When have you felt your bodily autonomy was limited by an outside force—laws, institutions, or expectations?

• Every fucking day of my life.

  
  

• Hmmm.... when have I not?

  
  

• My entire childhood through young adulthood. Breaking away from Christianity was the best thing I could have done for myself physically and mentally. It worries me to see the church push for the amount of governing control it's gaining.

  
  

• When I was pregnant with my second child, I was STRONGLY encouraged multiple times to get my tubes tied during the birth that was going to be a c-section. It was uncomfortable and judgy. When my husband got a vasectomy a week after the birth (our family plan) he was welcomed with claps. He's a great guy, but geez.

  
  

• I was institutionalized two times as a minor. It is absolutely powerless and desperate to feel like you cannot make choices about your body or what medicines people are, forcing you to take. Not to be able to move freely in space or contribute to your own care, etc..

  
  

• The day SCOTUS released the Dobbs decision

  
  

• Sometimes it's daily for my entire life and although that sounds harsh, it's given me so many opportunities to practice steadfast commitment to my own autonomy's - to act in resistance to rigid binary gender norms, to have hard conversations about consent, to live fully in my body without guilt. It's absolutely a journey and as I age the challenges nourish my self of self and allow me to connect with others in more sincere and genuine ways.

  
  

• I think, strangely enough, high-school athletics. This falls under the expectations category. I think it was very bad for me to push myself so physically hard with zero adherence to my menstrual cycle. I would sleep sometimes only 4 hours because of homework and then have to practice hard or have games 2 hours per day 5 or 6 days/week. I ended up tearing my ACL my junior year of high-school. This is a common injury for young women because our joints get looser around ovulation and in the days leading up to menstruation because of rising estrogen and relaxing hormones that soften ligaments.

  
  

• Several times as a teenager, usually in dating situations, but also sometimes through come-ons, cat calls, or unwanted "accidental" touching or brushing up against from adult men that I didn't know well. It seemed to really stop by my mid twenties--maybe I learned to carry myself differently or maybe I just wasn't perceived as being as exploitable because of my age. Because of those experiences, I taught my daughters that when something like that happens to them to make a loud ugly scene. Embarrass the heck out of the jerk. Yell, "Stop touching me now! You do not have permission to touch my body! Get away from me!"

  
  

• I equate motherhood with the willingness to give up bodily autonomy.

  
  

• Oooof. Big question-long response. I don't recall a single cognizant day on this planet that I haven't been under the influence of other people's perceptions of what I should do with my own body. Examples: as a child, that I should be a little lady-seen and not heard as a young woman that I should attune my body for the male gaze, but not too sexy, not too modest...etc. access to prevention methods was limited, zero maternal factual guidance offered, only judgements. Walking through the darkness of body connection until I figured it out on my own and often through victimization, misguidance, mistakes, and delayed realization. I have never said to myself that "I feel like I am a fully autonomous human being." It's a very strange feeling, but legit, I mean we weren't even counted as humans in biblical times and we STILL/AGAIN don't have full rights to our reproductive decisions.

  
  

• As a child/teen: The expectation growing up of getting married and having babies and that it was my role as a woman. As an adult: being talked out of certain birth control types by providers, the question, "what does your husband think of that" when the topic is something with my body🤮

  
  

• The laws around midwifery and my choice to give birth at home. The views of what is "normal " are so limited and arbitrary that it really limited my ability to choose what was right for me.