Our Bodies, Ourselves
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 19 November 2020
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Some have described Our Bodies, Ourselves as “obscene trash” – for others it’s a vital source of information about women’s health and sexuality. First published in 1973, this radical, and sometimes controversial, book has become a best-seller and a global phenomenon. Josephine Casserly talks to one of the authors, Joan Ditzion.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more watching listen on BBC sounds. |
| 0:31.9 | This is the sound of climate change. |
| 0:35.0 | Find out what it all means at the end of this podcast. I'm Josephine Casselli. Today I'm telling the story of Our Bodies Ourselves. |
| 0:55.0 | It's a groundbreaking book which has provided vital information on women's health |
| 0:59.9 | and sexuality since the 1970s. I'm speaking to one of its authors, Joan Ditzian, |
| 1:07.0 | and just a warning that this program contains some quite graphic descriptions. |
| 1:13.3 | This revolutionary book grew out of a series of consciousness-raising meetings in the late 60s. |
| 1:18.4 | So the first meeting I went to was kind of amazing. |
| 1:21.6 | They were about 50-60 women there and there was some women |
| 1:25.0 | was infants and breastfeeding and their children and it was just a lot of good spirit |
| 1:29.8 | in the room. Joan has seen an advert for a workshop about women's health and |
| 1:33.6 | sexuality in a local Boston paper and thought it sounded interesting. It was |
| 1:37.9 | called women and their bodies. This was 1969. Joan was an art teacher, 25 and newly married and she was just starting to get |
| 1:45.7 | interested in feminism. I remember the first session was on sexuality so |
| 1:52.2 | basically I had, you know, really didn't know that much about sexuality. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

