my no-no square

so, what is the obsession with policing our bodies?

from deeming certain consensual sex acts illegal, to the endless assault on abortion, to dictating who can and cannot marry, to don't ask don't tell, to victim blaming in dv and sexual assault situations, to ignoring illegal and criminal assaults/harassment against pro-choicers, fat-identified folks, women, and queer - trans - and gender-non-conforming folk, to the bombardment of fat jokes and "lose weight now" miracle ads, to the racially and gender biased workplace rules dictating appropriate appearance and attire, to the use of shapely youth images to promote sexuality, to abstinence-only education and to the recent Grenada Middle School cheerleaders and their lovely abstinence cheer "Stop, don't touch me there! You know this is my no-no square!"

(ok, for the record, i'm totally co'opting this cheer. i think i've found my pride costume!)

it seems like there is a never-ending catalogue of things we may and may not do, with our own bodies. as a survivor of societal and personal assaults and abuse around my gender and sexuality (and really - who isn't), it took me a long time until i (very recently) began to realize - it is not my body that betrayed me at all - it was "them".

them. the people policing my body, telling me how i should dress, talk, look, act, date, have sex (or not have sex) AND the people harassing my body for falling outside of these norms- the people dishing out the "consequences" of my "transgressions". but what, exactly, is the point of all these rules in the first place?

at my job, we recently had an outside facilitator run a group with the young people i work with based on spirituality and LGBT sexuality. she led us in a role play where we all pretended to be families from before-the-bible-days. we lived in neighboring communities with a certain amount of land, children and good/bad reputations (based entirely on the women's ability to produce boys, and the children's ability to refrain from getting diseases). she led us through how whole families and communities could die if their children did things such as tattoo themselves (hello fatal infections) and come out as gay (effectively stopping the needed production of child-workers for the farm). and so, she explained, a lot of rules got put in the bible that reflected the perceived survival needs of the time (NOT to mention the biased opinions of the writers) that are completely irrelevant today. she reflected that although it was very oppressive, this was the why around how it started. the next question is then, why is it still going on?

i can only imagine this to begin with a deep and collective fear about our bodies. our bodies tell us a lot of things we maybe don't want to know - like when we have a feeling we're not "supposed" to have, or a longing for something that we're taught is "bad", or even the basic insecurity that comes along when you experience someone or something that is different from you.

bodies are unpredictable things, try as you might - you just cannot control them. you can be in command of your body (ie - express your anger in a way that does not hurt or jeopardize the well-being of others), but you can't make it not feel things. you can't un-gay yourself, no matter how many exgay-camps (and come on - it's got the word camp in it people, did you really think it would work?!) you go to. but (so it seems) you can legally try to control other peoples bodies. this is a great way to deal with your discomfort about your own body and your own feelings, because you magically get to displace them on others.

feeling uncomfortable? great! choose someone with less power than you to blame it on, and you're good to go!

unfortunately this body-policing has generational consequences that are not so easily erased. we still carry with us the expectations and oppressions that the communities before us faced, only it just gets more complicated and insidious as we go on making it harder to recognize - and harder to fight (a great book to read about this idea is "Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights" by Kenji Yoshino). though depressingly enough, alongside these more subtle oppressions, there are still many unreported (and reported), extremely violent, in-your-face crimes still happening.

so - maybe the "why" of this doesn't matter, except to begin to realize that, actually, it's not your fault. that your body is yours - and should be respected and celebrated as an integral part of you. regardless of the current laws and societal consequences of the assertion.