She is right. We have told stories about the links between disease and their environment for decades using age-old narratives as a potent form of public health policy. Shepherds knew instinctively that certain types of clover caused their sheep to be infertile and kept them from the fields where it grew—alerting us to the power of naturally occurring estrogens. The phrase “mad as a hatter,” made famous by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland, comes from the mercury poisoning that those in the hat trade suffered during the manufacturing process. Moreover, Japanese women routinely fed their families ginger with their sushi to help ward off parasites.
Stories matter. So do the experiences of women. Yet, as a group that day, we consistently failed to count our own experience as relevant and reliable. One woman mentioned that she couldn’t possibly be an expert on breast-feeding since she had only had 2 children, as if there was some unwritten rule that only those who had had 5 or more children were the “real” experts. Another woman who had passionately collected community cookbooks since childhood feared people would see her as obsessive or creepy if she let on—even though one Harvard library boasts a whole collection of regional cookbooks and that the historic combination of foods into cuisines has been shown to promote health in myriad ways. Her passion was simply another form of scholarship; there is nothing creepy about that.
When Orenstein asked how many of us had been uncomfortable during this exercise, we all raised our hands. She says that this exercise creates an almost universal expression of discomfort among women, but only rarely does it disturb men.
Simply stating our expertise and listing our credentials was an almost overwhelming first step to taking our position as thought leaders and women capable of joining the national conversation.
I had my own issues with this. Although a long time editor and writer I had ventured into the scientific arena with my book, an arena that I felt too technical and way over my head. There were hundreds of chemicals in my hometown capable of causing disease, alone or in combination, lurking in three toxic waste sites in my hometown. It was a veritable chemical cocktail. I soldiered on, however, enlisting a cadre of experts to check and recheck my material.
