To watch this video, click the following link:  THIS IS MY BODY, NOT YOURS.

I came across this video featured by UPWORTHY, a website that aims to provide content that may be disturbing to some and relevant to others.  They are social media with a mission, they say. They also claim to be non-partisan. However, they do have a few biases:

But we do have a point of view. We’re pro-gay marriage, and we’re anti-child poverty. We think the media is horrible to women, we think climate change is real, and we think the government has a lot to learn from the Internet about efficiency, disruption, and effectiveness.

And then there are dozens of issues where our curators disagree with each other — areas where there’s legitimate debate to be had amongst well-meaning people. We try to encourage that debate by curating great pieces of content that represent different sides.

I happened to click on their offering this morning and was wowed by this video. In five minutes, women from all backgrounds, shapes, sizes, colors, and persuasions talked passionately about a reality that is here and now:  that women are comfortable in their own skin, in their voice, and in the power they have come to realize they do possess.

All through the video, you will hear the words repeated over an over, as though it’s a punctuation, “This is my body, not yours.”

What it boils down to is choice.  Women want to make their own decision on how they are to use, treat, decorate, protect, shield, save, heal their bodies. It’s all about women being able to choose what is right, not a decision made by a third-party, a patriarchal societal dictate, a political or religious organization, or some twisted dysfunctional need for a group, whether organized or not, to control, demean, dominate, enslave, belittle, whether blatantly or in the guise of protection, paternalistic care, religious morality.

Through the expose, there were references to the Susan Komen Foundation’s faux pas with their attempted withdrawal of funding Planned Parenthood screening activities, the questions on the merits of decreasing the frequency of mammograms, the religious organizations’ refusal to fund oral contraception to their employees who want or need it.

There were repeated allusions to groups using government legislation to limit women’s access to medical care and to dictate how women’s reproductive and sexual health care is to be carried out.  Insane laws as subjecting a woman to a mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasound before she has an abortion so she would hear/see echoes of the fetus.  Can you imagine being a rape victim and being subjected to unwanted sexual penetration with a blunt object—again? And for pregnant women who are not rape victims, this is tantamount to legislated rape by a rigid phallic blunt instrument.  Yes, really!  Rape does include not just penetration with an unwanted penis but also of any unwanted inanimate object!

There was mention of women having the right to seek sexual pleasure, just like men.  Why not?  Are orgasms to be rightful achievements for men but deniable and shameful to women?  Are women who want, seek, and reach orgasms dirty, inferior, wanton, unclean, impure, unworthy? Tsk, tsk, tsk.

One Of These Does Not Belong In Private Reproductive Health Care Decisions (Photo credit: Occupy* Posters)

And then there was the issue of abortion.  Ooooh.  Sensitive and explosive issue. Sigh!  All I can say is, the views on this should really be reviewed to keep abreast of the progress in medical and technical discoveries and advancements, not limited to some edicts handed down through repeated oral recitations over the last 4000 years. (Oral recitations, by the way, are prone to variations in interpretations and memories. We are all quite aware of false memories and their consequences). There are many laws and practices, customs and traditions that evolved out of necessity considering the climate of the time or era.  There is no denying it.  There are also those that evolved for largely political reasons as well.

A white ribbon to commemorate the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women

None of these women aim to infringe on other people’s morality or religious liberties.  They only ask that these people not infringe on their rights— to marry who they want whether it’s a man or another woman, when and how they get pregnant, to equal opportunity for work and pay, to proper health care with none of these religious and political restrictions, to education, to divorce, to safety and protection under the law, to respect and dignity, and complete equality.

I believe the time has come. And so, for all the authorities out there from government, legislative, political parties, religious groups, social groups, Boy Scouts of America and the like, the Todd Akins of this world— no woman in her right mind in this day and age will give you her ears nor eyes, her attention, her support, least of all, her vote, unless you redefine your thinking of us women!

It’s my body, not yours. So stop telling me what to do with it because I don’t tell you what to do with yours.

Thank you for reading this all the way down to the end. Let’s support the move to end violence against women today, February 14, 2013:  ONE BILLION RISING

Related articles

• Another Victory For Women’s Rights: Arizona Loses Battle To Defund Planned Parenthood (addictinginfo.org)
• Transvaginal Ultrasound: Rape Is Not A Medical Procedure (crooksandliars.com)
• 2012’s War on Women (prospect.org)
• Of Rape and Roe (inthesetimes.com)
• My womb. My choice. (thenotsoquietfeminist.wordpress.com)
• The American Bishops, Contraception, and Gender Discrimination (verdict.justia.com)
• United Kingdom Pledges to Ensure Abortion Access for War Rape Victims (prweb.com)
• How Upworthy Makes Social Change Pop Online Like Cat Videos (fastcompany.com)
• Where Consensual Sex is Rape, and Forced Sex a legal right. (indianhomemaker.wordpress.com)