mollyporter | Entries tagged with feminism

I consider myself a good feminist. A living-in-the-real-world, we'll-never-be-a-perfect-society-but-we-can-at-least-be-better, I-think-it's-ok-to-sometimes-laugh-at-myself feminist, but a good feminist nevertheless. But I don't consider myself someone who toes the pitchfork wielding line of extremists who tell me that I'm a bad feminist if I don't take the most radical point of view. I don't consider myself someone who is so firmly rooted in what I believe that all I can do is shout it more and more emphatically, shutting down the lines of communication with people who think differently than I do.

There's this event that has been advertised on campus for the last few weeks. It's happening this Wednesday. It's an event that, in the interest of not shutting off lines of communication with people I disagree with, I will probably end up attending. The advertising for this event has been intentionally radicalizing, blatantly one-sided, and in the case of the table-topper pictured at the top of this post, actually offensive to me. Mostly because of the hypocrisy represented in the line "IF YOU ARE A WOMAN, YOUR BODY IS A BATTLEGROUND". Excuse you, if you don't think that the blasted patriarchy you're fighting so hard against should be permitted to create a discourse that constructs my body as something I don't wish it to be (a sexual object, a childbearing object, a care-taking object &c. &c. &c.) then WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO DO EXACTLY THE SAME THING? My body is NOT a battleground on which you are permitted to stage your fight, my body is my own.

Yes, yes, yes, the body is a cultural object the meaning of which is not derived from a sovereign (ie singular and centralized) power but rather is entrenched in a cultural discourse and is constructed out of social, political, and cultural meaning. Ok, I understand that you want to shift that discourse. But how about instead of keeping notions of gender and sexuality so firmly rooted in the body you move it away from the physical body, from biological sex. How about you don't reaffirm the already existing notions of objectification of the female body by structuring it as a thing devoid of will or agency, something that is acted upon rather than something that acts. Because a battleground does not fight back, a battleground is appropriated for the use of the soldiers who fight on it. A battleground can be destroyed, ravaged, torn apart, with no final affect on the battle.

So my body is not your battleground, Sunsara Taylor. Not yours or anyone else's. And if the fliers I have seen plastered all over campus are truly reflective of your views then I fear your so-called revolution will do me as a woman more harm than good. I guess I'll see you at your event tomorrow, because now that I've critically engaged in your advertising I'd better at least see if it matches the views you present at your talk.

Edit: Attended the talk. A lot of outrage, not a lot of solutions. This is my unsurprised face.