Vancouver Women’s Health Collective

An outline and handout for the Vancouver Women's Health Collective's workshop on lesbian life. The document was filed with excerpts from "Stepping out of Line: A Workbook on Lesbianism and Feminism" by Nym Hughes, Yvonne Johnson and Yvette Perreault (1984), and the essay "I am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities," by Audre Lorde. The workshop outline lists topics such as heterosexual privilege, lesbian culture, homophobia, and lesbians of colour, among other. The handout accompanying the outline is called "What is Homophobia?", a 1-page document containing a list of questions the reader would ask of him or herself that indicate homophobic beliefs (i.e.- "Have you ever wished that gay men and lesbians weren't so blatant or open about being gay?")

This document outlines the major activities and services provided by the Vancouver Women's Health Collective (VWHC) during the period of the early 1990s. It includes information on their involvement with the Provincial Women's Health Lobby (PWL), their research into the role of health care advocates, one-on-one advocacy work, pre- and post-abortion peer counselling, birth control counselling, their educational workshops and seminars, and their commitment to advocacy skills development for volunteers.

A zine distributed by Blood Sisters, with stories, poems, illustrations and essays on topics including sexual assault, menstruation, alternative menstrual products, masturbation, oppression and subordination, and corporatization. The zine includes instructions on making your own pads, abortion information, diagrams of women's reproductive organs, and gender-based analysis of the menstrual product industry.

An article instructing women on how to go about conducting medical research and reading medical studies. Written by Barbara Mintzes, a member of the Vancouver Women's Health Collective (VWHC), the article demystifies the objectivity and absolute truth often afforded to medical studies, and suggests that women get together and read critically medical studies and their published findings. Mintzes explains different types of studies, study designs, and ways of judging the validity of results. Mintzes encourages women to become informed and comfortable with information commonly limited to doctors and other health care professionals and researchers.