A woman’s body is NOT public property! It is not a rent-free billboard to advertise the latest fashion or fad, it is not a façade born to satisfy your aesthetic tastes, it is not a sexual toy or a publicly mandated baby incubator. It does not exist to please your eye or fulfill your idea of gender stereotypes.
A woman can dress as she pleases and is no longer bound to unhealthy standards of beauty; she will not don a chastity belt, a corset or even a bra if that does not suit her. She can shave her head, she can pierce her lip, she can get a tattoo and it is nobody’s business but her own. Nothing she wears or does not wear is in any way an invitation for assault or sexual aggression.
A woman by birth is in no way obligated to claim the color pink, the adjective pretty or a particular pronoun to placate your idea of what it means to be a girl. She (he or they) is a sovereign individual who can study and work in any field they choose and have romantic and/or sexual relationships with any consenting adult they desire. Or not—women are not obligated to be sexual creatures.
Women are also not obligated to be pleased or flattered by your unwanted sexual attention or advances. Women can smile if they feel happy or amused, but never need to smile on command to soothe your need for their compliance. If women choose to participate in the patriarchal institution of marriage, they need not take their partner’s name or automatically give their partner’s name to their children or even have children or stay home with their children if they do; all of these decisions must be made mutually, without coercion.
Women were not made from a man’s rib, and we did not get anyone kicked out of paradise. For those of you who claim to love Jesus, he bucked the traditional sexism of his time and upheld women’s rights and value. We are not going to “submit” to our husbands just because some dude wrote a letter about it nearly 2,000 years ago, and women are not here to “serve” men.
A woman in your workplace is not obligated to fetch your coffee, run your errands or listen to your problems UNLESS that is SPECIFICALLY part of her job description and she is compensated for it. Ditto for a woman who is a full-time mother and house manager. A woman’s time and effort are not less valuable than your own.
A woman’s body is NOT a reproductive machine. She is not obligated to have children and all legal mandates that deny her access to birth control, voluntary sterilization, and safe abortion access are immoral. If men want to force reproduction, they must compensate financially and emotionally for the use and wear and tear on a woman’s body or invent some artificial means of incubation. If your objective cannot be gained without holding a woman’s body hostage for nine months then your objective is not a fair or reasonable one.
Women’s bodies are not public property. Your attempts to legislate away her safe sexual expression and reproductive health are as much a violation as your attempts to sexualize her against her will. “No” always means “no” and never means “you must know better than I do about my own body and life choices”.
Women’s bodies are not public property. Until we can agree to this, there will never be gender equity. Unless we understand this, men will continue to be culturally conditioned to objectify, demean and debase women, often under the guise of being “paternal” or even “gentlemanly”.
Women’s bodies are not public property. Your attempts to own us speak only of your weakness and our strength. Slavery has been illegal in this country since 1865.
It is time to set us free.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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