Dear Reader,
Our bodies should be the simplest things in the world: mere vessels for the consciousness, glorified houseplants that we just need to water and feed, a collection of material that carries us around.
But of course, as we all know, bodies are far more complicated than that. Philosophers have been pontificating on the mind-body split for centuries, but the fact that our bodies can feel so separate from who we really are is still a very real, daily issue for most people. Not only that, but because our bodies are the mediators between ourselves and the rest of the world, they’re vulnerable to the forces of other people and society.
In this issue, we see a wide array of problems complicating people’s relationships with their own bodies and others’. Cedar O’Dowd writes about how nonbinary college athletes navigate the binary world of sports, as well as how transphobic rules forced them to make the painful decision between their identity and staying on the team. David-Elijah Brown also discusses injustice imposed on his body in a short, poetic piece about his blackness and the struggles and joys that it brings him. An anonymous writer talks about losing control over her body as she loses her sense of self to a deeply toxic and violent relationship—ultimately, though, she finds a way to reconnect with her body and uncover the happiness it can give her. All three writers experience the vulnerability that being a person in a body gives you, and all three find ways to rediscover what’s great about the hunks of meat they live in.
Hannah G. Peak and Courtney Knerr talk about other bodies smaller than their own. Peak reflects on her relationship with her boyfriend’s son and his tiny body through the act of doing laundry together, while Knerr makes an argument about the commodification of animal bodies through dissection.
In this aptly named Body Issue, we’ll be exploring the widest range of bodily issues. Despite the fact that I, personally, would often prefer a houseplant to a human body, this issue makes me realize that there really are some pros to this crazy piece of machinery I live in—and I hope it does the same for you.
Corporeally yours,
Kat and the rest of the Cipher staff
Body Issue | February 2020