Policing Bodies

I was asked how I was doing the other day.

I confided in the person that for all the obstacles I had been facing at that time, I was actually feeling pretty damn good. There had been a development in my personal life which was really fantastic – but I couldn’t tell her what it was.

Doing so would have meant that I’d come out a second time. And I am not yet ready to face the potential consequences of such revelations. Thankfully, and I’m deeply appreciative of this, she was fine with my lack of elaboration.

My hesitation is due from bad experiences coming out on this, even within gay/lesbian circles. It shouldn’t have to be like this. News about how I’ve come to know myself better and evolve shouldn’t be met with derision.

But we live in a society that’s terribly oppressive of those that make their body their own. That defy this society’s script as it pertains to relationships, gender roles, gender expression, sexuality, weight, and all other matters that relate to one’s body. Sexism, which is so omnipresent as to become invisible, is a big part of this.

It’s ridiculous that we would disparage people for taking ownership over their own selves. For entering into non-monogamous relationships, for being read as male and wearing a dress, for young adults fucking someone twice their age, for being HIV+ and having sex, for refusing to pass on fucked up notions of gender to the next generation. We don’t care that these are acts of the self or between consenting adults. They’ve defied the script, and that’s enough.

We judge them. We hurt them. We kick them out of our homes. We deny them jobs. We don’t let them get a roof. We make fun of them in the street. We turn them away from shelters. We make them the subject of newspaper articles. We downright hunt them. We rape them, then blame it on the fact that they didn’t follow the script – it’s because of the clothes you wore! Yes, we police bodies like nobody’s business.

There is no public discourse about how this is all really fucked up. The best we get is about how some aspects of it are fucked up – gay rights, trans rights, fat shaming – and that’s important. We don’t want to erase narratives. It’s in addition to that that this other picture needs to be deconstructed.

Not that we’re even making the great strides that we the privileged have been patting ourselves on the back over. This country barely tolerates the most arguably acceptable of these deviations, gay rights, in it’s most mundane of forms: the homonormative marriage. A third of Canadians in 2012 still opposed same-sex marriage, including more than half of Albertans. Ten years after they saw that no, the sanctity of their own marriage wasn’t magically diminished because two people they don’t know got married.

It’s fucking oppressive shit, and it doesn’t bode well for an end to this policing of bodies in the near future. There’ll be more minor wins, here and there, but until we finally take a step back and realize that the whole system needs to be smashed, we will perpetually justify our own existence against this most restrictive of scripts.

End Note: Are you a straight cisgendered monogamous couple? Fucking eh! That’s great! The point isn’t that that’s bad, it’s that this society does not tolerate anything else.

Baked Good of the Day: Vegan Coconut Milk Truffles. This was a joint effort with a friend and turned out absolutely delicious.