-blame even more than previous victim-blaming discourses have. And, especially when paired with slut-shaming — which makes women and girls feel bad about the existence of a strong sex drive and any entitlement they might feel to (gasp!) satisfy their desires — it serves as an attempt to keep a tight cultural lid on women’s sexuality. It’s an updated and vastly more complex version of “good girls don’t.”

OBOB: Brad, how has the notion of “gray rape” complicated your teachings?

Brad Perry: In my experience, the attitude about acquaintance rape (which is what the term “gray rape” is usually referring to) amongst most policy makers, many students, and a good chunk of the general public has not changed drastically since it first entered the public’s awareness 20 years ago. There has been some progress in getting people to understand that usurping another person’s sexual autonomy is rape under any circumstances, but old mindsets die hard.

In that context, the gray rape thing just seems like more of the same but with a new name — as Lisa eloquently discusses in her essay. The only way my work has been complicated by the notion of “gray rape” is that now people have a convenient label. I don’t think it’s necessarily changed many people’s minds on whether or not to take acquaintance rape seriously — the people who are going to deny it are usually going to find a reason to do so until something happens to change their mind — but it has given those folks some hip new contemporary language to dismiss acquaintance rape.

We’re a country found by patriarchal religious fanatics who were (among other things) obsessed with denying human sexuality, so it’s not at all surprising to me that we keep revisiting the issue of social control over women’s sexualities. That’s not too say I think we should throw our hands up and say, “Oh, well” — in order to remember how much history we have to overcome so that we don’t lose our minds trying to make progress.

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When you’re steeped in messages about looking hot at the expense of (or as a substitute for) feeling aroused or having sexual desire, it becomes all the easier for you to question your own judgment about what happened to you and believe the cultural forces telling you that your assault was just miscommunication and bad sex.
– Lisa Jervis in “Yes Means Yes”
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OBOB: We seem to be making gains in educating young women that date rape is indeed rape, but there remains a backlash in the broader media discourse. How do activists intervene in larger, public spaces?

LJ: That’s a hard one. I wish I had some brilliant answers. I think we have to just keep repeating our message, in a variety of ways and in a variety of settings: calling out the bullshit in the backlash, promoting education around healthy sexuality and exposing how rape culture operates. But I actually think that the smaller, private spaces may be more important. As Brad’s work shows, we need to educate boys and men about rape in the way we’ve educated women.

The percentage of guys who want to be rapists is infinitesimally small, and a lot of the ones who do end up committing assault are confused and hurt by it — and if they had different cultural training, they wouldn’t have done it.

It comes back to one of the ideas at the core of “Yes Means Yes”: that a true embrace of enthusiastic participation as the baseline of consent would prevent an entire category of rapes. And the way to get there is probably more through interpersonal interactions than other activities more traditionally understood as activism.

BP: I agree with Lisa that repeatedly calling out the bullshit is important. A good technique to use is to get the backlashers to at least admit that unwanted sex is a very hurtful thing — even if they refuse to call it “rape” or “sexual assault.” That can cut right through the semantic hemming and hawing. Responding to the backlash — as well as proactively getting our messages out there — across multiple levels of our social environment is also crucial.

OBOB: Lisa, what do you think are some positive images in popular culture that encourage women to be sexual for themselves?

LJ: This is a little hard for me to admit, since so much of my career has been spent as a pop culture critic, but I don’t watch a lot of TV or go to a lot of movies these days. I’ve had to unplug from my intense consumption of mass media in order to preserve my sanity and, frankly, free up my time for other things. So I don’t have any specific examples I can cite.

But I do see a few cultural trends, however gradual, that bring me hope: The first is the proliferation of feminist- and woman-run sex toy shops. When Good Vibrations was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area 30 years ago, they were unique. But slowly over the last three decades — and, it seems, more quickly over the last five years or so — such spaces have proliferated. Toys in Babeland, the Tool Shed, the Smitten Kitten, Early to Bed — I could go on (check out the thread at Feministing for a look at how geographically widespread these shops are becoming).

I also think the proliferation of erotica aimed at women, and the fact that the selection has generally become a lot more broad — the expectation that women want to read about soft-focus, romantic scenarios is slowly wearing away — is a heartening sign.

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… I propose playing matchmaker with two disciplines that have always seemed to be like ships passing in the night: sexual health promotion and sexual violence prevention. They’re the perfect couple — philosophically complementary, yet with their own things going on. Whether they’re engaged in stimulating research comparisons over dinner, flirting about the REAL Act on a walk through the park, or making sweet, back-arching, toe curling collaboration at home with the lights on, our society can only benefit.
– Brad Perry in “Yes Means Yes”

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OBOB: Brad, are there images that encourage men to see women as collaborative partners in a healthy sexual experience?

BP: Hmmmm … this is a tough one because mainstream media imagery does not usually graphically depict sexual expression, lest they be fined by the FCC and/or spark a shit-storm of outrage from concerned citizens and the like. So we’re left with either hints (the man is generally a nice guy, and we assume the sexual encounter we only see the beginning of was consensual and/or good), or the apparently equally acceptable option of making the interaction violent (which is usually shown in more detail, albeit in a LifetimeTV/”SVU”-esque sensationalized manner).

What this means is that in the mainstream media we are never able to see what a collaborative sexual encounter would actually look like. And when I talk to groups of young men about navigating a hook-up culture, it’s precisely that how-to piece that they want to know. We’re all raised to see sex as this mysterious thing that just happens. And boys are also told that they’re supposed to just know what to do without anyone ever going into detail about anything beyond why they should make sure they “call the shots.”

So they look where ever they can to get a clue. The mainstream media is one of those places, and all they’re getting there are the same old boring and dangerous “dominate her” messages, episodes of sexual violence, and a collection of vague hints for any potentially healthy options.

This is one area where I have seen some improvement though, in that at least when we’re shown the lead-up to a sexual encounter it seems more collaborative than it used to be. It used to always be either flat-out coercion or a “sweep her off her feet” vibe, so it’s not like the bar was set all that high to begin with, but at least it seems headed in the right direction.

OBOB: Brad, you discuss institutional obstacles — government-funded abstinence-only programs, the lack of sex education classes — to teaching healthy sexuality. What are some of the obstacles you encounter with boys themselves? In other words, how do you get boys to see “the game” as a game, and a damaging one at that?

BP: I haven’t actually worked directly with groups of young men in a few years, so I can only answer based on what I’ve been hearing from my colleagues who are doing that work on a day-to-day basis. There are a lot of techniques used by rape prevention specialists when working with groups of young men, but perhaps the most common one is to get them talking about what it means to be man. Pretty soon they’ll start to see how rigid gender roles can be, how they’re enforced, and how their lives are limited as a result.

Eventually, you can get to the topic of how this all relates to sexuality (assuming the school or youth institution in which you’re working allows you to even talk about sex). When that happens, you’ll find — after a few days or so of savvy facilitation — that most young men don’t want to be the ones always pursuing, always calling the shots.

Once you get them to realize/admit that, then the door is open for a deeper conversation about how to flirt and engage people to whom they’re attracted outside of the bullshit of “the game.” Such conversations can explode “the game.” But you need that institutional support to make any of this happen — the support of legislation, funding, the local setting in which you’re doing the work, the parents — across the spectrum of their social environments.

Otherwise, you might not have enough time to have these conversations, or even if you do, they might come undone in the face of resistance from other influential forces in the lives of the young men. Public health folks call this working at multiple levels of the social ecology.

OBOB: Lisa, in your essay you mention several examples of books and articles that have bombarded girls and women with damaging messages about sexuality and rape. Besides “Yes Means Yes,” what other books or resources would you recommend to combat those messages?

LJ: This is another really hard one. As with the earlier question about images, I have more general than specific recommendations. Since what’s damaging about these messages is often that they contradict or are divorced from women’s actual experiences, I think reading first-person accounts and talking to other people is one of the best antidotes. So zines, blogs, and message boards discussing rape and assault are key.

Also, for teenagers and older preteens of all genders, the absolute best place for nonjudgmental, affirming sex information is Scarleteen.com. Founder Heather Corinna’s book “S.E.X.” is also brilliant and focuses a lot on figuring out what you want and learning to communicate about it with others.

OBOB: Brad’s essay opens with him at age 13, getting advice about sex from a friend’s older brother. The instructions can be summed up as: give girls beer, make a move, and if you’re lucky you’ll “get some.” This introduction to sex is commonly passed down by siblings, friends and throughout popular culture. A question for both of you: What would an equally compelling counter-narrative look like? How would it compete with the swagger?

LJ: The simplest counter-narrative is that good sex can’t happen if it’s not 100 percent mutual and wanted by everyone involved. That if you tell someone you’re into them, find out if they’re into you, and go from there, everyone will have a much better time. Of course that’s a tough sell for any 13-year-old — communication is hard even for the most mature adults among us, and asking for what you want makes you vulnerable. But without it, any sexual experience will ultimately be unsatisfying.

BP: Focusing on the pleasure to be had in mutual and enthusiastic sexual encounters — based on informed and consensual decisions — is a start. Mind-blowing sexual experiences and the tenets of healthy sexuality go hand-in-hand. Mind-blowing sexual experiences and “the game” typically don’t.

Of course, what constitutes “mind-blowing sex” is subjective, but I think that the freedom and knowledge inherent in a healthy sexuality paradigm is more likely to yield satisfaction consistently. On a very practical level, we need to find ways to “cool” and mainstream these concepts in the same way that the swagger and boys-will-be-boys have been.

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Use this link to order “Yes Means Yes” today and a percentage of the sale will automatically go to Our Bodies, Ourselves.

But as Jen Dozer, a freelance writer and registered nurse, writes in this article published at Our Bodies Ourselves, a woman who has experienced infertility or a pregnancy loss may find it difficult to push aside feelings of worry and concern.

“The long-desired pregnancy may not be the joyous experience she has dreamed about,” writes Dozer. “The experience of infertility brings its own baggage to a pregnancy: grief for previous losses; anxiety; and fear that her body, unable to conceive on its own, may not be able to carry a pregnancy.”

In addition to discussing the emotional effects of infertility that a woman may experience once pregnant, Dozer lists a number of useful ways to “ameliorate the doom and gloom expectations that years of repeated failures have led you to expect.” Links to related resources are also provided.

Dozer writes from experience. She went through almost two years of infertility before giving birth to a boy on Mother’s Day 2008 and blogs about infertility, motherhood and health care at MrsSpock.blogspot.com. She recently spoke with OBOB.

Our Bodies Our Blog: What was your experience with infertility?

Jen Dozer: It took almost two years to conceive our son. I had never had any sign that there could be anything wrong with me reproductively. After 12 months of unsuccessful attempts, my husband and I underwent testing. Other than my progesterone being slightly low, and a mildly misshapen (arcuate) uterus that should not interfere with conception, all the tests were normal. Our official diagnosis was unexplained infertility.

According to our doctor, we had a 3-to-4 percent chance of conceiving on our own. We underwent several cycles of me taking Clomid to stimulate my ovaries to release eggs, and one cycle of Clomid combined with intrauterine insemination. I was set to begin injecting myself with stronger medication when I became pregnant spontaneously. Our doctor could offer no explanation other than the previous medicated cycles may have “jump-started” things. A non-answer, really.

Most infertility patients are able to conceive with relatively low-tech means. In the future, for us, there are no guarantees about how easy or how difficult it might be to have a second child. There is always the possibility that we may need IVF to conceive, or we may never have a successful pregnancy again. There is a lot of uncertainty.

OBOB: In the OBOS article you wrote: “If a pregnancy finally does occur, it can be difficult for a woman who has experienced infertility to view herself as just another pregnant woman.” What was your pregnancy like, and how did you cope with your fears or concerns?

JD: There was definitely a higher level of anxiety, and I have never even had a loss. I can’t imagine the anxiety level I would feel after a stillbirth, or six miscarriages, or seven years of infertility instead of 20 months. I approached my ultrasounds and the heartbeat searches with the Doppler with trepidation: Was my baby still alive? I don’t think that is going through the average woman’s head. Disaster could be around any corner.

I think I called the office nurse in a panic twice a month. My OB was kind and bumped me to appointments every two weeks by the time I was 20 weeks. I needed the extra reassurance. I was successful in not caving in to renting a Doppler to listen to my son’s heartbeat. I really wanted to have faith in my body. It can be almost an impossible task when your body has shown month after month concrete proof of its dysfunction. How could I be sure that it could get the pregnancy and birth part right, too? Those were uncharted waters. After all, there had been no indication that my body would have problems with conception.

To try and cope with the ramped-up anxiety, I chose a provider — an OB who worked with two midwives — who was known for trusting women’s bodies, yet at the same time sensitive to my background of infertility. It’s easy to say, “Get over it,” or, “Trust birth,” but those statements just invalidate the very real experience of having a body that doesn’t function properly.

What I loved about my providers was that no one ever said anything like that to me. They took the stance of “innocent until proven guilty” when it came to my body, yet still were willing to provide extra support in the form of more appointments, and taking the time to address my anxieties and reassure me that my baby was fine. In the end, when there really was a problem with my son, they took it seriously. Perhaps I wasn’t “supposed” to worry or fret over my body’s ability to carry a pregnancy, but, despite my best efforts, I did. The head can only strong-arm the heart so much.

I also did a lot of reading good birth stories. My copy of “Spiritual Midwifery” and “Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth” were well-thumbed. I avoided watching birth shows on TV. They tend to show pregnancies as complicated and births as emergencies, and I had enough fear rolling through my head already. I tried to avoid Googling my symptoms. Dr. Google is notoriously full of misinformation.

I had some small experience as an OB nurse, and I found calling and asking the OB nurse to be more helpful and less likely to send me into a panic. Last, I took a hypnobirthing class. I used my relaxation techniques every night. I admit, this class would probably not be a good match for the average infertility patient, who would likely feel they had nothing in common with their classmates. In our circles, it seems like hubris to desire more from a birth than a living child.

OBOB: How well does the media cover infertility?

JD: Just like with birth stories, drama sells. Although I do know some women who have endured multiple losses, more than 10 IVFs, and over-stimulated ovaries that landed them in the hospital and whatnot, they do not represent the majority of infertile women. Really bad things do happen sometimes — the same with birth. My birth story was not the ideal. It’s not typical for a nuchal cord to almost kill a child. If that’s what you see on TV most of the time, that’s what you’re going to think birth is — fraught with danger.

Most of the time, we resolve our infertility with more low-tech means. We take oral medication or do some inseminations. We take some heparin throughout pregnancy to avoid miscarriage from clotting issues. We have a child after a normal pregnancy. We go for adoption.

IVF, in real life, is the last resort. IVF, however, is more interesting than me popping some Metformin to control PCOS. No one wants to hear about your stomach cramps after using Metformin. Find a surrogate in India, carrying triplets conceived with eggs donated from your sister, all after you’ve already done 7 IVFs yourself, and you have ratings gold. No wonder the public thinks treatments are “out there.”

OBOB: You wrote a wonderful post at your blog about women feeling judged by their childbirth choices, and you include eight smart and practical “wishes” concerning medical care and attitudes toward women. Does your experience as a nurse make it more difficult for you to accept absolutes about what’s “best” for women?

JD: Yes, I would say so. When you’re out on the floor, you can see that although a disease state or body process usually tends to go one way, and the research shows it to be true as well, there will always be outliers. Human beings are so complex. No good practitioner, no matter what model of care they are using, can be said to be doing their job well if they don’t view their patient as a whole. That big picture may very well show you that what is best practice for most women may not be best practice for one particular woman.

For example, best practice shows that a vaginal delivery has better outcomes for both mom and baby. What if mom has a bicornate uterus and the baby does not have sufficient room to turn and get into an optimal position to make it through the birth canal? A good practitioner will be able to expect the best but plan for the worst.

Infertility and loss can change the landscape so much when it comes to pregnancy and birth. I hear over and again that a living child is the number one goal. Ensuring their safety at the expense of ourselves is not uncommon.

OBOB: How long have you been writing Mrs. Spock? What are the most frequently asked questions or concerns that you hear from readers?

JD: I will have been writing Mrs. Spock two years this February. In the ALI blogosphere [adoption/loss/infertility], it’s like a big kaffeeklatsch of women reading and supporting each other. Infertility blogs become adoption blogs, or pregnancy blogs, or life-after-infertility blogs. Sometimes life will throw an extra monkey wrench, and they will become infant loss blogs or cancer blogs. We share our treatments, our successes and failures, our dreams, our family life, and above all, our hopes to share our lives with children.

My blog usually addresses what is going on in our life now. A lot of my regular readers have had a child in the past year as well, and we are all muddling through this new experience of motherhood together.

OBOB: What resources do you recommend for women dealing with infertility?

JD: If they are in the beginning, and have tried to become pregnant and been unsuccessful, I would suggest ignoring the advice of friends and relatives, who mean well, but tend to be misinformed, and seek the consultation of a reproductive endocrinologist. For those women in the throes of it, and who are keeping their infertility a deep, dark, dirty secret, I say, seek support.

I have been very open about our struggles from day one, and was shocked to have no less than four good friends, people I knew well, secretly come out of the closet to me. It’s a shame that women can feel so judged by their own family and friends for seeking answers to their reproductive challenges that they hide the truth.

I think there is nothing shameful in cancer treatments having left you sterile, or endometriosis scarring your tubes, or your ovaries having difficulty releasing an egg, or in your blood clotting too easily and causing miscarriage, or in your partner’s sperm count being quite low. It’s not like you’ve purposely done that to yourself. I think if more couples are brave enough to tell the truth, the level of judgment due to misinformation will decrease.

People seem to have awfully strong opinions about something they know very little about. The internet, I find, is a great place to connect with other women who are undergoing the same kinds of things, and in a more anonymous atmosphere for those who are afraid of revealing their secret to those who know them.