Post 4: Body of Laws, Law of Bodies

Post 4
There is no doubt that women’s reproductive rights have become an issue of law for a considerable amount of time. Through personal experience, my gender has and will always prevent me from truly acknowledging the impacts of trying having my body controlled. What I do know, however, is that an it is certainly not the first time I have witnessed law makers recklessly use their powers to enact laws on issues that they have no idea about. I have always thought it beyond ridiculous the concept of law makers having pre-conceived notions about what ought to be without taking the time to acknowledge the implications of it. For me this sends an awful message about our society. It says that the government may affect sensitive parts of women’s lives solely on authority, not serious debating and decision-making, just the authority of a mostly male government.
I think there is a false goal of this type of legislation. Usually it is spoken about as if it were real like moral issues or tax issues. I think the real goal is hidden, perhaps even to the law makers who enforce

This just made me laugh. But in all seriousness
it is unfair of men to stop reproductive choices.

it. The hidden goal is to have dominance over women. It makes sense when one thinks about it for long enough. An unlearned group of mostly white males making the decisions for women about their own physical bodies seems like a prime example of what dominance is. An essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack” by Peggy McIntosh explains very well the idea of not only acknowledging the disadvantages of the colored and female, but of acknowledging that there is white privilege which must also be acknowledged and challenged. She hits it on the nose when she elaborates on how the idea of democracy is harmed by the hidden goal of dominance. She says:
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power, and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.(McIntosh, 5)
All of this always comes back to secrecy, doesn’t it? There’s a very messed up contradictory system in place to where the ones in power can effectively dominate whomever they choose, and those people usually end up being the ones different from them. All of this in the government, and there’s still this ideal about America that everyone has a fair shot.
There is definitely a power play involved in this. One of the thing that helps reveal this in all this political mess is how it is only women’s’ bodies that are being discussed. Like there is absolutely no way men’s’ bodies can be debated about in these issues. In “The Alienable Rights of Women”, author Roxane Gay touches on this inconsistency. She writes:
What often goes unspoken in this conversation is how debates about birth control and reproductive freedom continually force the female body into being a legislative matter because men refuse to assume their fair share of responsibility for birth control. Men refuse to allow their bodies to become a legislative matter because they have that inalienable right.(Gay, 276).
I think the only way this can be fought is if enough people, both men and women, speak about how

these unlawful body laws offend our principles. In “The Transformation of Silence into Language and

Being denied abortion rights force women
to go to unreasonable lengths

Action”, author Audre Lorde succinctly addresses the need for people to acknowledge that they have a responsibility to speak against tyrannies. She writes, “And where the words of women crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives.”(Lorde, 43). It is from speaking that the government works, enough voices should create enough of a stir for people to be inspired and for change to happen. In this way, the media can help.
The way media both helps and hurts women’s bodies and sexuality is by mass producing messages. How it hurts these issues is that the ones in charge of mainstream media are the privileged class of people. They will knowingly or unknowingly transmit harmful images and ideas that are taken as normal. This creates what Harris Perry calls a “crooked room”. In her book “Crooked Room”, she makes an analogy of how people will conform to what their surroundings tell them is normal, such as what is upright in a room with crooked walls (Perry, 29). How the media can benefit us is that we control part of it, we can use ways to transmit our message of fairness or realness of women’s bodies through so many people that it can stand out amongst mainstream media and different opinions can be heard on an equal level.

Works Cited:
McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack”. 1989. page 5
Gay, Roxane. “The Alienable Rights of Women”. Bad Feminist. Page 276
Lorde, Audrey. “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”. 1984. Sister Outsider. page 43.
Perry, Harris. “Crooked Room”. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America. 2011. Page 29

http://www.reproductiverights.org/press-room/huffington-post-fight-womens-reproductive-rights-winning-losing-abortion-war-Roe

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/opinion/sunday/the-reproductive-rights-rollback-of-2015.html?_r=0