About

Let’s Talk/Share/Improve Our Gyn Experiences We are going beyond self-help — We’ll build comfort and agency when going to our gynecologic appointments. We’ll have clear goals to spread the knowledge we learn and help teach our practitioners so that more of us can have better, safer experiences – centered around our needs – with the doctors who care for us.

Who’s invited? Anyone and everyone who sees a gynecologist.

What is this? In this six-part gathering, with long-term follow-up, we will

• get to know each other
• talk about the experiences we’ve had with our gynecologists
• imagine how we’d like our visits to feel and to be
• develop the skills we need to make visits feel how we’d like
• practice draping and not draping
• experience what it’s like to bring a friend
• work with mirrors
• become experts with speculums
• practice teaching our practitioners to treat us beautifully

We can help our practitioners learn another way to be with us. We’ll teach ourselves first. Over our months together, we’ll report back, get better at it, and start teaching others.

The story I hear most often about gynecological visits is something like:
"I was alone in the room; I was draped; the doctor looked at my body from the other side of the drape; I couldn’t see the parts of my body they were looking at; stuff was done to my body; I was not asked to participate in any way; I left feeling kinda empty; I left feeling disconnected from my own body; I didn’t learn more about my body; no anatomical parts were mentioned, or taught."

Note: Deirdre Cooper Owens wrote Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology. Go ahead and order it. We’ll read and discuss, and see how we can start undoing this racist/misogynist healthcare system under which everyone suffers, including our practitioners.

Class Leaders

Isa Coffey, RN Founder/Director WiseBodies + Guest educators with expertise in the pelvis, movement, healing, plant medicine, body politic, and music will be joining us.

Isa Coffey, RN, has been developing and teaching her own sex ed curriculum for decades, and has the skills and experience. She founded WiseBodies 13 years ago, and has been directing it since. She’s been a labor & delivery nurse; a homebirth doula; worked for years in 3 women’s health clinics, including the cervical cap fitting site she co-founded; has taught sex ed in high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools; is an herbalist and a gardener. It turns out this is a perfect set of skills to teach this class.

Dates + Time

Dates & Time: October 2023 - April 2024
Second Tuesdays: Oct 10, Nov 14, Dec 12, Jan 9, Feb 13, Mar 12, Apr 9, 6:00 - 8:00pm

Hoping we can meet in-person, but we'll use zoom if necessary. If in-person we'll do potluck dinners and eat together!

Registration & Cost

Cost: Suggested donation of $20–$80 per evening, which will be gifted to http://www.morganerichardsondoula.com and https://www.anarchalucybetsey.org.