ABSTRACT
In 1980, a small group of pioneering feminists in the city of Recife, in the Northeast corner of Brazil, gathered in one another’s living rooms, with the most common tool of the gynecological trade in hand: the speculum. Th e participants were intent on learning about their own bodies and taking charge of their medical care by conducting selfexaminations. As they struggled to master the awkward instrument and to survey the hidden wonders of their anatomies, they pieced together bits of data that they had gleaned. Th eir new knowledge represented a “great discovery” for these young middle-and upper-class women, according to one participant, and they were eager to share it with women in poor neighborhoods who had little access to such information and faced wretched health conditions.1 Th e group founded an organization, giving it the name “SOS Corpo: Grupo de Saúde da Mulher” (SOS Body: Women’s Health Group) to refl ect their concern with women’s bodies, and began doing outreach to women in the working-class bairros that had formed around the periphery of the city.
