One topic I hear often, and most often from Libertarians, is that people ‘own’ their body. These people espouse body autonomy and self rule. In fact, this is a starting point and they extend it out to some imaginary boundary of limited government.
This sentiment is captured by pithy statements like
Your right to extend your fist ends at my nose.
Some guy
This all sounds well and good, yet there is no objective case that defends body self-ownership. Taking this position is simply latching onto normative, emotional rhetoric.
Personally, I like the idea that I should have some control over decisions leading to what happens to my body, but save for the idea content, I am under no delusion that this is self-evident or otherwise guaranteed. By extension, there is no reason in particular why sovereignty can be defended except through mutual contract and the tacit (and sometimes explicit) violence and the threat thereof, as I’ve commented on before.
Philosophics 
Part of what complicated this is the fact that we are not just our own body. I am constituted by my Environment, and by my community, my friends, my family etc. My ideas, opinions, reactions, and so on are formed by a complex web of influences. I am not just embodied, I am also rooted in a context. What this says about body rights, I’m not sure, but it does add some interesting complexity.
On a different note, have a look at my Joker review, you might find it interesting.
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Loved the review. It is interesting.
Spoiler Alert: I still haven’t seen the film as I’m waiting for it to come to streaming. Lol
The 3 most common reactions to Joker are
– Identity
– Mental Illness
– White Privilege
Clearly, he was formed by the crucible of society intermeshed with his malformed or proto-forming identity.
The biggest problem with identity is that it’s not fixed:
“Never the same river; never the same man.”
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White Privilege? Could you send me a link to someone exploring that?
Whats interesting about the Joker movie to me is how it interacts with all of our cultural/political issues, while just mixing them up in a pretty subversive way. For instance, Arthur, the character who becomes the Joker, is essentially an incel, the type of loner white guy who would stereotypically do a school shooting. And yet, this is the guy who is portrayed as being oppressed and rejected by the powerful. He kicks off an anti-rich, movement. Those two things at the same time are strange and unsettling.
Similarily, it seems to me that the rich Wayne in the movie could represent both of the candidates in the 2016 US election. Part of what its getting at there is just the fact that the Joker is disillusioned with all power, all narratives, all causes, he sees through all the masks.
The Joker speaks to the rise of Trump, mental illness, meaninglessness, inequality, power dynamics, the oppressed, mass shootings, ect.
Identity definitely isn’t like a river, there is definitly the ability to transform ones idenity, but one is always rooted in a place, community, time ect.
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Hey Julian. I read several. Here is a link to one.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/joker-film-joaquin-phoenix-todd-phillips-whiteness-characters-cast-a9149961.html
In essence, the point is that his mental illness was allowed to manifest, whereas a person of colour would not have had the same social latitude.
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As to identity, the point here is not ones ability to transform but rather there is an actual identity in the first place. My thoughts run quickly to the concept of personae, Identity is relative. As anyone with parents realise, your impression of your mum is different as a 4-year-old than a 40-year-old. This is an identity issue. The spouse of the mum likely sees a different person, as does the mum of the mum, the coworkers of the mum, the vicar, and so on.
And the mum at 4 and 40 are totally different people on all levels.
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If you have no sovereignty over your own physical person, what’s left? The fact the question even arises is a sign that it’s very late in the day for individual liberty.
Yes, this is a slippery slope argument. Sometimes such arguments are legitimate. Never debate the radius of the private sphere with anyone who won’t first concede that there should be a private sphere.
But there is another radius to consider: the radius of competence. That Joker review got me thinking of this. There’s no point in giving someone authority over what he can’t handle, and some unfortunate souls can’t handle anything at all. But who will make that call? Everyone has a conflict of interest there, because everyone wants more freedom to swing his own fist.
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Just wanting something, sovereignty or freedom or whatever, doesn’t mean you can or should have it. I’ve been indoctrinated to believe that these are so-called ‘inalienable rights’, the freedom bit anyway, sort of, but these are just words. Several hundred years ago, there was no such right; barely even the concept. In another few hundred years, they’ll be onto something new. Can’t wait.
True enough about authority or agency, as it were, but who’s the decider?
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