..."If ever our bodies - their health, their freedom, their adornment, their use - are not our own, what is?"
It is a question that men of color have asked in many anti-colonial movements, from Gandhi in British India to Steve Biko, who found the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa - a message of autonomy and self-respect for which, even in 1977, he was imprisoned and beaten to death. Blacks with the self-esteem to look to themselves for a sense of what was beautiful and proud were too threatening to the white minority regime.
It's a question that women in every country are asking as they defy customs and laws that control female bodies for sex and reproduction; a control sometimes instituted by men of a different race to limit reproduction, and sometimes by men of their own race to force reproduction. Whether an older woman is going under the knife for cosmetic surgery because she fears losing her husband, or a younger one is forced to undergo a clitoridectomy because she is not marriageable without it, females rarely own their own bodies. In the United States, too, a woman may be told she is too fat for a job, be kicked of the airwaves for being too old, be reduced by economic need to selling her body for sex or surrogate motherhood, be forced to seek approval from the state for an abortion because she is too young, suffer the common body invasion of rape and be blamed for inviting the crime by the very fact of having a female body, and be constrained in a thousand other ways. The basic message is the same: A woman's power is not supposed to extend as far as her own skin. Which is why, as Adrienne Rich wrote at the end of Of Woman Born, "The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers."
It's a question that women who love women and men who love men are asking when they overturn homophobic, pronatalist punishments that subject the most private uses of our bodies to the public laws, or when they agitate for the right to be affectionate with each other at high school proms and anywhere else that heterosexual couples are. They are struggling against a bias so extreme that in the United States almost half of gays, have experienced violent attacks from strangers, peers, or their own families - and are six times more likely to attempt suicide then their heterosexual counterparts - even while they are still adolescents. Now in the era of AIDS, the unfair stigma of "carrying" a disease is a danger both to self and to self-esteem.
It's a question that many men of supposedly powerful groups are asking, too, when they challenge everything from laws on the length of their hair to the largely unnecessary rite of circumcision; from standards of height to hierarchies based on muscles, prowess at sports, and ability to fight each other; from an assumption that they must be willing to die for state-approved purposes to one that they will kill for them.
The answer to the question of who owns our bodies lies establishing the legal, moral, and social principle of bodily integrity, so that each person controls the universe within our skins. It lies in getting rid of both the Iron Maiden and the Iron Man so we can have choice, not compulsion; more beauty in our lives, not less; pleasure, not constraint. In Naomi Wolf's imagery, we are changing the self-consciousness of a spotlight on the body for the self-confidence of a light radiating from the body.
That's the shift of paradigm here: Instead of a light that is directed at us by others, a light that shines from within.
Gloria Steinem, "Revolution from Within," 1991
I am a firm believer in knowing where one's roots lie before the path forward is realized.
In regard to the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the backlash of a rich history for women determining their own path in life with the empowerment of Choice was lingering for four decades. This too, in time will pass.
When all the draconian laws of Pro-Life are tested for their illegal content within state legislatures, there will be no more blockades to the dignity of women in the USA. When abortion clinics are no longer the focus of those breaking the law and harassing the innocent, but, the enforcement of law to prevent danger to women and their providers. And when those that seek anarchy over justice are finally prosecuted. The Pro-Life movement is not about life, dignity or respect at all, it is about power.
It is a question that men of color have asked in many anti-colonial movements, from Gandhi in British India to Steve Biko, who found the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa - a message of autonomy and self-respect for which, even in 1977, he was imprisoned and beaten to death. Blacks with the self-esteem to look to themselves for a sense of what was beautiful and proud were too threatening to the white minority regime.
It's a question that women in every country are asking as they defy customs and laws that control female bodies for sex and reproduction; a control sometimes instituted by men of a different race to limit reproduction, and sometimes by men of their own race to force reproduction. Whether an older woman is going under the knife for cosmetic surgery because she fears losing her husband, or a younger one is forced to undergo a clitoridectomy because she is not marriageable without it, females rarely own their own bodies. In the United States, too, a woman may be told she is too fat for a job, be kicked of the airwaves for being too old, be reduced by economic need to selling her body for sex or surrogate motherhood, be forced to seek approval from the state for an abortion because she is too young, suffer the common body invasion of rape and be blamed for inviting the crime by the very fact of having a female body, and be constrained in a thousand other ways. The basic message is the same: A woman's power is not supposed to extend as far as her own skin. Which is why, as Adrienne Rich wrote at the end of Of Woman Born, "The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers."
It's a question that women who love women and men who love men are asking when they overturn homophobic, pronatalist punishments that subject the most private uses of our bodies to the public laws, or when they agitate for the right to be affectionate with each other at high school proms and anywhere else that heterosexual couples are. They are struggling against a bias so extreme that in the United States almost half of gays, have experienced violent attacks from strangers, peers, or their own families - and are six times more likely to attempt suicide then their heterosexual counterparts - even while they are still adolescents. Now in the era of AIDS, the unfair stigma of "carrying" a disease is a danger both to self and to self-esteem.
It's a question that many men of supposedly powerful groups are asking, too, when they challenge everything from laws on the length of their hair to the largely unnecessary rite of circumcision; from standards of height to hierarchies based on muscles, prowess at sports, and ability to fight each other; from an assumption that they must be willing to die for state-approved purposes to one that they will kill for them.
The answer to the question of who owns our bodies lies establishing the legal, moral, and social principle of bodily integrity, so that each person controls the universe within our skins. It lies in getting rid of both the Iron Maiden and the Iron Man so we can have choice, not compulsion; more beauty in our lives, not less; pleasure, not constraint. In Naomi Wolf's imagery, we are changing the self-consciousness of a spotlight on the body for the self-confidence of a light radiating from the body.
That's the shift of paradigm here: Instead of a light that is directed at us by others, a light that shines from within.
Gloria Steinem, "Revolution from Within," 1991
I am a firm believer in knowing where one's roots lie before the path forward is realized.
In regard to the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the backlash of a rich history for women determining their own path in life with the empowerment of Choice was lingering for four decades. This too, in time will pass.
When all the draconian laws of Pro-Life are tested for their illegal content within state legislatures, there will be no more blockades to the dignity of women in the USA. When abortion clinics are no longer the focus of those breaking the law and harassing the innocent, but, the enforcement of law to prevent danger to women and their providers. And when those that seek anarchy over justice are finally prosecuted. The Pro-Life movement is not about life, dignity or respect at all, it is about power.
