Health Activism and Sexual Politics

Health Activism and Sexual Politics: Feminist Engagements with Health, Illness and the Body explores the intersection of health activism and sexual politics through both traditional research chapters and innovative contributions on creative and scholarly practice as activism.

The book showcases the analytical power of feminist research at the intersection of sexuality, health, and activism. As digital technologies create new possibilities and challenges for politics, sex, and health interventions, the contributors demonstrate diverse ways to engage meaningfully with activism. Spanning Latin America, Southern Africa, Northern Europe, the UK, and North America, the collection offers alternative epistemologies to hegemonic biomedical knowledge about illness, pleasure, pain, and marginalization. The interdisciplinary approach incorporates feminist technoscience studies alongside perspectives from medical humanities, sexuality studies, gender studies, design, and drama studies. Each chapter challenges inequities and reimagines possibilities for health and well-being through collective action, creative engagement, and scholarly inquiry. Together, they insist on recognizing the multiplicity of experiences around illness and desire, making knowledge that values lived experiences as communicable, worthy of care, and deserving of recognition.

This book will appeal to scholars, students, activists, and artists interested in health, sexual practice, gender, activism, and public engagement.