Mina Youn
Media 384
Prof. Cacoili
April 1, 2017
In the Group 2 presentation of the
politics of sex, they raised the question, “Who owns your body?” My answer, and
the majority of the class’ answer was a variation of “me, myself and I.” On a
personal level, this is true, our bodies are our own, to do what we’d like;
however, the reality is we live in a society ruled by the government and they control
what we have access to, such as basic healthcare, and therefore, they bodies
belong to them. While I always understood this on some level, it was eye
opening to learn how much of our choices were controlled and limited. Roxanne
Gay in “The Alienable Rights of Women” writes that "whenever governments
wanted to achieve some end, often involving population growth, they restricted
access to birth control and/or criminalized birth control unless, of course the
population growth concerned the poor, in which case, contraception was
enthusiastically promoted” (268). With the new Trump administration, the
Republicans are trying to repeat history by “creating a smoke screen,
reintroducing abortion and, more inexplicably, birth control into a national
debate” (268).
As always,
with history and today, major, social and political issues are decided for the
world by a room full of powerful, heterosexual, rich, white men. The HuffingtonPost wrote an article on how another room full of men tried to dictate what happens
to women’s health care and women’s bodies. The patriarchy rears its ugly head
again on these matters of importance in female issues where they have no say
and no right simply because these powerful, conservative men feel that “men
shouldn’t have to pay for things like maternity care. Republicans argue that
premiums will go down if people can shop around more for a la carte services.”
 |
| A literal room full of powerful, heterosexual, rich, white men deciding the fates of women & their health issues. |
The satirical “Men’s Right to Know Act”
or Bill 4260, Texas Senator Jessica Farrar proposed recently was to expose the ridiculous
and sometimes cruel procedures women must undergo before an abortion. Her bill
mirrors these procedures, but for men’s health. A major part of the bill states
that: “Emissions outside of a woman’s
vagina, or created outside of a health or medical facility, will be charged a
$100 civil penalty for each emission, and will be considered an act against an
unborn child,” which many found to be hilarious and ridiculous is in line with
what women must endure. Senator Farrar proposed such a bill to make people stop
and think about women’s health, especially because of the challenges and restrictions
the Trump administration create for women’s health.
As with all
issues, the broad issue of the restriction of women’s health and power and
agency is again limited when race and socioeconomic issues enter the
conversation. If white women suffer, then women of color suffer exponentially.
Throughout history, white and mainstream feminists’ priority was legal
abortion, but as Jennifer Nelson points out in her Introduction, “women of
color pushed for a more complex reproductive rights discourse: one that
acknowledged that different women had varying reproductive experiences, in
part, depending on their race and class position” (4). The horror women of
color faced in their reproductive rights was “sterilize[ation] without their
knowledge or consent” (5).
 |
| Why should the government control women's bodies? |
The unfair
and frankly outrageous attempts at controlling women’s bodies and subduing
their agency is part of our history that sadly continues today in 2017. Women who
desire safe and affordable health care, who want a right to choose whether or
not she wants to undergo an abortion, who simply want a means of birth control
are demonized as murderers and whores. If however, the situation was reversed,
and men were the ones who became pregnant and desired all of the above, access
to abortion, contraception and health care would be unlimited, free and
everywhere. Women’s bodies and their health issues, such as pregnancies, affect
our societies as a whole. What these heterosexual, rich, white Republican men don’t
seem to understand is that, like healthcare, people’s live cannot be prioritized
a la carte. As long as we live in this society together, we must all make those
decisions together.
Works Cited
Gay, Roxane. "The Alienable Rights of Women." Bad Feminist. Harper Perennial. 2014,
pp. 267-279.
Nelson, Jennifer. "Introduction." Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights
Movement. NYU Press. 2003, pp. 1-20.
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