A Woman's Liberation

Okay, so this is unrelated to photography and may be only tangentially related to fashion (and I'm not going to explore that possible connection here), but I found it both interesting and moving, so it's worth sharing.  

From Ursula K. LeGuin's "A Woman's Liberation" (collected in A Woman's Liberation:  A Choice of Futures by and about Women, edited by Connie Willis and Sheila Williams):

What is one man's and one woman's love and desire, against the history of two worlds, the great revolutions of our lifetimes, the hope, the unending cruelty of our species?  A little thing.  But a key is a little thing, next to the door it opens.  If you lose the key, the door may never be unlocked.  It is in our bodies that we lose or begin our freedom, in our bodies that we accept or end our slavery.

This is a beautiful articulation of the importance of the body and of love in politics of liberation (e.g., antiracist movements, gay rights movements, feminist movements).  If we do not have sovereignty over our own bodies, if we cannot take pleasure in ourselves, how can we possibly have any more far-reaching freedoms or power?  And, conversely, if we allow others to control or otherwise abuse our bodies, that prevents us from being truly free in ways that are beyond merely physical.

I highly recommend this story.

   

antique keys, originally uploaded by Ross McGinnes.