Who prostitutes our body

Now that the legislative debate to abolish prostitution has been opened in Spain, I find it interesting to think about other forms of exploitation of citizens' bodies. Because prostitution is the tip of the iceberg of a conception of the relations between the individual body and the body politic, which are defined precisely through the exploitation of the individual body by the body politic. And that they are defined this way not only in prostitution but in all areas of life. That's why I think that, when faced with a serious debate about prostitution, it would be worth seriously thinking about who has the rights over our bodies. And because.

It happens that at some point we ceded our body to the State, although no one remembers when such a thing was agreed, unlike the explicit agreement on the cession of the monopoly of violence, which is included in all Constitutions. However, despite not having agreed upon it, rights over the body have historically been alienated by political power without any explanation or contract in this regard.

This explains, for example, why some governments feel legitimate to exploit women's bodies as producers of life, imposing the right to be born without, at the same time, offering any guarantee for the survival of children. And the same thing happens with death and in the way in which some doctors can exercise corporate, union or class rights to decide how other people die.

Not to mention marriage. At what point did the Church and the State begin to regulate the intimate relationships of individuals. And when did we accept that the State had legitimacy to decide, for example, whether or not two people of the same sex could marry. Worse still, at what point did we agree that it was up to political power to determine the gender of citizens. Or demand, through the Civil Code, as in fact happens, the obligation of fidelity to all couples who decide to marry in Spain, which could turn marriage into a peaceful form of sexual exploitation for people who depend on money. of their spouses to survive. Of course, sex is not essential to control the body. The preferred tool of power is work. It is worth asking, in this sense, when we accepted that we had to obey business structures that demanded (and still demand) our corporality to carry out work, but above all to exercise their power. In short: when did our decision about our body stop being enough to decide what to do with it.

Our society traffics in human bodies all the time, at the most peaceful and permissible levels and also at the most monstrous. And all the sexual aberrations, all the exploitation of bodies (which is the order of the day in all physical and virtual spheres of human experience) are an inherent consequence of a society where citizens have renounced, without agreeing and often without knowing it, to the right over the government of their bodies. In this sense, I think pointing out the tip of the iceberg is of little use when the crew and captain of this ship have previously denied the existence of ice.

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