IIRC, you’re dating a trans-identified person, right? I was wondering if you had any thoughts on how to tell if a relationship with someone with that much political distance is worth the shot. I’m not really a radfem, just a sort of gender skeptic, but I’m in a similar boat and I feel weird about it. I’m not sure what the best way to proceed is.
it’s hard to advise on how to tell whether it’s worth it to take a shot with someone or not. i suppose my question would be, what kind of political distance is there between you and the other person?
my partner considers themself non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, but doesn’t consider themself trans. their NB situation has more to do with discomfort with the social role of women and personal experiences with misogyny than belief in gender souls or changing sex. this makes it a lot easier for us to be in a relationship because we mostly agree on things. because misogyny is a motivator for them, they understand the importance of sex and female class consciousness.
it was also crucial that i never held my beliefs back from them, both in the sense that they didn’t feel duped and i never felt like i was censoring myself.
so, how to tell if it’s worth it to try…don’t hide your thoughts or self, it’s okay to not see entirely eye to eye on things as long as your non-negotiable values are shared, and you really like each other. without knowing you or the other person, that’s all i got. good luck with whatever you choose.
I no longer have the energy to read these kinds scribes in full because it’s always more of the same: pretending to not know what feminism, pretending women are saying something we aren’t. It’s just so energy sucking.
Honestly, seeing “women” as a turf to be defended, as opposed to a set of imperatives and limitations to be criticized, challenged, changed.
Catherine Mckinnon I am not a set of imperatives. I am not a turf to be challenged or defended. I am a human being.I’m not territorial over the word woman, they can use any sound with their mouth to refer to me they want. But what sound will I use with my mouth to say that I am a alive, experiencing consciousness in a human body which is persecuted on the basis of being of the female sex.
Victoria Smith wrote this article about how heartbreaking this is (she compares trying to define radical feminism without saying women are a sex class, to those creative writing exercises where you try not to use the letter “e” in a whole story):
That bit about “I am not a turf to be defended” is SO IMPORTANT and central to this whole thing. The way the right wing is starting to own this question, they absolutely DO talk about “woman” as an identity or turf to be defended. The Posie Parker rhetoric is full of this. So Catharine MacKinnon assuming the "terf" position is about defending the "woman identity", when a lot of us don't really care at all about the woman identity, we care about the material needs of women, is a huge problem.
I’m so happy Victoria Smith called her out on this.
We’re fucking tired of being fed shit and being told it’s gold and if we can’t recognize it’s gold it’s because we don’t understand some super duper sophisticated analysis. Academia is filled with this and it’s worse than stupid now, it’s EVIL.
Fuck, I'm not even sure if i can bring myself to read this piece. So many of my intellectual and feminist/lesbian icons (including margaret atwood, judy blume, billie jean king, bell hooks, and now catherine mackinnon) have absolutely abandoned the courage of their convictions and all of their principles in recent years in order to spare themselves from the mob.
Within the last five years or so, each one of the women I just mentioned has either a) flipped on her feminist principles after succeeding in a field that feminism helped them break into (cough cough billie jean king going all in on supporting and calling for MtF tennis players to compete in female tournaments after her own retirement, despite never having had to play against males herself) or b) gone out and made public statements that, at first, appeared to acknowledge the existence of women’s sex-based oppression or female people as a class, only to immediately do a 180 and walk back their commentary after receiving the tiniest amount of pushback.
I think seeing what’s happened to JKR in the public square has really escalated a culture of fear among even very high-profile feminists and female writers, which of course is unfortunately the point. Especially how it’s not going away even years later, like this is proof positive that even when women express their opinions as kindly and diplomatically-stated as JKR did, it’s still a huge endless fucking deal and she’s still facing insane abuse and the seeming widespread societal conclusion that she’s an evil unmentionable bigot. While I can understand not wanting that to happen to you, I don’t see how that fear could ever justify betraying the entire body of feminist work you’ve crafted over nearly a lifetime in the field.
i began reading mackinnon’s piece, but it’s so full of bad faith arguments and mischaracterization of feminism…it’s honestly embarrassing. i am embarrassed for her.
she does not explain WHY one might think males who claim to be women would be welcomed. just states it like it’s common knowledge. i’m open to hearing her argument here but there is none.
it does not strike me as self evident that there is a certain subset of men that women would be happy to consider also women. it strikes me as thinly veiled homophobic rhetoric and actual biological essentialism—“leaving masculinity behind” as of being a woman/“embracing womanhood” requires leaving masculinity behind. embarrassing argument for mackinnon to be making here.
she again needs to explain herself here. no radfem who knows anything about feminism conflates “female sex” with “feminine gender.” the accepted position of radical feminism is actually the exact opposite—women are female, not not necessarily feminine. there is no wrong way to “be” a woman; the word is not a carefully delineated category into or out of which movement is even possible, it is merely the linguistic extension of female that is specific to adult humans in the same way “kitten” describes a baby cat. my cat plays fetch and i sometimes jokingly call him “puppy cat” but it’s universally understood that he doesn’t belong at the dog park, right?
“reverting,” as though this definition of woman is somehow regressive. this is a linguistic feint meant to make an emotional appeal and it’s again embarrassing for a smart academic to be making this and all her other arguments in this piece.
“defining women by biology” is NOT biological essential!! and i have to believe mackinnon knows this because…cmon this is undergrad level shit. which makes this a bad faith argument she should again be embarrassed by.
biological essentialism is ascribing a biological basis to behaviors/roles/preferences, like “women are naturally submissive” or “it’s nature for women to enjoy looking pretty;” mackinnon is not just wrong here, she’s lying.
again with the “reduction” language. no radical feminist is saying women are nothing more than female bodies, just that a female body is the one and only requirement for being a woman, and then that woman can live whatever type of life she wants!
“qualities chosen so whatever is considered definitive if sex is not only physical but cannot be physically changed into.” i am so so so embarrassed for this grown woman who is an academic to really be making this argument—first that the definition of sex has been “chosen,” as though it was concocted rather than observed, then that the physical, corporeal locus of sex is somehow arbitrarily arrived at, that there is some other locus of sex into which one CAN change but the mean women have picked the rigid physical categories not because it best reflects the shared reality of women, but because it excludes men. embarrassing to make the argument that women have defined our entire existence as a reaction to men.
i couldn’t keep reading. so embarrassed for her and incredibly let down.
hello I was hoping to get advice on running! i was never particularly athletic but started doing couch to 5k and have just hit the 3mi mark but it’s TOUGH and I don’t really feel like I can easily do it. How do I get better at running, and faster and be able to hit longer distances? is it just practice? it seems so far out of reach 😭 my hip also hurts when I run but is that just because I’m bad at running?
hey, congrats on hitting your 3 mile mark, that’s incredible! i remember the first time i ran 3 miles and it was also tough. one thing i know now was i was going way too fast!
the answer to most of your questions is to just run more, but i would specifically advise slowing down as you run more.
slow down so much it seems easy and you could have a chat while running those three miles. it might feel “too slow,” and might seem silly to go that slow, but this is how you a) make three miles not feel tough, b) go longer distances, and c) get faster. this is also how you preserve your own mental fortitude by not making running miserable all of the time.
running is miserable some of the time, and i would even venture that it should be miserable a very slim sliver of the time, like when you’re doing hill repeats or sprinting or you just hit mile 24 of a marathon. but i digress.
also, the slower you run the farther you can go. if you want to go farther and eventually get faster, you need more time on your feet; more time running causes physical adaptations in your body that make running easier/more efficient. and importantly, you cannot force these adaptations by going faster or farther than you’re ready to, you can only injure yourself this way.
if you wanna go farther and faster, you can’t increase both at the same time. your body isn’t adapted to both, and asking it to adapt to both is a recipe for injury. pick either distance or speed to increase and do so very cautiously. finishing a workout and feeling like you’ve still got gas in the tank is a good thing.
and at the beginning of your running journey, just running more is likely going to improve your ability at both speed and distance.
idk how many miles you’re running per week, but the common idea is, don’t increase your mileage more than 10% per week. so if you ran 10 miles this week, no more than 11 next week.
about the hip pain—right out the gate, this isn’t medical advice and i recommend a physical therapist, which is how i cured my own hip pain when i first began running. she identified muscle imbalances in my body—namely that my thigh muscles were a lot stronger than my glutes, which were not activating during running and my thigh muscles and my hip flexors were overcompensating, hence the pain. so your issue could be strength based, and strength training is incredibly helpful to running even if that’s not the source of your pain. it could also be to do with your gait when running, which is something a PT can help you sort out. i had to change my gait significantly in addition to strengthening my glutes to sort my pain. another possible culprit is your shoes. your running shoes might be old, after about 500-700 miles, you should retire your shoes; after about 300 miles shoes will start to be affected by the use. so if your shoes are old or aren’t exclusive or specifically running shoes, time for new ones.
it could also be that your shoes are not the right specs for your body/gait. i run in shoes with a high drop (10mm), which is the distance between the heel and the toe of the shoe. i once tried to change brands of shoes and switched to an 8mm drop thinking i’d be fine, but i was not fine. i had tendinitis in my achilles for two months following ~60 miles in the new shoes. i went back to a new pair of my old shoes and the tendinitis went away.
SO that’s a lot way to say idk see a PT.
and while soreness is to be expected and a little ache or two, running shouldn’t cause real pain, and if it is, that’s a sign somethings up. it doesn’t mean you’re a bad runner either, it just means you need to pay attention and make some adjustments.
don’t seek a destination (like getting faster) when running, just run. it’s not going to be a steady incline of progress where each run improves on the last. your ability to enjoy the act of running itself will help you stick with what can be a lifelong hobby. and that brings me back to—slow down.
and as for running in the heat, it will always be harder than running in cool/cold. my paces drop significantly in the heat no matter how much i run in it. it also makes you sweat more, which means you’re losing (and thus need to replace) more water and more electrolytes when running in the heat vs running in the cool.
be kind to yourself. if running feels hard one day, whether it’s because of heat or because of life stress or bad sleep or whatever, just go easier so you can enjoy it and stick with the habit—this will almost always lead to improvement, but it certainly won’t make you worse at running.
when we say trans women are male and trans men are female, we are not saying they deserve to be discriminated against or that their dysphoria doesn’t matter. we are saying biology exists and matters in certain contexts.
when we say we won’t date trans women because we’re lesbians, we are not saying trans women don’t deserve to have happy, fulfilling relationships. we are saying that we are not romantically or sexually attracted to them and so that neither of us would have a happy, fulfilling relationship if we dated.
when we say we are gender critical, we are not saying everyone should be gender-conforming. we are saying the opposite, that men and women should be free to dress and act however they like instead of being forced into certain gender roles based on their sex.
when we say female-only safe spaces are important, we are not saying trans-only or mixed safe spaces aren’t also important. we are saying that based on our biology, women have certain shared experiences and face specific oppression that we deserve to be able to discuss among ourselves.
when we say one thing and you hear another, that isn’t our fault. when you’re ready to listen to what we actually believe or to have a genuine discussion, we’ll still be here.
Amanda is a producer for National Public Radio’s show 1A and tomorrow’s is about lesbian bars. They’re doing an open call for audience input (they share and discuss voicemails during the show). Feel free to send to folks you know!
Tomorrow’s show:
In the 1980's there were roughly 200 lesbian bars. Today, there are less than 30. We sit down with Krista Burton the author of "Moby Dyke" who journeyed around the U-S to visit all of them and find out why they're disappearing. If you frequent a lesbian bar in your town, we'd love to hear what this space means to you. Or, if you don't have a lesbian bar in your area, how does the lack of space affect the way you connect with your community?
Call us: 8-5-5, 2-3-6, 1-2-1-2.
How do you think spaces for lesbians and queer women have changed over time?
Leave us a voicemail: 8-5-5, 2-3-6, 1-2-1-2 or a message with our app, 1A Vox Pop. And we’ll get to your stories tomorrow on 1-A.
I don’t think y’all want to hear this, but the right is gaining a lot of ground in the US and I believe it’s found a way to replicate the success it’s had in radicalizing men by taking a different approach with women: pretending to be the only ones willing to listen to women’s concerns over trans issues and then slowly introducing anti-abortion, anti-gay, and other conservative rhetoric.
I just got an ad on youtube from a rightwing legal organization that framed the issues around trans athletes and female sports as an attack on personal freedoms and said it was on par with gay couples adopting. this organization was instrumental in overturning roe v wade, and it is not stopping any time soon.
make no mistake: these people are not radical feminists. and they don’t pretend to be. but I need y’all to start paying attention to the feminists who call out rightwing rhetoric in trans discourse and stop dismissing us as “divisive” and “too focused on ideological purity to get shit done.”
if someone questions why pediatric transition is being framed as a matter of “parental rights” (which this legal organization is also heavily pushing for) instead of, say, framing it as a matter of patient/children rights, take a moment to understand why that may be problematic down the line. do we want a parent to have the right to put their gay kid through conversion therapy? do we want a parent to have the right to stop their daughter from having an abortion?
I don’t care for ideological purity, I care about not empowering an already powerful group of people that is directly attacking women.
Why do those who do not have transsexualism / GID pursue transitioning?
(originally published on twentythreetimes.tumblr.com on 22Jun2013. This is my work; I am 23xx. Minor edits/updates made.)
This is the most common question I see people asking in regards to detransition. Like many queries about us, I think this is the wrong question but I will answer it as best I can in light of my personal experience. Most people assume that one who detransitions must not have been trans in the first place, but it’s not that simple.
It seems that people often associate the stereotype of the feminine-“transtrender”-boi with FAAB detransitioners. This may put things in a nice little box for masculine trans guys trying to feel better about themselves, but it’s really not realistic.
As a child, I would regularly feel a deep sadness about being a girl. Periodically, from about age four to sixteen, I spent several days (for lack of better phrasing) in mourning for my gender. I didn’t know why it made me feel so sad to be a girl that early on. As I got older, I was increasingly jealous of how my brother was treated. Despite what my parents still claim, there was a stark contrast in every aspect of our upbringing. When I was about sixteen, I started cross-dressing when I was home alone. I put on my father’s clothes and used household items to pack with. I felt really awkward about my genitals sexually, to the point that I gave up touching myself for the most part for years. I wasn’t able to get myself off until I learned to envision myself as male in sexual contexts.
I have always been very flat-chested, so I have never been too dysphoric about it. That wasn’t really a factor that could help me determine how I felt about my gender, like it is for many trans guys. I wore a binder early on presenting as male so I would feel less self-conscious even though no one else could really tell the difference, but after going on T I didn’t need it at all.
Before learning about what being trans was, I described myself in a journal from when I was nineteen as “gender-variant.” Soon after that, I started going to this trans group on campus and I felt like I finally fit in somewhere and found others like me. Trans guys I met there shared the same feelings and insecurities as I did.
I saw a psychologist and multiple therapists. I received an official diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder. I felt dysphoric about my scrawny arms, my hips, my thighs, my soft featured face. I sometimes felt the sensation of a phantom penis. I packed about 50% of the time as a guy. I saw myself as being transsexual, not transgender. I saw my condition as purely medical. Testosterone was my medicine.
I was the typical, classic case “true transsexual.” I didn’t go back and forth on what my identity was. I was completely secure in being a man. This decision was cemented by my sexual dysphoria: nothing in the world hurt more than not being able to have sex with my girlfriend like a cis man.
I didn’t deceive my doctor or lie to my therapist. I didn’t rush my decision. Six months after socially changing my name and living as male 100% of the time, I had the opportunity to go on T. I really wanted to but ended up canceling the appointment and deciding I wasn’t ready. I waited another year and went back to the doctor, this time leaving with a prescription for Testosterone Enanthate.
your story matches mine almost exactly. i also felt a deep sadness about being a girl; i felt inadequate compared to men when i was in sexual situations with women, which made me uncomfortable with my own genitalia; i saw myself as a “transsexual,” not “transgender” and it was purely medical in my mind, so testosterone was simply a medicine i needed; i also had an appointment for T, but postponed for about a year before taking that step (though i left that first appointment with a script, which was ridiculously easy to get, i filled it and did one shot, felt overwhelmed and didn’t resume taking testosterone for a year); i also received a diagnosis of Gender Identity Disorder; i felt seen among other “trans guys.”
and yet here we are.
i think trans people can find stories like ours uncomfortable because when detransitioners are just “transtrenders” or people who rushed transition or people who didn’t pass and couldn’t take the abuse or people who had unsupportive families and lives, then it’s easy to say, “well i’m none of those things so detransition won’t happen to me,” but we’re proof that that’s not enough to keep you from detransitioning; the only protection from detransitioning is living in denial about the reality of transition.
dear nonbinary women, do you not think other women are human too? do you think we're born with the desire to cover our real faces in pretty carcinogens and dress up our bodies like we're dolls? do you think we're born to nurture? do you think we're born to be consumed? why have you accepted that this is all women are, that you alone are more human than the rest of us? what if all women feel just as much as you do?
"well i'm nonbinary and i love wearing makeup and being feminine" let me refer you to another of my notable works on the subject:
enby women are like yes i love makeup and fashion and looking cute and demure but i don't want to be seen as a woman because on the inside i'm a real human person
isn't it so much fun how people say "feminism should focus on solving racism and homophobia and transphobia and ableism and classism because patriarchy won't end until all these other issues are solved" all the time but absolutely no one ever says any other movement should try to solve misogyny. almost like it isn't about ending patriarchy at all and is actually a strategy to devalue and deprioritize activism that centers women's rights
you are 100% right, but i see it as both the above AS WELL AS an implicit threat. a preemptive justification for inaction; you won’t get your liberation from patriarchy and no one will help you unless you first focus on XYZ , and also no one can help with women’s oppression because we all must focus on the problems that matter.
i got invited (today) to run a half (13.1 miles) this weekend, but i’ve never run one with so much vert (3,000+ feet) and i have not been training for that, so this could be an invitation to suffer. not sure whether to accept.
trying to pro con it
pro: beautiful course, meet my partner’s lesbian cousin and her fiancé, get to try something new and hard, camping and food and beer at the event
con: real chance i’m biting off more than i can chew and can i handle it if i DNF or run significantly slower than i’m used to? aka my ego is afraid
pro: it is probably a good thing to challenge my ego if this is what it’s afraid of? i can do hard things
con: maybe have to run alone and have NO idea how to approach a half on a trail up a mountain wrt pacing the race. also i don’t own trail shoes
pro: that’s kinda exciting to walk blindly and confidently into a hard new thing tho. and i’ve run plenty of trail in my road shoes…
the "true self" isnt REAL there is no ideal you hiding somewhere that you need to unearth thats a FANTASY you can change yourself but its no more "real" or "true" than who you were at any point BEFORE or AFTER right fucking now
You're not transmasc/nonbinary in spite of your conservative upbringing but because of it
Your parents and your culture growing up taught you that women are weak and subservient and must be feminine and obedient and exist to please others and be looked at and lusted after. That's not what you want to be, and rather than expanding your definition of womanhood, rather than realizing women don't have to be like that, you slap a label on yourself to differentiate yourself from all other women, who are definitely like that. Women get harmed and raped and humiliated and you want to feel proud and dignified and safe. You're not like them, that's why you feel that way. Women don't have complex thoughts and personalities. They're nothing like you and you're nothing like them. You're nonbinary.
Your parents and culture have taught you that men are strong, reliable, that their opinions are heard and respected. They're in charge, they're dominant, they can never be hurt. You don't question that image, you aspire to be like that. You're not a weak woman who is worthless, your opinion matters, you matter, so you're a man. You're safe from rape and abuse now, you feel valued and unashamed, and that's not what women feel like. They're happy to be put in their place, you're not. You're a transgender man.
You're so deep entrenched in the gender hierarchy you don't even notice a world exists outside of it. You don't see that women and men come in all possible nuances of every personality under the sun: you were never taught that's possible. You're not getting out of that pit of your upbringing. You're digging it deeper and painting it sparkly purple.
problem w radical feminism today is tumblr is full of thoughtful, insightful women who have read feminist theory and live according to feminist values who are like hmm i don't subscribe to every particular detail of radical feminism and i dont dedicate 50% of my time to a womens shelter so i cant call myself a "radfem" per se and then twitter is full of women who are like im a radfem cause god said men cant wear dresses
a few months ago i saw these bitter disgusted posts by a lesbian on here about how nauseating she finds it to look at post-mastectomy detrans women’s bodies and obviously she had a situation with extreme squeamishness at any sort of depiction of wounds or scars in Any way, so i don’t think its root was in hatred of us specifically but the way she expressed it was so close-minded and unwilling to see anything from our perspective or feel any compassion for the suffering that led us to full-on 180s in terms of our identities and perceptions of ourselves. and she said we “have other options in life than romance” and essentially should give up on love entirely since in the PAST we must not have prioritized it if we were willing to rule out our chances at a typical, normative lesbian sex life in an unaltered body— as if our past preferences are something we hold true ETERNALLY and can never change— which is fundamentally at odds with my lived truth, which is that, whether gradually or seemingly shifting in an instant, we can have a different perception of ourselves, perhaps a mirror opposite even, than we once had. and i don’t really have the time to waste explaining that to someone who doesn’t care about my experience, and most people are intrigued and curious and willing to listen, anyway. the oddest thing is she was unwilling to accept that this was not just HER personal (and completely acceptable, in terms of boundaries) belief; she ascribed it to ALL LESBIANS. (when i sent an anonymous message to her saying, i am someone who had a mastectomy at 16, she immediately accused me of lying. lol.) but i’m here to tell you that what she said is false because i’m now in the healthiest and most open in communication relationship i’ve ever had, with a lovely and sweet and compassionate woman who is also a lesbian, who sees me for who i am and is able to comfort me, and be attracted to me, despite the fact i had a body-altering surgery at the age of 16. there are lesbians out there who care about people like us. don’t ever give up hope. love u ❣️🌸🌈
i feel sorry for whatever she’s going through, but my mastectomy has not (noticeably) impacted my dating/sex life at all. before i was with my partner i was dating plenty of women, i had a lot of lovely sexual encounters with other lesbians who found me attractive, and now my current partner (bisexual but only dates women) also finds me attractive.
i always think, something tragic can happen to our bodies at any time in this life. you can get a big scar from an accident, lose limbs or digits, get bitten by a brown recluse spider and lose your calf muscle to necrosis! don’t sweat it. bodies are different and beautiful and women are weird and sexy all the time. if someone isn’t attracted to you for whatever reason that’s their business.
a close friend from childhood who i played hockey with for many years requested to follow me on IG and i, also curious, followed her back. as curious as i was about what sort of person she’d become, i was anxious wondering what she would think of who i’ve become—openly lesbian, masculine, post-mastectomy (the absence of my breasts is evident from pictures).
then i navigated to her profile and scrolled through her images, fascinated by the extent to which she’d become a hyper-feminine woman, a sharp contrast to the girl i knew growing up. full-face makeup, clothing that accentuates her bust and butt, posing for pictures to achieve a similar appearance, potentially having had breast implant surgery (obv i don’t know for sure, but her breast size is much bigger, and i knew her through college).
i was just sort of struck by how similar our divergent paths really were, how inescapable patriarchal expectations were for both of us, the ways those expectations have shaped our life experiences and our bodies. we represent two extreme reactions to the expectations of women. i hope she’s doing okay.
When a political group wants to strategise so that its members can arrive at agreed-on political tactics and ideas, they call for, and create, separate spaces. These might be in coffee shops, in community centres, in one another’s homes or in semi-public spaces such as workers clubs, even cinemas. When the proletariat was rebelling, they did not ask the capitalists and aristocracy to join them (even if a few did); when the civil rights movement started it was not thanks to the ideas and politics of white people (even though some whites joined to support the cause); when the women’s liberation movement sprang into life, it was women joining together to fight against their oppression.
The difference is that women are supposed to love men. And while there may well be love across classes and ethnic groups, religions and languages, there is not an expectation that this should happen. In the case of women, this expectation remains no matter how tolerant a society claims to be. These arguments would not be so intense if trans people were supporting women (and some do), but most seem intent on undermining feminist actions and the need for women to be able to have gatherings without men present (whether transitioning or not).
i hate to be this person because i used to roll my eyes at people who told me this but finally making myself go through uncomfortable situations for the possibility of joy has resulted in me being happier than i ever could have imagined being. i do think that you should always listen to yourself but i prevented my own happiness for a long time by not knowing how to tell intuition from overthinking and being too afraid and sticking to negative what if’s when i should have been sticking to positive what if’s. not every venture outside your comfort zone will result in some revelation that moves the earth under your feet but the probablilty of it is zero if you never venture out
Women and girls should not be emotionally excluded from our own bodies. They are our space, our selves; they belong to no one else. Often, it is unsafe for us to say it, let alone feel it. We must grab every chance we can.
“it should be possible to live without constant falsification. It should be possible for a woman to live – without feeing that she is starving on the doorstep of plenty – as light, remarkable, strong and free.
Women and girls should not be emotionally excluded from our own bodies. They are our space, our selves; they belong to no one else.”
