More than bodies

Women’s bodies have always been a contested space. Once they were seen as merely deficient versions of the bodies of men, and even when the theory shifted to acknowledging difference, the hierarchy remained. And much of the devaluing of women was done through linking them inextricably with their bodies – it was men who were seen as the ones who could be ruled by their minds and by logic, creatures of science able to transcend the limits of their bodies. On the other hand, women were linked with both nature and nurture, meant to stay in a role defined by their bodies – by their wombs – and simply unable to transcend them.

History is replete with disproved theories and pseudo-science that placed women at the mercy of their bodies. There was the ancient belief in the “wandering womb,” which treated the uterus as if it were a living thing that could move around a woman’s body and cause all sorts of ailments; there was female hysteria, where a whole array of behaviors deemed to be problematic were ascribed to a mental disorder exclusively suffered by women, a “disorder” that was seen by the male establishment to be a natural outcome of being a woman (one need only know that the ancient Greek word for uterus is “hystera” to make the connection between one and the other.)

While men could take on any number of professions and be given a wide latitude of tolerance for any eccentricities, the only “natural” state of being for a woman was to be an obedient wife and devoted mother – and any woman that did not adhere or aspire to such a role was seen as ill in mind or body, and subject to treatment and correction for her own good.

This patriarchal mindset could see itself expressed in truly horrible forms, such as with the American “neurologists” Walter Freeman and James Watts who conducted lobotomies – making incisions into the brain (!!!) – on a great many women, most of whom were only “sick” of wishing for a different life. As Elinor Cleghorn writes in her book “Unwell Women:” “In an era when a mentally healthy woman was a serene wife and mother, any behavior or emotion that disrupted domestic harmony could be interpreted as a justification for a lobotomy. Almost all the housewives were described as suffering from depression. And the success of the lobotomy was measured according to how obligingly they resumed their household duties. For physicians faced with ‘agitated,’ ‘anxious’ or ‘obsessive’ women, the lobotomy was a quick-fix solution for ‘bringing the patient back to earth and the enjoyments thereof’.”

Surely, some may protest, such barbarism is in the distant past. But Freeman and Watts were active into the 1940s, and one of the reasons that Cleghorn wrote her book is because of her experience of male medical practitioners being dismissive of her complaints of chronic pain, telling her that it was “just her hormones,” that it was all in her mind, when in fact she was suffering from a disease I myself am intimately familiar with: lupus.

The idea of “hormones” causing the pain or symptoms of women – not that this is almost never used for men – is but one of the modern expressions of the patriarchal insistence that women are slaves to their bodies. You can see a similar mentality in the way mass media and dominant cultures continue to regurgitate without context or critical thought memes about women being “mean” or “irrational” during PMS, or pregnancy, or menopause.

There is always this underlying presumption that women must do and act in a manner defined by their bodies, dictated by their wombs. How better to allow men in power to continue to feel justified in making rules for women about their own bodies – after all, it is “for their own good.” After all, women cannot be trusted to make such important decisions, because women “are too emotional.”

Women have always had to fight to be treated as more than their bodies. Women have always had to fight to have a say in decisions made about women’s bodies. I saw that personally when I was an advocate for the Reproductive Health Law, and that fight continues even today.

There are things that do change. The fight has come to include and encompass the right to self-determination for other marginalized gender identities and sexual orientations, the fight to raise our children to be safe in their own bodies, the fight to make the idea of true consent integral and essential to any relationship.

Yet some things do not. Those in power will always try to maintain their hierarchy, at the expense of those who are marginalized. There are obstacles to overcome, complex and contested areas where science can provide no clear answers and disagreement is all but guaranteed.

But anyone who believes in the equality of all human beings, who believes in the primacy of the right of a person to be their true selves (if that does no harm to another), must have bodily autonomy as a starting point. There can and will be times when the greater good requires infringement into that space – we have seen that recently with COVID-19. But those must always remain exceptions rather than the rule.

We are more than our bodies. But our bodies are us. And we cannot be free if our bodies are not.