“Why you so obsessed with me?” — women of color to the government
Among the many issues of the conservative agenda stands the issue of abortions and the availability of birth control to low income women. With the recent election of Donald Trump for the upcoming presidential term, many women are afraid they will lose their contraceptive rights if he goes through with the defunding of such programs as Planned Parenthood, which provide a multitude of affordable services to women all over the country. The goal is to push good morals. Don’t sin and have sex, and don’t “kill unborn children” through abortions. This program defunding is meant to put some morality back in a society that, god forbid, has become more open to bodily autonomy and sex education.
But while Americans at home are in the process of being denied access to contraceptives and family planning, the United States government has had a history of sending cash overseas to give women in other countries just that. We have been a part of programs to control population overseas with literally millions of dollars given to the United Nations Population Fund to help with “the unmet need for contraceptives.” It is supposed to be an altruistic move on the U.S. government’s side because they want to lend a helping hand in foreign poverty and hunger.
But how can we put a limit on birth control within our home country but continue to support the distribution of it on foreign soil? Are these two contradicting government actions really both meant for the greater good? Is it really about morality at home and helping out our struggling neighbors?
Something just doesn’t add up.
Michel Foucault has created a discourse that suggests that in trying to contain sexuality, we are actually a sex-obsessed society. We want to know everything the other does in the bedroom. He takes it a step further in saying, “one had to speak of [sex] as a thing to be not simply condemned or tolerated, but managed, inserted into systems of utility, regulated for the greater good of all.” Foucault seems to think that we not only want to talk about sex, we also want to control the sex that others are having.
This idea definitely makes an appearance in the policy we are seeing today.
We, live in a sex obsessed society with people in power that want ever so badly to control our bodies and sexuality.
Our government in particular is concerned with controlling sex, especially that of brown women, and have taken to public policy to exert power over those bodies.
The population most affected by the defunding of Planned Parenthood would be low-income women of color. Those clinics are a major source for brown and black women to gain access to all types of birth control and a sex education, things that empower women to have autonomy over their bodies. Taking that away puts more control over those bodies in the hands of government.
The implementation of “Family Planning” programs overseas is essentially a form of population control for women of color. Government action is again limiting the autonomy of a woman to choose if and when she has children because policy is dictating that women in general need to be limited on the number of humans their bodies can bring into the world.
Both of these situations imply that women need to be controlled, as if we cannot have autonomy over what goes in and what comes our of our bodies. As if we need help making decisions related to sex. Shouldn’t we then keep Planned Parenthood’s resources and also use sex education overseas to empower women with knowledge to enhance the making of those decisons?
At the end of the day the issue doesn’t seem to be about the morality of America, or the greater good of the population. It has way more to do with government’s obsession with brown and black women’s bodies.
Our bodies are amazing, yes, but they are not for your control.
While obsession with the beauty of women of color’s bodies is plausible due to the beauty of them, taking control of them is not the right way to go about those feelings. Women need to be empowered enough to know about our bodies and decide what we do with them, without the dictation of anybody other than ourselves. Government doesn’t need to have a say in our sexuality and all that it entails. Our bodies are ours and ours only.
