I’ve always disliked and never connected to the libfem focus on “the body”. There’s been a lot of theorizing built on phrases like black bodies, the pregnant body, the menstruating body
And I always interpreted this as part of the post modernist, libefem habit of adopting the oppressor view and then building in it. Patriarchy and oppressive entities see us as “bodies”. As human resources to extract from. The body and what it can provide: sex, labour, attention. When a army captain says “he needs more bodies on the ground- he’s talking about his soldiers but not them as people, but as automatons-as extensions of his force, which what the soldiers’ bodies represent to him.
Oppression doesn’t happen to bodies, though. It happens to people. People who have minds and emotions, and hopes and dreams and desires. People who feel, people who think, people who have creative ideas about their life and what they want.
There is no humanity in just a body alone. If you’ve ever seen a dead body, you already know that instinctively. Without the light of human consciousness, a body is an object. Funny enough, that’s how your oppressors see you- as an object to extract from.
So be wary of ideas and theorizing that center the body and the body only. Your humanity is not a priority for those people.
This is so fucking catholic. The complete dissonance between the body and the person.
It's like the bassis for martyrdom- suffering of the body makes the soul pure.
Begs to question if some people actually see oppression as bad because it hurts human beings, or as a shortcut to virtue.
