Quotes & Sayings About Bodily Integrity

Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. — Ashley Judd

There is no good reason that a girl is shamed for sexting while a boy is not, that a woman's number must be lower than a man's, that a survivor of sexual assault has her credibility stolen from her along with her bodily integrity. For women to be truly safe, we must eradicate the use of the term "slut." Only then will female sexuality become transformed from a site of pitfalls to one of positivity and possibility. — Leora Tanenbaum

Having the right to choose determines whether women will find an equal place at life's table, whether children will be truly valued, and whether everyone's personal liberties, privacy, and bodily integrity will be safeguarded against the ideology of the right. — Gloria Feldt

The god of virginity is popular in the Arab world. It doesn't matter if you're a person of faith or an atheist, Muslim or Christian - everybody worships the god of virginity. Everything possible is done to keep the hymen - that most fragile foundation upon which the god of virginity sits - intact. At the altar of the god of virginity, we sacrifice not only our girls' bodily integrity and right to pleasure but also their right to justice in the face of sexual violation. Sometimes we even sacrifice their lives: in the name of "honor," some families murder their daughters to keep the god of virginity appeased. When that happens, it leaves one vulnerable to the wonderful temptation of imagining a world where girls and women are more than hymens. — Mona Eltahawy

The power of the state stops at our skins. They can't restrict contraception [or] abortion. They can't take our kidneys. Bodily integrity is a principle. — Gloria Steinem

In pregnancy, there are two bodies, one inside the other. Two people live under one skin. When so much of life is dedicated to maintaining our integrity as distinct beings, this bodily tandem is an uncanny fact. — Joan Raphael-Leff

Every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity. — Pope John XXIII

Three quick breaths triggered the responses: he fell into the floating awareness ... focusing the consciousness ... aortal dilation ... avoiding the unfocused mechanism of consciousness ... to be conscious by choice ... blood enriched and swift-flooding the overload regions ... one does not obtain food-safety freedom by instinct alone ... animal consciousness does not extend beyond the given moment nor into the idea that its victims may become extinct ... the animal destroys and does not produce ... animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual ... the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe ... focused consciousness by choice, this forms your grid ... bodily integrity follows nerve-blood flow according to the deepest awareness of cell needs ... all things/cells/beings are impermanent ... strive for flow-permanence within ... — Frank Herbert

Intimate justice touches on ideas of gender inequity, violence, bodily integrity, physical and mental health. I don't expect a 15-year-old girl to have that figured out; it's hard enough to have it figured out when you're 50. — Peggy Orenstein

Romantic love, in pornography as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willingness to submit to her own annihilation. The proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover. — Andrea Dworkin

Criminalization is a human rights issue because it disregards the fundamental principles of self-determination, bodily integrity, and sexual freedom.14 — Melinda Chateauvert

The effect of legalised prostitution on women outside prostitution is to lower the status of all women. Women are recognised by the state in this system as the appropriate objects of male penetration with no consideration for their personhood or pleasure. This teaches that the penetration and use of an unwilling woman is 'sex', an idea that lies at the root of sexual violence against women in general. There is no chance of developing a sexuality of equality in which women's pleasure, right to say no, and bodily integrity are respected whilst the violence of prostitution is allowed to continue with state support for men's behaviour. — Sheila Jeffreys

Similarly, dance is not just a raging sea of unrelated bodily movements; the relationship of those movements to one another is what creates integrity and integrality, a coherence and cohesion that the higher levels of our brain process. — Daniel Levitin