Post 4: Her Body, Her Choice

As a society, we are accustomed to hearing that women are objectified in the media.  We are tired of hearing the same thing and almost, desensitized.  The urgency in trying to free women of this objectification is becoming subdued.  We have begun to normalize the objectification of women, and excuse it by shaping it as a means for liberation.  However, we must rekindle the desire to eliminate the objectification of women.  This can be done by realizing that if women are objects, then women must be possessed.  Women must have an owner, a trainer, and a controller.  Objects only have value if they are valuable enough to be owned and dictated.  This ownership is best asserted by policing women’s bodies and taking complete possession of their rights to their own body.  Indeed, the woman’s body is possessed by the looming arms of patriarchy. 

An example of the policing of women’s bodies is the enforcement of laws that restrict their right to abortion.  These legislations are made and enforced by men for women.  The irony is hardly ever contested.  As Roxane Gay puts it, pregnancy is both a private and public thing.  It is private because “it is so very personal.  It happens within the body.  In a perfect world, pregnancy would be an intimate experience shared by a woman and her partner alone, but for various reasons that is not possible” (269).  She claims that it is public because it invited “public intervention.”  People inquire about the mother’s health, about the baby, etc.  Also, a woman must seek medical help, and to do this, she must make her pregnancy public.  Public intervention transforms this very personal experience, native to a woman’s body, into a public discourse.  If a woman must carry a baby for nine months and then painfully give birth to it, she must withhold a complete right to her body and her decisions.  However, that is not the case.  Pregnancy becomes more public than private.  And how telling is it that law makers like the governor of Indiana can make decisions restricting the ability of women to get a proper abortion?  In an article in The New York Times, it states, “Indiana’s governor signed a bill on Thursday that adds broad limits to women’s access to abortions, banning those motivated solely by the mother’s objection to the fetus’s race, gender or disability, and placing new restrictions on doctors.”  Male lawmakers such as governor Mike Pence, employ incorrect “facts” about the repercussions of abortion in order to change the overall attitude towards abortion.  They make it seem as though abortion is a dangerous feat that must be avoided at all cost.  Such propaganda is what snatches the right to their own body from women’s hands.  This is avid policing of the female body.  

This picture accurately depicts the involvement of men in policing women's bodies by restricting their rights to abortion.

Women’s bodies are also policed for them simply being mothers.  Women who give birth but also work, are ensured very few chances of a paid parental leave here in the United States.  Women who work and take part in a family system, are compelled to dedicate their time to one or the other.  According to statistics provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), “the U.S. government support for working parents remains very limited, compared with 37 other nations.”  This factor especially affects women because this limits their prosperity in their work place.  They would lose out on pay in comparison to their male counterparts who require a shorter parental leave.  Such conditions make it difficult for women to actively join the work place and manage a family system.

Women’s sexuality is another factor in the rights a woman has over her body.  This right is policed through the active policing of her sexuality.  This is carried out by reducing access to birth control.  A woman is unable to completely explore her sexuality like men are simply because her body is able to carry a child.  Women’s rights to their sexuality are restricted by increasing her chances of getting pregnant.  In Tanya Steele’s article about the “Hobby Lobby,” she says, “Restrictions on access to birth control are at odds with the fact that sexuality, for most of us, takes time to understand and appreciate. Sex is an outlet, a release, a roadmap to understanding who we are. And it provides an opportunity to bond, to connect with another human being.  For women, birth control can support us in our desire to understand our sexuality without life-altering consequences.”  Men don’t face the life altering consequences that exploring their sexuality could lead to.  And they still police the sexuality of women by restricting their rights to birth control.  Sexuality for a woman, thus, becomes more of a gamble, a risk, and something that must be contained.  

This depicts the double standard and irony in a man having a say in women's right to birth control.

Works Cited:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/12/among-38-nations-u-s-is-the-holdout-when-it-comes-to-offering-paid-parental-leave/

https://rewire.news/article/2014/07/10/hobby-lobby-womans-right-sexual-exploration/

Gay, Roxane. “The Alienable Rights of Women”. Bad Feminist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/us/indiana-governor-mike-pence-signs-abortion-bill.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FAbortion&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=6&pgtype=collection&_r=0