Why “Your body, my choice” isn’t “just a joke”

Warning: This article contains mentions of rape, sexual harassment, and violence toward women.”

THE SLOGAN “My body, my choice,” has long been used in reference to freedom of choice when it comes to women’s bodies, particularly with issues on bodily autonomy and abortion.

As the organization Amnesty International explained, everyone should be able to make their own decisions with regard to their health, body, and sexual lives.

“A woman is refused contraception because she doesn’t have her husband’s permission,” they wrote on their website. 

“A teenager is denied a life-saving termination because abortion is illegal in her country. A man is harassed by police because he’s gay.”

This is why they have launched the global campaign, “My Body My Rights”, as a means of stopping the control and criminalization of sexuality and reproduction. 

Amnesty International is just one of the thousands who have joined the “My body, my choice” movement, as more and more people around the globe fight for the rights of women and to live their lives as they see fit. 

Now, however, far-right groups have co-opted this slogan. In particular, far-right activist Nick Fuentes has gone viral for posting to X last November 5th: “Your body, my choice. Forever.”

This tweet has since received millions of views, with many other conservatives also using the phrase, commenting on the social media posts of women on a variety of platforms.

Many young men have also been chanting the phrase in schools or during class; the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) cites one parent whose daughter was told that she should “sleep with one eye open” by a group of young men.

Other groups, the ISD further reports, have even started using this phrase to sexually assault women, with some posts online calling for “rape squads” or “rape.”

Many members of far-right groups have since responded by saying that the phrase is just a joke and that if people don’t like it, they are free to simply turn off their laptops and scroll away. 

For those of us, however, who have had to live our lives in fear of men every day, that is not the case.

As per Moira Donegan of The Guardian: “Your body, my choice” presents women’s full citizenship and freedom as laughable, asserting, in gleeful terms, the male supremacy that will now carry for the force of policy and law under a new Trump administration.”

The case of violence against women

Statista reports that in the Philippines, in 2023 alone, there were about 8,400 victims of rape. The organization Cameleon Association further notes that 98% of rape victims are women.

In 2021, 8,399 cases of physical violence against women were reported, alongside 1,791 rape cases and 1,505 acts of lasciviousness.

In America, RAINN reports that 1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. 

In the 23 years that I have been alive, I can without a doubt say that I have never met a woman who has not been sexually harassed by a man in one way, shape, or form in her life. 

Whether it be getting catcalled, groped, or raped, it is unfortunately a seemingly universal experience among women no matter what part of the world they reside in. 

It has happened to me on several occasions – some with strangers, and others with friends that I’d trusted with my entire chest. Hence why I have fought so hard to spread the idea of “My body, my choice”; I do not say it as an attack on men or on their own autonomy, but instead as a plea to recognize that women are people too and deserve to be treated as such. 

Who knew, however, that fighting for one’s basic human rights could stir such controversy – such outrage?

Fighting for generations

Reports online note that one of the earliest uses of the term “My body, my choice” was in 1969, from a group of activists fighting for a woman’s right to legal abortion.

This fight has long been around, contrary to those who believe that it only started after the birth of the internet. It feels as if, since the beginning of time, women have been battling just to be respected and viewed as human, and years later, they are still fighting the same fight. 

For some reason, however, it seems that we are progressing backward, with men telling us to go back to the kitchen – men once again pushing us back into the boxes we have fought so hard to get out of.

Following the U.S. elections, the ISD found that there was an increase in the mentions of phrases such as “Your body, my choice,” and “Get back to the kitchen,” mainly targeted toward women. This was seen across platforms including X, forums, blogs, as well as Reddit and YouTube.

There has been a boom in jokes centered on rape and sexual harassment, and once more, it has become funny to joke about a woman getting taken advantage of. Suddenly, we are once again just reduced to being the butt of a joke – to being an object or sexual plaything instead of a human.

There have even been calls to revoke the 19th Amendment, which gives women the right to vote; one joke about this in particular came from John McEntee, who is now a senior advisor for Project 2025.

“Sorry we want MALE only voting,” he wrote.

“The 19th might have to go.”

It is, thus, laughable when men say that the “Your body, my choice” movement is a mere joke when even now, only days after Trump has been re-elected, are we already seeing its consequences. 

Upon his election, women cried for themselves, and men cried for their wives and daughters. Looking at what is currently happening, it is not hard to understand why.

While one can also say that this is happening in the U.S., not in the Philippines, it is important to remember that the U.S. is a global superpower. Everything they do affects the Philippines in some way or another.

Our media, our politics, everything is affected by the West. Given the control that men demand over women’s bodies in the U.S., what more of a country like the Philippines, wherein even now, we still have to fight tooth and nail for basic respect? For bodily autonomy? For life?

It is a terrifying time to be alive. More than this, it is a terrifying time to be a woman, just as it has always been.