Body Autonomy Word List

BODY AUTONOMY

Right to control own physical self

WATCH

1. Never Rarely Sometimes Always — Eliza Hittman, 2020 · Film · A teenager navigating a system that treats her body as everyone’s business but her own.

2. Happening — Audrey Diwan, 2021 · Film · Illegal abortion in 1960s France; body autonomy as life or death.

3. Miss Representation — Jennifer Siebel Newsom, 2011 · Documentary · How media strips women of ownership over their own bodies and image.

4. The Handmaid’s Tale — Various, 2017– · Series · A world built on the total abolition of bodily autonomy.

5. Disclosure — Laverne Cox, 2020 · Documentary · Trans people’s right to define their own bodies and identities.

6. Embrace — Taryn Brumfitt, 2016 · Documentary · A woman’s global journey to reclaim her body from shame and other people’s judgment.

7. Fed Up — Stephanie Soechtig, 2014 · Documentary · How the food industry colonizes bodies, especially children’s.

8. The Invisible War — Kirby Dick, 2012 · Documentary · Sexual assault in the military; body autonomy violated by institution and culture.

9. Reversing Roe — Ricki Stern & Annie Sundberg, 2018 · Documentary · The political movement to remove reproductive body autonomy.

10. Crip Camp — James LeBrecht & Nicole Newnham, 2020 · Documentary · Disabled people demanding control over their own bodies and lives.

LISTEN

1. Shout Your Abortion — Amelia Bonow · Body autonomy as the core of reproductive justice.

2. Disability Visibility Podcast — Alice Wong · Disabled people asserting authority over their own bodies and medical decisions.

3. The Repro Wrap — Rewire News Group · Body autonomy in reproductive healthcare policy.

4. Good Ancestor Podcast — Layla F. Saad · Body autonomy as part of anti-oppression and liberation work.

5. Ologies: Body episodes — Alie Ward · Science of the human body taught without shame or othering.

6. The Body Is Not an Apology Podcast — Sonya Renee Taylor · Radical body autonomy and self-love as political practice.

7. Sex Ed with DB — Danielle Bezalel · Body literacy and autonomy through honest sex education.

8. Come as You Are — Emily Nagoski, audiobook · The science of female sexuality and the right to define your own body’s experience.

9. Stuff Mom Never Told You — Anney & Samantha · Body autonomy, feminism, and the history of women’s bodily rights.

10. Hidden Brain: Body episodes — Shankar Vedantam · The psychology of how we relate to and make decisions about our bodies.

READ

1. The Body Is Not an Apology — Sonya Renee Taylor · Radical self-love as resistance to all systems that police bodies.

2. Policing the Womb — Michele Goodwin · How the state criminalizes bodily autonomy, especially for pregnant people.

3. Come as You Are — Emily Nagoski · The science of sexuality and the right to know and own your own body.

4. Pleasure Activism — adrienne maree brown · Body autonomy and the right to pleasure as a political and spiritual act.

5. Our Bodies, Ourselves — Boston Women’s Health Book Collective · The book that gave women language and authority over their own bodies.

6. The Turnaway Study — Diana Greene Foster · What happens to people denied bodily autonomy in reproductive decisions.

7. Sitting Pretty — Rebekah Taussig · A disabled woman’s body as a site of other people’s assumptions and interventions.

8. Hunger — Roxane Gay · A body held hostage by trauma; the politics of size and self-determination.

9. Care Work — Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha · Disabled people demanding bodily autonomy within care relationships.

10. Reproductive Justice — Loretta Ross & Rickie Solinger · Body autonomy as the foundation of reproductive rights.