Important to distinguish between “do you own your body” and “ought you own your body?”.
Also “own” needs to be defined.
It’s hard to say one owns their body when one can’t even control the body’s functions and actions a lot of the times. Question is, if we don’t own our bodies, who does? Perhaps a transcendent, divine entity? Or is the concept of property a scuffed human notion that holds no value in the concrete world? In other words, what if our bodies aren’t owned by anyone?
I’d say ‘no’, and that this is a category error (like asking what the colour of ‘up’ is).
If I owned by body, I could legally sell it, but I can’t sell it, and wouldn’t want any legal structure allowing people to sell their body-parts. I think bodies aren’t the kinds of things one can own.
It is not that simple. There are some of things that one can own but that is illegal to sell in some countries. Drugs for example. You can own the pills you take, without having the right to sell them. And on the other hand worker kind of “sell” (or at least “rent”) their bodies.
I could legally sell it, but I can’t sell it
You sure? There are countries where people choose to legally sell their bodies once they die. Universities for example buy them for study purposes
As someone pointed out in another comment this question depends heavily on the definition you give to “own”. In fact it is more a question about that than about anything else.
I love the question you ask around in Lemmy, they are often a potential base to really interesting discussions. I think it is a shame you don’t spend more time discussing the answers with us. Especially since those case where the definitions of the words you use are important, which is often the case when you try to build a short, punchy, but still interesting question.
To begin an answer, if owning is taken in a very liberal definition of “you are free to do everything you want with it”, then clearly no. For example, being violent towards others. Or having Nazi/fascist symbols tattooed. These things you are not free to do. But if we add a clause resembling “as long as it only imply yourself or consenting of any person involved”, then we get clauser to something I would agree with. But even then, it is not satisfactory. Example : being openly in an homosexual relationship and displaying it in public is perfectly OK to me. But I recognize it has an impact an homophobes. They are technically impacted. But to me the solution is of course not to criminalize homosexuals, but to fight against homophobia until it is not a question anymore.
So yeah, a specific and perfect definition is quite hard…
That how ancap would frame discussion of human rights lol
