This week, on “Being Body Conscious,” we’re thinking about what it means to exist in a physical body, and how the outer world shapes our relationship to our bodies and how we live in them. What would it mean for us to not have to unconditionally love our bodies, but to accept them as they are? How do we listen to our bodies and reconnect with our sensual capacities? How can claiming the identities that exist in our bodies help us find community?
I noticed the term “bodies” being used in academic and activist spaces all the time when talking about marginalized people and their experiences. Black bodies, trans bodies, queer bodies. It used to make me bristle. Why are we reducing them to “bodies”? These are people. This is dehumanizing. I now realize that by thinking in terms of bodies, it actually humanizes the conversation and grounds us in reality. “People” can be amorphous. “People” exist out there. But there is an urgency felt in the body. Bodies immediately feel impact. We know we are human, not just because of our minds, but because we know how it feels.
So many of our ideological battles today are really centered around the body. When it comes to reproductive rights, trans rights, race, immigration, workers rights, it’s about which bodies we choose to see as worthy, productive, and normal. My hope is that this episode will help people re-center their bodies as the starting point of progress, because we cannot recognize our shared humanity without first recognizing our bodies ourselves.
– Angelo