The Right to Control Access to Self

‘Self’ includes one’s body, one’s personal space, one’s personal possessions, and one’s communications, and almost everybody would be better off if we all recognized that we have a right to control access to self.

There are lots of things which are wrong with global society. One of the top problems, in my opinion, is that most of the dominant cultures around the world do not recognize a universal right to control access to self.

One (though just one) manifestation of the denial of this right is rape culture. Rape is a violation of one’s control over sexual access to oneself.

Another manifestation of the denial of this right is the way white people in the United States (and other societies?) regard access to black women’s hair.

Yet another manifestation is the US government and other governments) deciding that they have the right to record, read/listen to, and collect metadata on all ‘private’ electronic communications in the world. If you have been living under a rock during the past few months, you may consult Glenn Greenwald’s reporting on NSA surveillance for The Guardian.

I think that all of these issues are related. Because most people accept rape culture (in fact, some parts of rape culture are still internalized in me), it makes it easier for them to accept a surveillance state. If we lived in a culture which recognized a universal right to control access to self a) it would be harder for those who control the government and corporations to conceive of violating that right in the first place and b) if/when government/corporate leaders do violate the right, the outry would be way, way, way bigger. Likewise, because our own leaders do not respect the right to control access to self, ordinary people are more inclined to violate each other’s right to this control.

Of course, this is such a big problem that most of the time it has to be tackled in pieces. Sometimes, one must focus on corrective rape of asexuals. Sometimes, one must focus on the common tendency to pry into the details trans*people’s genitals. Sometimes, one must focus on police officers who break into homes with neither permission nor warrant. Sometimes, one must focus on a senator who thinks it’s okay for government and corporate insiders to have access to detailed personal information of massive numbers of ordinary citizens, but not okay for said citizens to know that the information is being collected, let alone how the information is being used (I am thinking of Dianne Feinstein, who I deeply regret voting for, and should be taken out of office ASAP).

However, even when taking on the smaller pieces, I think one must be aware that this is part of a greater evil, and that the ultimate solution is to create a consensus among humanity that everyone had a right to control access to self.

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This is Difficult for Me to Say

Trigger warning: sexual harassment

I have been a victim of sexual harassment.

This is difficult for me to say.

I considered it to be a minor form of sexual harassment. In fact, in order to shield myself psychologically, I told myself it was just a misunderstanding. But deep down, I knew what it was.

Why did I want to tell myself that it was not sexual harassment?

Well, as I discussed last week, society has some really messed up ideas about sexual purity. While it’s easy for me to reject these ideas academically, rejecting them when it’s personal and I feel vulnerable is not so easy. It felt that, if I admitted, even to myself, that I were a victim of sexual harassment, that it would be some kind of horrible, shameful stain on myself.

And that’s rubbish.

The fact that I was the victim of sexual harassment? That says nothing about my character. That says absolutely nothing about my character. It does say something significant about the character of the harasser.

And this is a characteristic of rape culture – it’s the victim who gets ‘dirty’, is blamed, shamed, etc … and the perpetrator stays ‘clean’, as people either ignore the perpetrator, or ‘splain away the perpetrators actions. I did this myself in my head ‘oh, he probably wasn’t aware that he was making me uncomfortable…’ (yeah, let’s ignore the fact that he was in a position of authority over me, which meant I was hesitant to confront him directly, and he would have had to have been astonishingly clueless to not know that his behavior made me uncomfortable).

I think this might be the single most messed up thing about the way society perceives sexual purity. Though I think it’s wrong to shame consenting adults for doing harmless things, at least consenting adults have control over whether or not conform to society’s ideas. Victims of sexual harassment (or worse) don’t have that control … and this ‘sexual purity’ even lets the perpetrators off the hook.

I had assumed that I was alone. Then I overheard that he had sexually harassed some other people. I hadn’t realized that I had potential allies. If I had known, maybe I would have handled the situation a little differently. Then again, he was in a position of authority, so maybe not.

The more I read about cultural change, the more I think that people telling their stories is an essential part of the process. My story is not nearly as horrible as many of the other stories out there … but no matter how ‘minor’ the sexual harassment was, it was still unacceptable. And if adding my own little voice dislodges rape culture by even a thousandth of a hair, then post will have been worth writing.

To the extent possible under law,
the person who associated CC0
with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring
rights to this work.