169 Bodily Autonomy
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This week we discuss bodily autonomy. Our culture shows us in many ways that we don’t have true control over our bodies, so it’s no wonder that we can’t imagine a culture based on affirmative consent when we’ve been taught since childhood that there are times our autonomy can be violated or ‘overruled.’In This Episode
Bodily autonomy is something that we feel is often overlooked in so many ways in our culture. The public, of course, has a lot of discourse around abortion, and we’re starting to talk about rape and consent culture, but there are so many other ways in which our bodily autonomy is violated, especially as children. We thought it would be beneficial to tease out some of these more subtle topics to explore how we are taught that our bodies are not our own since birth, and how this relates to the way in which we deny animals their bodily autonomy as well. Topics discussed include:- Prevalence of sexual assault
- Actors/actresses expected to do anything the director tells them; ex: Al Franken/Leann Tweeden situation
- Spanking or hitting children; assigning good/bad traits to their behavior
- Prisons
- Circumcision (description of foreskin here)
- Abortion debate
- How we “atta boy” men/boys who are sexually assaulted by women; ex: Katie Perry kissing 19 year old on American Idol, teachers who sleep with their students
- Vaccines, medication, birth control – it is difficult to make informed decisions about these things as they are pushed so hard with little to no information given by medical professionals, even upon request
- Organ donation – oddly, dead bodies seem to have more rights than those with female reproductive organs
- Spay/neuter
- Leashes, shock collars
- Restrict/control food
- Clip tails, balls, ears
- Restrict vocalizations
- Control play time, where to go when
- Control socialization and environment (leave home all day, tell to go lay down)
- Take away their family
- Breed without consent
What kind of fungi loves hot goss (gossip)? (A Nichole Dinato original joke!) Bitchy Shitshow Ranty-Recaps!
Nichole hilariously recaps the martial arts movie, The Protector
Links and Information
News- Starbucks to Release Plant-Based Food Line This Year (VegNews)
- San Francisco Bans Fur Sales (VegNews)
And one more thing about Nicole’s talk about dogs coming up to people without consent.. I get it, but at the same time that can only be solved by people not having pets anymore because otherwise you have to “control” the dog so much and take away their (please don’t call them it like they are things) autonomy (they obviously don’t have much when being kept as pets in the first place) which is not right either so..
(and I’m sorry,I’m not a native speaker and don’t always find the best most fitting words to express what I want to say, I hope I didn’t come off as rude or anything)
I don’t know if you actually ever check the comments on here, I left one another time before like a few months ago and never got a response (I can also understand that even if you’ve read it, maybe you didn’t have the time or energy to answer), but if you do, I would be really interested in your thoughts on my thoughts.
Enjoy the rest of your week!
The comment about referring to dogs as things was sparked by you saying “it” while talking about them a bunch of times, I know that you don’t think about dogs as objects, but wanted to point out that it would be more sensible to use the pronoun “they” instead.
I agree with you on the issue of pets, I also listened to your episode about it. It’s just that you said that people should control their dogs better or whatever which to a point might be true, but we also can’t dismiss the bodily autonomy of the animals themselves just like that, that’s what I meant.
I appreciate your response and I of course understand that you can not check and answer every comment all the time, but thanks anyway.
I also wanted to say how much I love the show and although – or maybe because?- I don’t agree with everything 100 percent all the time (mostly minor things though), I’ve learned a lot by listening to it and I always enjoy hearing your takes on things, your sidebars and especially your rents!!