[Trigger reference for mentions of disordered eating and self-harm, as well as implicit theme of body policing.]
My body is mine. All mine.
It is my domain into which none may enter without my explicit and enthusiastic consent.
It is mine to care for and dress and decorate and modify and use and inhabit in whatever way I want, so long as my choices don't infringe upon anyone else's right to do precisely the same.
My hair is mine, to cut or grow or style or color or shave or not shave or keep or lose, gracefully or ungracefully, as I choose.
My skin is mine, to pierce or tattoo or scar or burn or pearl or implant or otherwise alter as I choose, to cover or reveal in measures I determine.
My bones are mine, and my blood, and all my internal organs, the parts or wholes of which I may choose to donate to someone else who needs them.
My mind is mine, and the thoughts that reside therein—my ideology, my principles, my memory, my dreams, my experience, my perceptions, my humor, my choices.
My sexuality is mine, and the things that attract and excite me. My desire is mine—who I want to fuck and how often, whether I want to fuck in the first place, and how. Who I want to love, and let love me.
My gender is mine, and the choices I make about my gender presentation, and the decisions I make about whether the corporeal body that is my own must be changed in some big or small ways to reflect the gender I know myself to be.
My teeth are mine, and my tongue, and my tonsils, and everything down to my toes.
Choices about whether and how to abuse my body, and how to define what constitutes abuse (extreme sports? binge drinking? tongue bifurcation? overeating? under-eating? smoking? skin bleaching? wearing high heels?), and communicating my boundaries for intervention to those close to me, are my own.
My reproduction is mine. My reproductive choices are my own—whether to reproduce at all, and with whom, and when, and how often. My contraceptive decisions are my own, with the input of consenting partner/s.
I make the decisions about where my body goes and where it belongs and how it locomotes from place to place.
My abilities are my own. My disabilities are my own.
My healthcare choices are my own, along with the decisions about what foods and drinks and drugs, legal and less so. How my body is best nourished is a decision that belongs to me.
I know my body, and, though I may occasionally, or often, or some frequency in between, solicit the advice of professional people who know about bodies generally, and how to diagnose and fix and care for them, I claim without qualification the unreserved right to be an expert on what feels best and right and good for my body, as a unique entity.
One day, given the opportunity, I may make a decision about when my body stops living. I have chosen who will make decisions about my body and the life it holds (or doesn't) if I am rendered incapable. My choices about what happens to my body after it is dead are mine to make.
My choices are not empirically "right." They are right for me.
Because I am an adult woman who fervently believes in the radical notion that my body is mine.
And your body is yours.
[Related Reading: Proposed.]
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