MANIFESTO
Wombs were said to make their holders hysteric. Mad, lunatic, crazy. Such a label could get you arrested, institutionalized, or... burnt.
​We still live in the shadows of this word.
It's in the neglect we expect from institutions.
It's in the misinformation about our bodies.
It's in the "don't ask, don't tell" culture around menstrual cycles.
It's in the mistreatment of puberty and menopause as if they were illnesses.
It’s the refusal to diagnose and treat actual illnesses.
It’s in the prescription of ill-fitting, often debilitating drugs to mask a society-wide anxiety over reproduction.
It’s in the rejection of traditional ways of knowing as “unscientific”, by the very people and institutions who reject the science of our bodies.
It’s in the delegitimization of our lived reality through “jokes” about “being hormonal” or “menopausal”.
It’s in the rendering of “reproductive freedom” into a sacrifice of our physical, mental and emotional well-being.
It’s in the disappearance of women from public space once we hit a certain age.
It’s in the girlbossification of feminism.
It’s in the denial of abortion rights.
It’s in the dismantling of the social infrastructure supporting parenthood, aging, and disability.
​
It’s in the fear, shame, and anxiety we bear for the sin of having a womb.
​
It’s time we get real with ourselves: we will not be saved by the people and institutions who have systematically fought to criminalize our rights to bodily autonomy, dismantle the public infrastructure that makes life liveable, and deny us adequate care or treatment.
In this landscape of organized abandonment, Hope is not a destination we can escape to, but a path to be forged together. Here's the truth: the knowledge we need has always been ours. Our responsibility today is to reclaim and embody it.
That’s what the Hysteric Wombs Social Club is here for. To nourish to all of us seeking liberation from the rusty rosaries atrophiating our ovaries.
Because feeling safe, empowered and sovereign in our bodies is our damn birthright.
INTENTIONS
1- Dispelling patriarchal myths about bodies with wombs.
For too long, we’ve lived in fear of a boogeyman. We can only get pregnant a handful of days each cycle, and we can easily identify these days and act accordingly. Fertility is not an illness we need to be medicated against. Menopause is not a disease. Recognizing differences in hormonal patterns does not legitimize oppressive gender roles. Ozempic will not cure PCOS. And many more.
The Hysteric Wombs Social Club is here so you can stop wasting your time and energy fighting windmills, and lock tf in.
2- Offering an alternative to the two main types of feminism:
the one which refuses to acknowledge the differences between different types of bodies, or the real-life impacts these have;
and the one which uses these differences for the purposes of trans-exclusionary ideology, and the essentialization of “womanhood”.
Equality of social, economic, and political rights requires acknowledging the ways in which being built with a temporary menstrual cycle makes us different from people who are built to never experience one. These differences need not define you as “woman” or “man”, and can actually be a portal into infinite forms of queering gender expression.
3- Empowering you to become an active, informed, and responsible consumer of medical services targeting your reproductive system.
Medical negligence and mal-practice thrives when patients are fearful and deliberately ignorant of their bodies. You cannot make consensual decisions if you don’t know your body. The Hysteric Wombs Social Club seeks to make this knowledge accessible, so you can decide at each point what services and healing modalities suit you best.
4- Providing holistic support on your path to reclaim Bodily Sovereignty.
Part of the patriarchal sleight of hand has been to disconnect us from our bodies, with half-baked lies such as “I think therefore I am”. No. We are not minds attached to a body. We are bodies with minds of their own. I believe returning to our bodies is our historical responsibility towards the generations that preceded us, and those that will come in our stead.
Embodiment is not a luxury lifestyle. It is our folklore, from the words “folk” (the people) and “lore” (knowledge).
VALUES
1- Liberation.
The HWSC values freedom not as the right to consume, but as emancipation from social structures designed to keep us small, afraid, and obedient. As a facilitator, educator, and coach I am committed to creating nurturing spaces that help you stand tall in the face of the violence inscribed in our daily social life.
2- Equality.
As a facilitator, educator, and coach I strive to create conditions for equality in every container, session, and offering. I can only offer this work if I am remunerated fairly. But I know not everyone can afford to pay. As a facilitator, educator, and coach I am committed to making my services as accessible as possible. Free sessions and on-demand sliding-scales are some of the ways I currently have to do so.
​
Contact me to discuss payment arrangements that can meet you where you're at: hello@hystericwombssocialclub.com
3- Trans-inclusive queerness.
Queerness is not just about who you sleep with, but how you embody and express yourself in the world. As a facilitator, educator, and coach, I am committed to honouring the billion ways in which gender, sex, and sexuality can be lived and expressed. You have the right to understand your anatomy and physiology, and you should be entitled to the freedom to change it in whatever way feels life-affirming to you. Only you can know what your gender is.
I am enthusiastically open to working with people of all genders, including people who have undergone or are currently undergoing gender transitions. I believe menstruality work, cyclical attunement, and embodiment are powerful healing tools that must include trans-women, trans-men, and non-binary folks.
4- Sovereignty.
You were taught to outsource sovereignty to external sources: a father figure, a teacher, a doctor, a boss. Beneath this is a belief that someone else must know better, and that someone else should be responsible for your life. Underpinning this belief is a foundational insecurity in your own abilities.
Unlike manosphere influencers like Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson, I don’t think responsibility is something we can do as lone wolves. Self-responsibility requires we engage with the world not as victims, nor saviors, but as beautifully interdependent, sovereign beings. Like trees working together to breathe as a forest.
5- Magic.
The Hysteric Wombs Social Club is an ecosystem where different types of knowing can coexist. Science is a way of knowing the world through experimentation. There’s good science practiced in scientific institutions, and I hold that knowledge in the greatest esteem. It informs my work as a fertility awareness educator, a menstruality coach, and holistic herbalist.
However, not everything in the world and the body can be seen with the microscope of this science. Astrology, Human Design, Tarot, and Traditional Herbalism are magical arts I employ in my practice to grasp the whimsical aspects of existence.
6- Anti-capitalism, anti-racist, anti-genocide.
So far I wanted to affirm what the Hysteric Wombs Social Club is for, but it's also important to acknowledge what it stands firmly against.
​
To be anti-capitalist is to refuse exploitation, environmental destruction and the waging of war for endless economic growth. It is a commitment to experimenting with different ways of establishing economic relations with one another.
​
To be anti-racist is to refuse the colonial construct that there exist different "races" of human beings. This is not just about undoing individual biases, but also to undoing racism as the infrastructure of inequality in society.
​
To be anti-genocide is to stand with all the Peoples, past and present, that are persecuted by imperialist states. From Palestine to Ukraine, from Sudan to the Amazonian forest, from the racialized suburbs of Europe to the segregated plantation-society of the US, genocide is the enemy of human diversity.
​​​
I am enthusiastically and militantly open to collaborating with allies on these, and connected struggles. Reach out to me if you'd like to discuss menstruality, body autonomy, and folk medicine in these contexts: hello@hystericwombssocialclub.com