The most common time I see the
policing of women’s bodies in the united states is probably during the
conversation about contraceptive rights and abortion. The discussion
surrounding abortion has primarily been led by middle aged, straight, white men,
as pointed out in Roxane Gay’s article “The Alienable rights of Women.” Gay
writes “Legislatures across the United States have worked very hard to shape
and control the abortion experience in bizarre, insensitive ways that intervene
on a personal, should-be-private experience in very public, painful ways.”
Women are stripped of their right to privacy and are being told they are evil
for wanting the decision to not be forced into an unwanted pregnancy. This should
be viewed as a problem because men not have any insight on these issues, but
they are leading the discussion about them. Another issue of this debate is
that somehow control over women’s sexuality is deemed by male politicians as
necessary to our core values as a country. The debate comes back constantly to
issues of religion, and lawmakers seemingly push their religious, utterly
unscientific views about abortion and contraception on the people who are
actually being affected by the legislation regarding these issues. Both these things, however come back to a
fundamental issue of women to be able to control what happens to their bodies.
Planned parenthood is one of the biggest targets of anti-abortion legislation (despite
only 3% of their procedures being abortions) for this fact. In the link here,
it talks about this fact. Gender equality is often times equated to killing
babies, despite abortions not being legal past a point where the bundle of
cells could even be considered babies. The
people who protest planned parenthood often use these arguments under the guise
of help so that they can police a woman’s right to choose what happens to their
own body, calling themselves counselors, despite often not having any education
or training in psychology or social work. Standing outside Planned parenthood
locations should be called what it is, a fear tactic. It’s a fear tactic to
take control away from women, and leads to a culture that shames women for
trying to gain some control over something that they should not have to fight
for.
The need for reproductive rights is
often equated to the want by women to just have an insane amount of unprotected
sex, which is untrue, but the idea that it would be seen as a negative for
women to seek any sort of pleasure is a byproduct of a media landscape that
often portrays women as objects for male desire, not as people who, themselves, can receive sexual pleasure. This
idea calls back to the Ways of Seeing, when Berger describes the
tendency in media for women to be portrayed as something to be seen or acted upon.
Our culture often treats women as tools for the pleasure of men. As pointed out
in the article ‘Hobby Lobby,’ and a Woman’s Right to Sexual Exploration”, the
author points out “ Sexuality, for women, has been the least explored topic in
our culture. With few exceptions—among them Orange Is the New Black—emphasis on
female pleasure is lacking and long overdue. In Hollywood, displaying women’s
breasts or putting a woman’s body on display is code for “this is sexuality.”
Denying women the ability to talk about their right
to control their bodies has real world long term consequences, especially in a
culture where violence against women is so commonplace that a person accused of
sexual assault can have the highest seat in our government’s office. Our culture
has so stripped women of their rights that it even rewards their abusers, and
calls attention seekers and ridicules them for trying to speak out.
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