"What do anti-vaccers, pro-choice activists, and people with ugly tattoos have in common? They all think their body exclusively belongs to themselves."
Are you kidding me??
I woke up to this post on my Facebook feed today and only just managed to refrain from posting a vile response to this person before deciding my best course of action would be to just unfriend them.
Yeah yeah free speech, yadda yadda. But HOLY CRAP could you be more offensive to more people on the internet at one time? (Don't take that as a challenge..I'm sure it's possible.)
My problem with this post is not limited to the fact that it was an incredibly insensitive thing to say on social media. I see the issue here as being one of bodily autonomy. I am absolutely terrified to live in a world where it is not accepted that each person has sole control over their own body. This creates a buttload of issues, if you ask me. If you're saying a woman's body is not her own to control in the case of an abortion decision, are you implying that an unborn life is more important than an established one? Doesn't this open up the possibility of legitimized sexual assault? After all, a woman's body is not her own to control. She is not to be taken seriously. She cannot make her own decisions. She cannot give consent, let alone say "no" because her body does not exclusively belong to her. For that matter, women could presumably be forced into surrogacy if someone decided so because, again, women don't have control of their bodies.
How about torture? Again, legitimate because you don't have control over your body.
How about corporal punishment? Abuse in domestic relationships? Human trafficking? Physical punishment in classrooms? Forced organ/tissue/blood donation? How about forcibly injecting somebody with a diagnosed mental disorder with medication against their will? Eugenics??? Why don't we just chop off a person's arm for funsies? Doesn't matter. Their body belongs to us too.
Main point being, you may think you know what is best for someone else and society as a whole, but..actually.. you don't. I'm pretty sure chemically castrating Alan Turing because he was gay didn't make the world a better place. I mean, it caused him to commit suicide. I'll bet that prohibiting Savita Halappanavar Ireland from having an abortion, causing her to die in childbirth, really enhanced the quality of life of all of her loved ones. In the end, neither party's life was preserved as a result of this dis-allowance of autonomy. So...that was effective.
If people are allowed to have freedom of speech such that we cannot legally punish offensive messages such as these, then bodily autonomy should be a given as well. You cannot choose one over the other. Not how it works. Sorry.
I am SO SORRY that my "ugly" tattoo forcibly turned your eyes to look at it and offended you. Please, forgive me. I'll be sure to ask your approval of the next one before I get it done. Better yet, let's hold a public vote so that I don't accidentally offend anyone with my barbed wire arm tattoo.
Good? Good.
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