The Body Is Not the Enemy
Interesting post at Culturekitchen, excerpt below but you ought to read the whole thing:
"Terri Schiavo's death has affected me, not because I knew the woman, but because I know about the thing that drove her to her collapse in the first place. Eating disorders. Hatred of the body. The desire to hurt the thing that will not be controlled-the body, the female body.
"So much of what I write about comes back to the body. It is the topic I cannot stay away from. It is the source of my politics. It is the source of my art. It cannot be separated from my brain. I am not a Cartesian. It's not just that I think; it's that I feel, and I touch, taste, smell. It's that I have orgasms, that I know the touch of flesh on flesh. It is that I have felt a baby pass through my birth canal, have felt the stirring of life within me. It is that I have been penetrated by another human being. It is that I have experienced pain. It is that I have looked at my body and seen a reflection of imperfection that I wanted to fix, and in seeing that, I have starved it, purged it, wished it different. And so, having been so much an inhabitant of my body, that I declare that bodies are the site of resistance. It is that I think the government has no right to tell me which of my senses I should privilege, and which of my senses I should discipline."
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