Summary
Organization name
Our Bodies Ourselves
other names
OBOS
Categories
Education , Health , Community
Address
Our Bodies Ourselves, Suffolk University 8 Ashburton PlaceBoston, MA 02108
Our Bodies Ourselves is a world-class online platform that provides up-to-date, trustworthy, and inclusive information about the health and sexuality of women, girls, and gender-expansive people. Our Bodies Ourselves integrates LGBTQIA+ perspectives and leadership in all levels of the organization, and we serve members of LGBTQIA+ communities throughout the world.
Where We’ve Been
For almost 50 years, the book “Our Bodies, Ourselves” provided clear and accurate information on women’s health, sexuality, and empowerment. What started as a self-published booklet created by a collective of women’s health advocates grew into a vital resource, continually updated in new editions, selling millions of copies, and translated into 34 languages. We have proudly featured LGBTQIA+ lives and insights throughout our history. The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective collaborated with a group called Lesbian Liberation to write a chapter called "In Amerika they Call Us Dykes" for its first mass-market publication of “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”
Where We Are
Today, our entire website is LGBTQIA+ inclusive by design. You’ll find resources by, about, and for LGBTQIA+ people and communities across all of our eleven subject areas, on topics from safer sex to affordable housing, queer experiences of menstruation and menopause, and research findings on LGBTQIA+ heart health and mental health. Since our launch in September 2022, we have reached over 2 million 660,000 users from nearly every country in the world. Our dynamic digital platform is under constant revision and expansion, in response to our changing world. The website makes hundreds of health-related topics easily searchable. There are currently eleven main subject areas to explore:
ABORTION | BREAST CANCER | CONTRACEPTION | GROWING OLDER | PREGNANCY & BIRTH | GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE | HEART HEALTH | MENSTRUAL CYCLE | MENOPAUSE & PERIMENOPAUSE | MENTAL HEALTH | SEXUAL ANATOMIES & SEXUAL HEALTH | SEXUALITIES, GENDER, & RELATIONSHIPS| CHRONIC ILLNESS (coming soon)
Why Support Our Bodies Ourselves?
Access to reliable, evidence-based, inclusive, cost-free health information is more vital than ever. We’re living in a climate of unrelenting attacks on reproductive freedom; a flood of anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ legislation and rulings; and “abstinence only” masquerading as sex education. The for-profit American healthcare system is broken. We’re engulfed by rampant misinformation and disinformation, especially about women’s health.
Our Bodies Ourselves is here, true to its origins in the feminist movement of the 1970s. Our digital platform provides accurate, trustworthy, life-changing, and sometimes even lifesaving, information and resources. Our Bodies Ourselves is meeting the current moment of crisis with renewed commitment to ensuring that all women and gender-expansive people have the power to make their own decisions regarding health, reproduction, sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Where We’re Going
► Our Bodies Ourselves is firmly grounded in the public interest: our only agenda is to provide the most up-to-date and meaningful resources to improve users’ lives. We are committed to making high-quality content available at no cost.
► Our content experts bring a variety of professional perspectives, including expertise in medicine and allied health professions, public health, public policy, consumer activism, academia, communications, and the law. We are also diverse across race, age, sexuality, disability, gender identity, and culture, and the resources we provide are sensitive to these differences.
► The Stories & Conversations section of our site already has over 100 video interviews on topics in every content area. These personal accounts humanize the information we give and provide important feminist perspectives. In addition to finding critical information, users can learn how others have experienced and dealt with health and sexuality issues.
► As an explicitly feminist site, we provide opportunities for users to learn about the political forces that shape their experiences, and how to get involved in social change.
Your Role
You can contribute to this project strategically as a valued donor, as we work to ensure that queerness and LGBTQIA+ issues are integrated into all of our core content areas and throughout the site. Your donation this year will support our commitment to bringing you more resources and more community events like our “Sex and aging” panel. With your help, people throughout the world will continue to have ready access to information that is crucial to their health, sexuality, and empowerment. Your generosity will continue the important service that Our Bodies, Ourselves has provided for the last half-century.
We have an anonymous donor who will match all GiveOUTDay support from June 1 to 28!
OUR BODIES OURSELVES WELCOMES YOUR SUPPORT!
Organization name
Our Bodies Ourselves
other names
OBOS
Categories
Education , Health , Community
Address
Our Bodies Ourselves, Suffolk University 8 Ashburton Place