There are some words, phrases, and ideas I love. I love them because they fit in my mind like a key in a lock I've had for years, finally putting words to a soft and shapeless idea I couldn't name.
Operationalize is one of them. I love that word.
Bodily Autonomy (or bodily integrity) is another.
I first read the phrase bodily autonomy (or integrity...it was probably integrity, but my brain likes to say autonomy more) in a twitter rant about abortion rights. This smart and well informed individual was making an argument for bodily integrity, that we have laws protecting bodily integrity of one person over the well-being of another. For example, you cannot be compelled against your will to donate blood to save someone's life. Or to donate a kidney, or a piece of your liver. Because that would be insane, right? To force someone against their will and by law to donate a kidney to another person, a stranger or a family member, just because it could save their life. We don't do that in the United States because we value freedom above all else.
If you aren't a woman with a uterus.
Because if you are a woman with a uterus, you do not have the right to bodily autonomy. I mean, you do, sort of, right now. But it really depends on the state you live in, how much money you have, what your docto's religious beliefs are, who is on the supreme court and what judges and lawmakers in your area think. Because if you are a woman, and you happen to let a sperm past your complicated, expensive, and onerous system of reproductive defenses, you can lose your bodily autonomy to a pulsing packet of cells.
Forever.
I have already ranted and raved to everyone who will listen about the physical and psychological tolls of pregnancy, delivery, and do not get me started on the cost of what I hope is effective parenting. So let's look at the other side of my new proposal:
I refuse to listen to any pro-life person who has not already donated a kidney.
If you are truly pro-life, if you truly believe in saving lives, and have two functioning healthy kidneys, why on earth are you torturing some poor soul on dialysis when you could save a life?
Don't worry, I'll wait.
Because nephrectomy is major surgery? Sure. But it is a major surgery with minimal risks and less than 1% chance of future kidney failure according to the Mayo Clinic. The risks associated with the Cesarean section that saved my baby and I from complications carries far more risks than a routine kidney transplant. This is especially true in the United States, where we have a rising rate of maternal mortality, the worst record in the developed world.
So childbirth is potentially deadly, and pregnancy requires 9 months of life-altering preparation as your organs and bones shift to accommodate a human, then a painful delivery and recovery that is life-threatening in this country, followed by weeks of recovery and months of your organs, bones, and skin slowly shifting back into place. Also, you have to raise a human being. Or put them into the complicated system of foster care or adoption, where many kids go their whole lives without ever having a stable family.
But that's another rant, titled "If you are so pro-life, you better foster and/or adopt some of those children you forced to be born!"
By any measure, kidney donation is far easier, less impactful that childbirth. But we do not mandate kidney donation. Or life-saving bone marrow donation. Or even life-saving blood donation (which everyone should do, because it saves lives, is easy, you get a free cookie, and donation rates are dropping in the US). But we do not mandate that people give up their bodily integrity in any of these cases, and I can't figure out why. Are the 5-year-old children with bone cancer not as cute as a 10-week or fetus? Was my uncle who died because dialysis was too painful to endure not as important or worthwhile a person as a clump of pulsing cells? Or is it just that men have bone marrow, blood, and kidneys, and they don't want to give up their bodily autonomy?
This does not even touch on the number of abortions given to women who need them for medical reasons, who make the heart breaking choice to end a wanted pregnancy to save their own life, or prevent the suffering of their child. But you pro-life assholes don't want to talk about forcing mothers of wanted babies to slowly bleed to death and die of sepsis while their beloved child dies inside of them, do they.
Fucking assholes.
So, until we make blood donation, kidney donation, bone marrow donation, and liver donation mandatory in life-saving cases, every single pro-life politician can go fuck themselves all the way to the moon, and then suffocate silently in the cold darkness of space and leave the rest of us in peace.
/rant
Friday, October 19, 2018
I'm done.
I am so done with men this week.
Okay, not actually men, just patriarchy.
White supremacist, hetero-normative, ableist, cis-gendered capitalist patriarchy.
That fucking shit.
I am *so* done with it all.
This week, I had to walk a young female student and her friend to their car because a guy has been stalking her; waiting for her outside of her class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. After eight weeks she finally asked for help.
And I get it. I have had the same problem, and when subtly taking out work or checking emails doesn't work, I resorted to ducking the guy by going out different doors, leaving at different times. Plus, my annoying guy was much less persistent. One of the benefits of entering my late thirties and growing a mom-bod is that far fewer people want to bone me, so I can move through the world with less friction. To say it is a bittersweet victory would be understating it.
But I remember those days well, and they still happen often enough to remind me that as women, we are the emotional laborers of this society. It reminds me of a philosophy professor who suggested, as an exercise, that we assume that gravity is created by tiny creatures shooting arrows with rope attached to things to keep them from flying off the face of the earth. I pictured a version of the gremlin that used to haunt Bugs Bunny, hundreds of thousands of them under the surface, keeping the machinery of the world functioning as we know it.
That's the emotional labor of women. We are walking around all the time, being patient with a frustrated colleague, listening to the feelings of a stranger, letting a guy hit on us when we would much rather be sitting in silence. But most of us, most of the time let it happen, make the emotional space for the guy in the situation so we don't have to find out what would happen if we don't.
Even when we don't articulate it to ourselves, that's why we do it. That's why we are nice, or patient, or don't argue, or give out a fake number, or lie about a fake boyfriend or husband or appointment, or wear headphones or bring a book or walk with friends to mix up our route or keep our route the same and therefore familiar and safe. We put in all that extra work to protect the feelings of the men around us, strangers, family, friends, and peers, so we don't have to find out if this is the kind of guy who will snap. Or the situation that will make this guy snap. The anger and violence and ego of men is the fuel that drives us to do all of this emotional labor. We do not want to do it, even if we have tricked ourselves into believeing we don't mind. No one wants to work for free.
But we all do. We all do all this emotional labor of patiently making some guy's feelings or concerns more important than ours, more important than our precious time, because you never know when or where or which guy is going to snap and hit you or yell at you or threaten you or stab you or rape you or dehumanize you in some way because you made the mistake of asserting your autonomy, your humanity in the face of their own.
As if you were an equal.
And, how dumb would that be?
Okay, not actually men, just patriarchy.
White supremacist, hetero-normative, ableist, cis-gendered capitalist patriarchy.
That fucking shit.
I am *so* done with it all.
This week, I had to walk a young female student and her friend to their car because a guy has been stalking her; waiting for her outside of her class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. After eight weeks she finally asked for help.
And I get it. I have had the same problem, and when subtly taking out work or checking emails doesn't work, I resorted to ducking the guy by going out different doors, leaving at different times. Plus, my annoying guy was much less persistent. One of the benefits of entering my late thirties and growing a mom-bod is that far fewer people want to bone me, so I can move through the world with less friction. To say it is a bittersweet victory would be understating it.
But I remember those days well, and they still happen often enough to remind me that as women, we are the emotional laborers of this society. It reminds me of a philosophy professor who suggested, as an exercise, that we assume that gravity is created by tiny creatures shooting arrows with rope attached to things to keep them from flying off the face of the earth. I pictured a version of the gremlin that used to haunt Bugs Bunny, hundreds of thousands of them under the surface, keeping the machinery of the world functioning as we know it.
That's the emotional labor of women. We are walking around all the time, being patient with a frustrated colleague, listening to the feelings of a stranger, letting a guy hit on us when we would much rather be sitting in silence. But most of us, most of the time let it happen, make the emotional space for the guy in the situation so we don't have to find out what would happen if we don't.
Even when we don't articulate it to ourselves, that's why we do it. That's why we are nice, or patient, or don't argue, or give out a fake number, or lie about a fake boyfriend or husband or appointment, or wear headphones or bring a book or walk with friends to mix up our route or keep our route the same and therefore familiar and safe. We put in all that extra work to protect the feelings of the men around us, strangers, family, friends, and peers, so we don't have to find out if this is the kind of guy who will snap. Or the situation that will make this guy snap. The anger and violence and ego of men is the fuel that drives us to do all of this emotional labor. We do not want to do it, even if we have tricked ourselves into believeing we don't mind. No one wants to work for free.
But we all do. We all do all this emotional labor of patiently making some guy's feelings or concerns more important than ours, more important than our precious time, because you never know when or where or which guy is going to snap and hit you or yell at you or threaten you or stab you or rape you or dehumanize you in some way because you made the mistake of asserting your autonomy, your humanity in the face of their own.
As if you were an equal.
And, how dumb would that be?
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