Policing of the Women's Body
The policing of women’s bodies has existed since before the burst of the social media. In reality the policing of the woman's anatomy has existed for centuries. It’s just become more and more outrageous that we are having the same issues to the access to women's rights now in 2015 in the same manner of the 1960’s and 1970’s. In those earlier decades it was about the right to access to birth control and abortion rights, today; bureaucrats, predominantly men, tie up funds for these rights, place limitations and then try to control these rights to the woman's body when the right itself belongs to these women. A political system has taken precedence over women being able to choose what decision they want to make for their own anatomy. The media hypersexualizes women in a unscrupolous manner while dictating that if a woman were to indulge in sexual pleasure they are labeled a “whore” or “sexual deviant”.
The legislations and policies that are in effect today not only devalue women and their rights but it sends the message that we are not in control of ourselves. That whether or not I want to make a private decision about the body that I embody is not up to me but some bureaucrat whose religious beliefs affects my life.
“In 2011, 55 percent of all women of reproductive age in the United States lived in states hostile to abortion rights and reproductive freedoms. Waiting period, counseling, ultrasounds, transvaginal ultrasounds, sonogram, storytelling--all of these legislative moves are invasive,insulting and condescending because they are deeply misguided attempts to pressure women into changing their minds, to pressure women into not terminating their pregnancy as if women are so easily swayed, that such petty and cruel stall tactics will work (Bad Feminist 272).”
There are preventative measures after preventative measures to stop abortions yet the common sense solutions would be to provide birth control freely--yet that too is a problem. So not only do you not have the right to get an abortion, you can’t even consume the pill to prevent you from getting you pregnant because men in suits believe that they shouldn't have to pay for women who live in a “slutty” manner. its inexplicable that these politicians institutes these barriers that they have no right imposing. To prevent abortions in the first place the answer would be to provide the pill but that solution is not an acceptable one to these bureaucrats. Reproductive freedom has no business being in congress or any law related office where males lead the conversations. Its a womans body and their individual choice; that should be the final conversation however its just a negotiable part. Not only are there attempts to prevent abortions, limitations on birth control but if you have it their way and end up having a baby don't expect any maternity leave benefits be causes these men in suits don't push for that either, it seems that women's right altogether is ludicrous.
Women are made out to be whores for wanting a sexual life without wanting to get pregnant while men can reap the all the sexual benefits without taking any responsibility. The use of viagra isn't part of the political and legislative spectrum...there is no male version pill to kill off semen, so why is it that women somehow shoulder all the responsibility. Men can participate in the sexual act and not bother with the conversation that women must deal with.
When women are backed into a corner with no options and no rights by the state, rights that they are entitled too; they turn to self harm. Illegal abortions take place which results in death, sterilization and injury.
“Part of the radical feminist message offered by groups such as Redstockings was that abortion concerned all women equally. They maintained that every woman needed to get involved in challenging anti-abortion laws, because without the fundamental right to control reproduction in every instance, women remained subject to men (Nelson 15).
The message in media both empowers and subjects women to negative views as well. Although as a country we have come a long way in terms of women's right, the current legislations that stand in congress today in 2015 prove that misogynistic men controlling legislation about women's rights need to be stripped of this power. No man can or should make a decision a women should only be entitled too.
"If we wish to construct a feminism that is truly "sex positive," it must address the myriad forms of oppression that violate women's lives and bodies on a global scale. "Freedom in society can be measured by distribution of orgasms," reads another slogan of Wallace's Cliteracy project -- a statement that seems almost painfully ludicrous when we consider the millions of women worldwide whose freedoms, sexual and otherwise, are devastated on a daily basis by state violence, environmental degradation, poverty, racism, and the wide variety of other hardships women must tackle in the contemporary world, in addition to a lack of sexual gratification. Women's sexual empowerment is not an issue which can be separated from broader struggles for gender justice, and in order to support its realization, we must fight collectively for serious social and political change with the same passion and uncompromising desire we bring to our bedrooms."
The recognition that is woefully denied to women needs to be apart of the discourse. In Harris-Perry's Crooked Room the independence the African American women seeks from the stereotypical image that is imposed upon them is simply unfair. The independence these women sought and also these characters portrayed in these literary works depict how strength in spite they displayed despite all the opposition they faced in a time of racism. And despite not dealing with these replicated issues we are dealing with men as the opposition as they try to police our bodies and enforce rights that do no belong to them. It sends the message hat women, cannot govern themselves and that we should be allowed too, which is just absurd.
"After I realized the extent to which men work from a base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their oppressiveness was unconscious (McIntosh)."
If these men come from a base of privileged and its recognized that they are unaware of all the realities, relates we as women face…then why should white men be make life altering decisions for women?
Work Cited
Gay, Roxane. “The Alienable Rights of Women.” Bad Feminist. Harper Perennial, 2014. Print.
Harris-Perry, Melissa V. “Crooked Room.” Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes,
and Black Women in America. United States: Sheridan Books, Inc., 2011. 28-39.
McIntosh, Peggy “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack”
Nelson, Jennifer. "Introduction: From Abortion to Reproductive
Rights."Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. New York: New York UP, 2003. 1-20.
No comments:
Post a Comment