Dangerous Bodies
Who gets to define safety and fear, security and terror? Who can we trust to tell us when, where, and how we are safe?
Our safety and security are dependent upon our bodies, our surroundings, our abilities, and the authorities under which we live. But oftentimes, they can be manipulated and erased by the same forces meant to maintain them.
Given the prevalence of competing ideas and narratives about terror, safety is more political now than ever before. In order to understand measures of security, we need to look at the systems that set them and examine their motivations. We are influenced by experience and cultural dynamics, but also programmed by the government and media to believe one incident to be an act of terror while we allow other acts, however similar in violation and violence, to exist outside the canon of terrorism. Who gets to define safety and fear, security and terror? Who can we trust to tell us when, where, and how we are safe?
Tell us about the spaces where you feel secure and the places where you feel threatened or under attack. What does it mean to be safe and feel secure in your surroundings? In your own skin? How can you create safety measures for yourself and others in your community without violating someone else’s? How does the body you’re in relate to your own sense of safety and other people’s ideas of danger? And why do we reject bodies in danger?
The featured image is “Safety” by Gabor Kiss.
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- 6: Dangerous Bodies
“Go ahead and pee on the floor,” the radiology technician says.
I drove with no GPS. After what happened, getting lost seemed like a good idea.
In the Soviet Russia of the 1980s, my mom chose not to tell me we were Jewish.
I am gripping my chest as my colleague attempts to reassure me. “The paramedics will be here soon,” she says.
He calls you makhtesh, a word he tells you means the expanse of the universe.
On a day I am walking with my cane / in Starbucks / the lady behind me inquires, / from…
As my leg was pulled in, I felt the most excruciating pain come over my entire body, from head to…
People who claim spaces as sacred are usually referring to mountains covered in snow-dusted firs or ocean waters that received…
Most of the time I can avoid looking at my left breast — or whatever it’s called now — but…
Arriving home in his private plane from an L.A. movie set, Rick can almost fool himself into thinking that he…
I remember a time when all I wanted to be was Trash.
I’ve been a plus-size beauty vlogger for the past two years, but I’ve been fat my whole life. Except for…
This is a body / You can touch me / I am organic matter / moving constantly.
It hadn’t occurred to Michael that his head might get stuck.
It is the spring of 2007, and I have traded in my solitude for friendship.
The big clock on town hall marks the hour, the bells inside ringing and ringing.