Since you can evidently only have liberty if you’re a religious group and/or a corporation, I have decided that it’s time to form a legal church corporation – The First Church of Unwomen* – that protects the rights of all who believe in the five commandments (because that was all I could think of and because teacher training said 5 rules are easy to remember and should be enough if you word them properly), which have been delivered from the mythical land of common sense:
1) Autonomy. Thou shalt have complete, unquestioning autonomy over thine own body. What others do unto their bodies is none of thy business, including whether someone should gain or lose weight, be wearing that outfit, etc. Because it makes no fucking sense that I should have a right to enough autonomy over my body to have an abortion but not to wear that bikini, sayeth our corporate charter or something.
2) Respect. Thou shalt respect other people’s choices and beliefs right up until they start limiting yours or someone else’s. At which point thou shalt throw down thy glove and take none of it.
3) Wine for breakfast. Or not, if you don’t go for that sort of thing. You can put it in a smoothie with kale if it makes you feel better. Or have a beer float if that’s more the cut of your jib. Or cake. But thou shalt obey thine own internal compass, not the shallow cultural ideas of what’s appropriate to consume at what time of day. See Commandment 5.
4) Shamelessness. Thou shalt not hate thy body, neither for its lacking nor for its amplitude. Hate leads to shame, which leads fear, which leads to trying to control other people’s ideas about things. See Commandment 1. Or Dune. Whatever gets you there.
5) Shouldlessness. Beware the unholy power of should. The only shoulds you should believe in are the ones on this list, which give people more actual freedom, as in “artists of all kinds should be paid fairly for their work” or, “if you want to, you should totally have a wine smoothie for breakfast.”
If you want to add more commandments, the comments are yours to abuse. But they have to be in line with the original 5, and are only canon for those to whom they appeal, for as long as they might appeal, but otherwise five shall be the number of commandments – not six, nor four, excepting that thou then continue to five. Ten is right out – it’s so last millennium.
The point is that it’s against our religious beliefs to deny ourselves autonomy over our own bodies, so that we can sue for corporate and religious protection and win, since being human beings with supposed civil rights doesn’t seem to be adequate anymore.
*Unwomen is not a reference to the United Nations organization (though it could be, and I welcome their matronage), but rather a reference to The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (which you seriously need to read if you haven’t because it’s fucking prescient). Unwomen are sterile women, widows, feminists, lesbians, nuns, and politically dissident women: all women who are incapable of social integration within the Republic’s strict gender divisions. I don’t see why men can’t also be unwomen as long as they follow the 5 Commandments – which are really just strong suggestions that boil down to what the Prophet Wil Wheaton spake unto the gamers at PAX: “Don’t Be A Dick.”
Cool?
UPDATE: it would seem that all you have to do to form a church is to say it is one, and therefore so it is. We have to decide what our members should be called, though (feminist is already taken. unwomanist? that sounds sort of anti-woman. help!). Also, on our high holy days (um, Alice Paul’s birthday maybe?) we should can wear the sacred raiment of whatever the hell we feel like, and commune over wine smoothies. I just have to fill out some paperwork to receive official 501(c)(3) status, which would allow our followers to give charitable donations, which we could totally give to women’s empowerment causes, or whateverall else you think we should, so long as it’s legal.
There is such a thing as taking a schtick too far. I don’t think this is one of those times (though I’m probably not a very good judge of that). But sometimes you just have to go all Colbert on a situation.
UPDATE #2: Go look at these great illustrations of women being in charge of their own bodies. Carol Rossetti is officially our first Saint. Here’s one I love:
And lo, this shall be our bible. It’s illustrated so it’s easier to read. Also, Whitney: I highly recommend the wine smoothie.
Snarkeling 