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They're not our heroes.
  • Although it has had little echo, today I bring you a news that came to us last year from New York. A statue of the Sims gynecologist has been removed from Central Park, in response to activists' demands.  
Udane Barinagarrementeria Laka 2019ko maiatzaren 17a

Doctor Sims is known as the founder and father of modern gynecology, among other things because in 1855 he founded in New York the first hospital for women and was the creator of many instruments and methods currently used by gynecologists.

However, this father's achievements in gynecology are the result of his surgical experiments with black slave women. No authorization and approval from these women, no anesthesia. And it's not the only case.

The history of gynecology has been written about the bodies of anonymous slaves and poor women. And in addition, we carry in our bodies, in our allusions, the recognition of the names of those men that we do not dare to call them Sadi who have made vivisections, heroes of gynecology. Skenne, Fallopio, Bartolino.

“He’s not our hero” (#NotOurHero) they say from New York, and endorsing the demands of these women activists, today I bring a feminist claim to take away all the spaces of recognition in the public space of these characters. They're not our heroes. We don't want a story written with violence about the bodies of poor women. We need all these men out of our bodies and our souls.

But what's more, we have to fill our bodies with our own words and meanings. Violence also involves calling “uterus” the organ of reproduction of the uterine bodies (and only to it). The bodily experience and the self-management and autonomy of the processes, which is also called in our own words. Embody, feel and say from ourselves. For them and for them, by the proper names that, without man or law, are allowed. Let's start!

This news has been published by Klitto. We brought it to the Basque Country thanks to the CC-BY-SA licence.