Puppetmasters

How the elites use gendered media and gendered laws to control human bodies

Over the past month we have witnessed a group of radicals try to take the nation hostage. Based on false allegations and deceptively edited footage, they accused Planned Parenthood, a non-profit nationwide provider of family planning services of selling, for profit, the organs of aborted fetuses. These radicals then threatened to shut down the government unless the rest of congress agreed to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. Thankfully catastrophe was averted: Congress passed a short-term budget, and funding for Planned Parenthood continues, though there is sure to be another budgetary fight in November. Either way, this grandstanding by radicals seems pointless. Only seven of Planned Parenthood’s hundreds of facilities provide abortions. So why then, are these radicals threatening to take down the most powerful government on earth over essentially nothing?

Some might say that this grandstanding is simply a ploy, wool pulled over the eyes of an easily angered American electorate while the far-right enacts less popular parts of their radical agenda. Others would suggest that this is really a simple attempt to blackmail abortion supporters. Still others think that this is nothing short of a war on all reproductive choice initiated by regressive fundamentalists who quake in fear when they imagine a women having agency. These arguments may all have some merit, but they all also miss one thing: the inherent and unique power that exists in controlling human bodies. If we look at the so called ‘debate’ over a women’s right to choose, and at the history of other parts of gendered politics in The United States, we begin to see that the elites have used gendered media and gendered law to control the bodies, and by extension, curtail the agency of the people, both men and women.

Let’s start with reproductive freedoms. Ever since the Supreme Court decisions of second half of the twentieth century, first guaranteeing the right to use contraceptives without government incursion, and then assuring women of the right to an abortion up until the third term of pregnancy, there has been a systemic effort to roll back these hard-earned reproductive freedoms. What happened? Evangelicals alone weren’t a large enough demographic to make this attack a worthy political target, but top level politicians used finely tuned rhetoric to turn half the country against the right to privacy. Why? Bodily control.

By depriving women of the right to choose, the mostly male elites gain a tremendous amount of power. For those among the elite who have an O’Brian-esque obsession with power, this might be enough (though for those who fetishize power in this way, rarely is anything ‘enough’), but for those who have further goals, especially the accumulation of more power either through control of the means of production, or control of the beliefs and laws governing the people, the practical and psychological impacts of curbing the agency of a sizable portion of the population are severalfold. First, the by rendering already marginalized groups more so, the elites solidify their own dominance and make it seem natural. Second by limiting the agency of women over men, the elites render the women’s views less important, and force many women to this structure, which makes it easier to control the public, as those in power only have to target those issues of interest to half the population. Third, control of bodies can lead to control of minds, having ones agency curtailed leaves one psychologically weakened and susceptible to suggestion. This becomes especially relevant when discussing mediated and legal control of men’s bodies.

The bodily disempowerment of men is far more difficult to identify, but it operates through a series of interlocking media and legal mechanisms, and is used to encourage men to defend hegemonic ideals, and give more monetary power to elites. It begins with the way media defines manhood.

From a very early age, boys are told, in a variety of ways to ‘man up.’ That they can and should be the primary guardians and breadwinners for their families, their communities, and their country. They are told that violence is acceptable if it is in the pursuit of these goals. Then the bodily control is reinforced by societal norms. Men must act a certain way, to do otherwise would to expose themselves to charges of ‘sissification,’ of being ‘pussies.’ In this way, the hegemonic goal of male bodily control intersects with the degradation of the female body to create a self-sustaining social praxis by which those in power simply watch as the oppressed vie to control their own and each other’s bodies. The benefit for those in power is obvious: as individuals attempt to assert power over one another, the elites continue to assert their control unquestioned.

As with women, a simple self-regulating social system isn’t enough to control the bodies of men, especially as both women and men realize the system and fight against it. In this case, those in power create gendered laws to reinforce societal control of male bodies. For example, men, and only men, are legally required to sign up for the Selective Service at the age of eighteen, putting them in a database to be drafted in times of need. Not only does this militaristic policy grant the state sweeping controls over male bodies, but it simultaneously reinforces patriarchal norms of gender, both by emphasizing both gender and sex and binary and inflexible concepts, and by reinforcing and glorifying the idea that men should be violent protectors. This and other laws serve the patriarchy in numerous ways, from keeping the populace squabbling among themselves, to encouraging capitalism and American hegemony by way of effort justification.

Gender inequality is one of the many complex ways that the elite maintain control over bodies. Many politicians continue to attempt to defund planned parenthood and restrict women’s control of their own bodies. I do not know how this specific battle for liberty, or others, will play out, but it is clear that if we abdicate the ongoing struggle against gendered mediation and laws, we will be allowing the clock to turn back. We will not simply be ignoring systemic inequality, we will be abdicating the ongoing struggle for the freedom to which America should and has always aspired.