Macro photograph of a twisted-up safety pin, by Gabor Kiss
Illustration of naked torso facing away

Dangerous Bodies

Who gets to define safety and fear, security and terror? Who can we trust to tell us when, where, and how we are safe?

Our safety and security are dependent upon our bodies, our surroundings, our abilities, and the authorities under which we live. But oftentimes, they can be manipulated and erased by the same forces meant to maintain them. 

Given the prevalence of competing ideas and narratives about terror, safety is more political now than ever before. In order to understand measures of security, we need to look at the systems that set them and examine their motivations. We are influenced by experience and cultural dynamics, but also programmed by the government and media to believe one incident to be an act of terror while we allow other acts, however similar in violation and violence, to exist outside the canon of terrorism. Who gets to define safety and fear, security and terror? Who can we trust to tell us when, where, and how we are safe?

Tell us about the spaces where you feel secure and the places where you feel threatened or under attack. What does it mean to be safe and feel secure in your surroundings? In your own skin? How can you create safety measures for yourself and others in your community without violating someone else’s? How does the body you’re in relate to your own sense of safety and other people’s ideas of danger? And why do we reject bodies in danger?

The featured image is “Safety” by Gabor Kiss.

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