What does Palestine have to do with Body Liberation?
If you receive my newsletter, you've heard about my engagement with Palestine liberation. You may be wondering, "What does Palestine have to do with my relationship with my body?"
The short answer is:
everything.
The medium answer is: the same oppressive systems. The systems behind the oppression of Palestinians are the same systems behind the oppression of Black people, indeginous people, people of color, disabled people, women, trans-people, queer people, etc. Just as a few examples, the same systems that justify Israel's right to colonize Palestinian territory are the same systems that:
evoked Manifest Destiny to justify genocide against indigenous people in the US
created race to justify the grossly inhumane treatment of Africans captured and sold into slavery
established a body-hierarchy to construct a wide-spread tolerance for neglect and oppression of bodies that diverge from the narrow definition of "acceptable" bodies.
Its also important to name these systems so we can move through the world with greater awareness. The systems I speak of include but are not limited to:
Settler colonialism: a system of oppression based on genocide and colonialism, that aims to displace a population of a nation (oftentimes indigenous people) and replace it with a new settler population. This has occurred throughout the world.
Capitalism: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit. (Fun fact: capitalism emerged as a modern world economic system in the 1400's with European colonial expansion.)
Social Darwinism: the study and implementation of various pseudoscientific theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in Western Europe and North America in the 1870s.
Imperialism: is the practice, theory or attitude of maintaining or extending power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing both hard power (military and economic power) and soft power (diplomatic power and cultural imperialism).
Moving in tendem, these systems often fuel extractive relatitonships with one another, the land, and resources upon which we depend. Scarcity mindeset, us versus them, and power-over are common mindsets that these systems reinforce. Individuals who succeed in these systems are often removed from their own humanity or the humanity of others. A study from 2016 showed that of the general population, 1% demonstrate psychopathic traits. This proportion jumped to 21% among 265 CEO's in the study. That means 1 in 5 corporate leaders demonstrated "clinical significant" psychopathic traits.
When Fannie Lou Hamer said, "No one is free until everybody's free" in 1971, she spoke truth that many generations are still learning to understand.
“Disrupting the messages that our bodies are not worthy of love, tenderness, and nourishment on an individual basis and interpersonal-level is important but it is only the beginning.”
Resources for greater understanding:
BOOKS
Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings beautifully illustrates the brutal connection between fatphobia and racism, specifically anti-Blackness.
Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Agnela Davis illuminates the connection between anti-Blackness is the US and Palestine.
Orientalism by Edward Said illustrates Western Imperialism's impact on the global narrative of the "Middle East" and the misrepresentation through that practice.
PODCASTS
Palestine Amplified
Code Switch
Today Explained
MOVIES
