Bodies

I have a theory that bodies offer freedom, but they are also vulnerable. Bodies are tools to access resources and power, but in trying to obtain that, one becomes vulnerable to punishment and marginalization for not conforming to the status quo.

Bodies are the focus of colonial and capitalist control. Colonialism is all about the extraction and exploitation of resources, especially land, minerals, and labor. Bodies provide productive labor. Under capitalist control, bodies are no longer vessels of pleasure, but productivity. People living in capitalist economies use their bodies for productive labor rather than pleasure. Bodily pleasure is then seen as an excess or rebellious or even dangerous waste. Colonialism and the capitalist economies it created dispossessed bodies of their sovereignty and took away their freedom, freedom to be themselves and freedom to live our their soul's unique destiny, instead putting them in the chains of slave or wage labor.

But we see time and time again that bodies resist control. When they resist control, they become sites of liberation from the chains of colonialism and capitalism. But when they practice resistance as a way to survive rather than drown in the hopelessness and helplessness of the prison of wage labor, they become vulnerable. Vulnerable to punishment and vulnerable to poverty and starvation. When bodies resist, they are marginalized. However, when they resist, they also find some autonomy and freedom.

But, by being sites of resistance and survival, this also makes them vulnerable targets. It also makes them objects of the police gaze. Their criminality and disorderliness is what makes them objects of control. This control is what leads to violence because it makes them criminals and makes them marginalized.

 

But this resistance and survival is also what gives them autonomy. It’s a strategy for getting what you need. What they need is community, humanity, and solidarity.

Let's take trans people as an example.

Trans people have decided not to accept the limits of gender.

Trans people are constantly asked to be vulnerable.

 

But being vulnerable—being open and out and not hiding—is also a strategy for getting what you need: community, resources, allies, and healthcare. 

They are vulnerable in order to get what they need, but they experience violence because of that. By being out, they are signaling their humanity and showing everyone by example how to get what you need as a human: be vulnerable and show up in your full humanity to ask for what you need.

Each time they re-claim sovereignty over their own body, they commit to transforming the reality of danger for non-conforming people. 

But trans people aren’t the only ones out there on the frontline, putting their bodies at risk so they can live out their full humanity. It’s anyone who refuses to conform to that status quo of capitalist control over bodies through wage labor. 

How can we make it safe for all people to ask for what they need? How can we make it safe for everyone to be vulnerable?