[ checking the tags first is recommended ]
Hahaha is it really any wonder that I’m still ready to throttle someone over that “we should celebrate our bodies” comment, is it really, is it really.
‘Cause even if you ignore the outstanding anti-ace/anti-repulsion mentality of putting a cap limit on how many of us are allowed to exist (and/or suggesting there are too many of us already) as well as implicitly advocating that people pressure themselves to be more sexual and cave in to grooming, even ignoring that —
it should be obvious what’s wrong with saying “you’re not supposed to feel body diaspora, and if you do, you’re doing existence wrong.” What the heck is that? What the heck is that? Why even bother putting up a smokescreen when you could just comment, “I hate trans, asexual, and sex-repulsed people” …?
To hell with “celebrating our bodies” if you’re going to weaponize it like that. To actual hell with it. I don’t want to “celebrate my body,” Jesus Christ. It’s just a body. It’s fearfully and wonderfully just a body. And all this pressure to “celebrate” it (’cause this comment is just one of many of its kind) has always felt weirdly like it’s more about appeasing other people than it is about doing what’s comfortable for me. It’s coercion with a smiling face, a positive guise for shame and obedience and towing the line. It’s someone handing me a prescribed, narrow role to play and labeling it “for your own good.”
And the more I think about it, the more it’s starting to sound like gaslighting.
Take your celebration and get out. Just get out.
The Ace Theist 
January 26th, 2015 at 3:27 pm
Body-positivity is sooo often anti-trans and anti-dysphoria, yeah. And just so inaccessible.
I vaguely remember the single inclusive workshop I went to, that posited like an x-y axis (kinda like those fiscal/social liberal/conservative grids), and four kinds of body politics/feelings, and interrogated how dysphoria isn’t anti-body. It was good. Only saw it the once though.
January 26th, 2015 at 4:02 pm
Interesting. If you ever come across that model again, do share.
January 31st, 2015 at 8:34 pm
I’d never actually thought of body-positivity as being anti-trans before. Huh. It…actually makes a lot of sense.
On the other hand, as someone who has struggled with poor self image for 14 years, sometimes I need body-positivity. Sometimes I need to hear that I can still be amazing despite not fitting in to society’s idea of beauty. I don’t think that it should be the end-all-be-all message, or that it should be a default mindset–there is something freeing about what you said, that a body is just a body.
It actually seems like a concept you’d think would be more included in the whole “celebrate you body” thing. There’s something very simple about it–that your beauty comes from the inside, and that your body is just a shell. Maybe something along those lines would be more inclusive. Maybe the message shouldn’t be “celebrate your body” but “celebrate yourself.”