‘My body, my choice’?
Written by Daniel & Angelika Bocchetti
This blog post accompanies a talk given by Daniel and Angelika at St Nic’s Live as part of our Christ & Culture sermon series. You can listen to the talk in full here.
The body, freedom and ‘choice’
The conversation around body and choice was triggered by a history of abuse. It is a history of abused bodies, particularly the bodies of women, ethnic minorities and the most vulnerable. The death of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd reminded some of us – some never forgot – of the horrific abuse of, and discrimination against, black bodies. In the #MeToo movement, women stood up against the reality of abused female bodies by powerful males. These abuses are, at their core, power dynamics that occur as an individual or a group seeks control over someone else’s body.
It is imperative for us as church to listen to people’s experiences and to heed their outcry. In our cultural moment one such outcry has been “my body, my choice”. It is an outcry that shouts: enough is enough; our bodies are not going to be controlled any longer. While there are different overtones to this slogan, there is a common thread: this body is mine and, therefore, I decide what to do with it. It is our vocation as church to honour and affirm the victims of abuse, to acknowledge the problem––and that includes us. Part of this vocation, however, is also to question: has this cultural resolution solved the problem? Does bodily autonomy heed the outcry of the oppressed body? Do these salvation narratives our culture preaches set us free? Perhaps the idea of “free choice” is more complex than that, and perhaps the “freedom” we have been granted does not necessarily set us free.
Fantine’s body and the captivity of ‘capitalist freedom’
There is a bitter scene in Les Misérables in which a female (Fantine) is shamed by a powerful male (Foreman). Fantine finds herself unemployed, in poverty, forced to prostitute herself to feed her child. The film expresses the tragedy of Fantine selling her (sacred) body due to power dynamics. The dynamics, however, are not merely between two individuals, but social as the community she belongs to supports, or at least is silent against, those dynamics. As a shamed woman Fantine finds no other choice available in society. She is not free; her body is abused. It is at this point that our cultural outcry is heard: Fantine should not be forced to prostitute herself but should be free to protect her body. In this cultural moment, this cry for choice (the sole expression of freedom) is coming full circle and is the main line in advocating for the decriminalisation of prostitution. If people are to be truly free, they need to be free to choose what to do with their bodies: “Fantine’s body, Fantine’s choice”. In popular culture, it is not uncommon to argue that it would be oppressive not to allow a person to sell their body if they wish to do so. The genealogy of prostitution is complex. However, we need to ask the question: was the tragedy in Fantine’s story that she could not prostitute herself out of a “free choice”? Is the problem the selling of her (sacred) body per se, or her selling of her body against her choice? Do we cry out against bodily power dynamics because they dishonour the body or because they limit our freedom? The language of freedom becomes equivocal. We have forgotten why we needed freedom in the first place.
Despite studies hypothesising ideal scenarios in which legalised prostitution could protect victims, there are at least as many studies showing that, within the engine of our consumerist, neoliberal market states, a body for sale is inevitably perceived as a product without value. As Julie Bindel puts it, the ‘position favoured by feminists including myself, and every sex trade survivor I have interviewed – is: prostitution is inherently abusive, and a cause and a consequence of women’s inequality. There is no way to make it safe, and it should be possible to eradicate it. Abolitionists reject the sanitising description of “sex worker”, and regard prostitution as a form of violence in a neoliberal world in which human flesh has come to be viewed as a commodity, like a burger.’
A study in New Zealand shows that the Prostitution Reform Act (PRA) provides employment, legal and health and safety rights for women. Yet, it does not mention whether these women chose prostitution as a dream career or whether their story is, instead, like that of Fantine, who was forced to prostitute herself due to power dynamics. The question to be asked again is, was the solution to Fantine’s problem a decent pimp, kind costumers and safer sex? To argue that sex trafficking is immoral because of coercion (and not because of the commercialisation of sex per se) ignores the fact that very few women would choose to sell their bodies were they not coerced by power dynamics, whether individual or social. The idea that women are actively choosing to be prostitutes is proven to be false by that fact that in the Netherlands ‘[t]wo-thirds of prostitutes are foreign, most often illegal, and nobody is registering them.’ In fact, ‘countries with legalised prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited’. If the #MeToo movement has taught us something, it is that choice (or consent) is never as simple as that.
There are numerous forms of psychological pressure that condition us to choose in a certain way. That is why we consider some sexual relationship to be rape even if not by physical coercion. Violence is not only physical, but also psychological.
The delusion of (modern) freedom
The “freedom” we are promised enslaves us, particularly the most vulnerable of society. It is important to pay attention to the fact that “someone” benefits from this freedom. Neoliberal market states do not try to repress prostitution, on the contrary, they foster and boost it to satisfy the consumer’s demand and profit from this new sector of the tourism industry. It is in their best interest that we are “free”. They can prophecy the desires of “free citizens” and (surprise!) they can satisfy them. The power dynamics are omnipresent, but more subtle. We are not told what we must do; we are told what we want to do and how we can be free to do it.
The selling of bodies is but one example that speaks of the complex relation between freedom and body. Freedom does not seem to be there to lead us to the “good” or to “justice”. Freedom is justice; freedom is the good; Freedom is the ultimate end. Pope John Paul II sums it up well:
“This ultimately means making freedom self-defining and a phenomenon creative of itself and its values. Indeed, when all is said and done man would not even have a nature; he would be his own personal life-project. Man would be nothing more than his own freedom!”
We become nothing more than our freedom. The problem is that “freedom” as a concept does not include the body. We abstract ourselves from the body. The body becomes a tool at the disposal of our true selves. In a new form of ancient dualism, our truest selves are made of emotions, ambitions, sexual orientations but not bodies. Bodies are either toys we idolise in a body cult, envoys we try to preserve by anti-aging technics, or tools we misuse for short-term pleasure. In either case they are our property not us. It is not a surprise that care workers who care for the bodies of the most vulnerable in society are underpaid (and underestimated), particularly those who care for the elderly. Why should anyone care for old toys/envoys/tools who are soon to be disposed of? On the contrary, those who care for our minds are highly paid and highly respected. The Netflix show Altered Carbon portrays this reality quite accurately.
Freedom in the Christian tradition
Could Paul and the Christian tradition offer us a better alternative for the freedom of the body? First: bodies matter, not as useful entities, but as sacred. Paul writes, ‘God raised the Lord’ (1 Cor 6.14). The biblical tradition values the body. The late Jewish tradition anticipated the “resurrection of the dead”. Jesus healed bodies. The church proclaimed Jesus’ bodily resurrection and believed that the saints would also be raised. God redeems our bodies because God created them. The body is ‘a temple of the Holy Spirit’ (v.19) As for any temple in Jewish literature, our body is the dwelling of God’s glory and presence. It is hard to conceive that God delights in our body. Yes, that body I often hate as I see my reflection in the mirror.
But then comes the shocker: ‘you are not your own’ (v.19b). Done! Close your Bible. This is too much. Or maybe hold on. Is this another power dynamic? Is someone else seeking control over our bodies?
‘You are not your own’, for ‘you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body’ (v.19–20). The language of “ownership”, for Paul, is not about slavery but about freedom from slavery. For Paul, we are slave to ourselves, but now we have been bought out of that. It is here that Paul redefines freedom. While for the Corinthians freedom is about liberation from restrictions, for Paul freedom is about liberation from addictions. Paul quotes a common axiom in Corinth, ‘all things are lawful for me’ (v.12), that is, as long as the law permits it, it is fine. But for Paul it is not about permission, it is about what is ‘beneficial’ and about not being ‘dominated by anything’. In our culture freedom is about self-determination; to be free is to be able not to have limits –as long as we do not limit someone else’s freedom. The “Other” becomes an obstacle to our freedom; the neighbour is ultimately a threat. In the Christian tradition, freedom is freedom from our self-determination, from a cosmic tyrant that enslaves us to our passions. No, God is not another oppressive master. We ‘were bought with a price’. The God who we are freed for is Jesus, who gave up any choice. The God who became human.
“My body, broken for you”
The addictions that hold us captive are crucified in Jesus’ death on the cross, and our bodies are valued and reoriented in his resurrection. This is Paul’s countercultural narrative, a narrative encapsulated in baptism: through the water we die and are raised to serve God. Jesus’ outcry is not “my body, my choice”, but “my body, broken for you”. The words spoken over us at Holy Communion, when we celebrate the feast of someone who died for us. He accepted not to have a choice so that we may be set free.