This paper asks how to recognize and benefit from “situated knowledges.” How can some of
the split, contradictory, and unequal knowledge positions become coordinated and mutually
beneficial? To do this, I consider how to provide women with the ability to evaluate and
adopt birth control technology without at the same time adopting and reproducing the
cultural messages and social arrangements embedded in it. I draw examples from the birth
control chapter of the 1984 and 1992 editions of The New Our Bodies, Ourselves. First, I …