LoginThe Sovereignty of Women
When Permission Ends, Personhood Begins
After the statement on Electronic Money Without Third Parties, the conversation could not remain confined to systems. These are parts of my book, a series of 21 statements by MoBitSo. They are originally my thoughts, published here with minor reforms.
This statement, The Sovereignty of Women, continues the chain. It speaks to ownership in its truest form — not of currency, but of self. this is a manifesto on the human soul, permission and women.
Eons have set traditions wherein women were deemed exceptions to personhood allowed where convenient, corralled otherwise. Law, scripture, office, and gossip all have had their turns calling this arrangement “natural.” What is natural about permission? Certainly, a woman is not a role, a spare labor reserve, a vessel, or the ward of somebody’s comfort. She is a person-and persons are sovereign.
Sovereignty is skin-deep. No power of court, priest, council, or crowd surpasses her consent. Her body is not the one negating a jurisdiction; it is not some currency in exchange for honor, purity, or policy. Touch, sex, reproduction, and medical decisions need her uncoerced yes-never saying no again. Whatever euphemisms camouflage coercion under custom, duty, and marital right do not diminish harm; this only renames it. We unmask them.
With sovereignty, papers can show various declarations. A woman’s signature should not be viewed as some lesser ink. Title, credit, wages, inheritance, and contract must follow her person-not those granted by the consent of a husband, father, boss, or committee. “Equal” is not just a slogan; it is a ledger: same job, same rate; same risk, same reward; same breach, same remedy. Anywhere numbers diverge from this will form excuses, which ended and work of corrections began.
Sovereignty moves in space. Doors that require chaperoning are bars by another name. Women do cross and travel, go to universities, assemble, compete, vote, publish, and build without chaperoning or apology. As much as men, the dark of the street and the room where power is held belong to women. Safety is an imposition against the violators, not the curfew against the victims.
Sovereignty governs work and worth. Hiring, promotion, and capital should reward contribution, not compliance to a stereotype-neither punished for motherhood nor penalized for refusing it. Care labor is not invisible: it is work which must be paid, credited, or shared. The pipeline problem is a pretext: the pipeline is created by those who chose to open the doors or shut them. We shall not accept the phrase, “not a fit,” as a velvet rope around our future.
A Sovereignty of gender will have consequences. It is not to sweep under the management of rumors: every assault must be prosecuted with due process and dispatch. The retaliation of reporting is, by itself, an offense. Confidential settlements purchasing silence over ongoing danger remain a fraud upon the next victim. Consent is affirmative, specific, and retractable; the absence of “no” does not mean “yes”; differences in power are not neutral ground.
Sovereignty includes family but cannot be defined by family. Motherhood is a choice, never a compulsion, while fatherhood, conversely, is not an act of courtesy, but duty. Reproductive health is ultimately health, one dealt with in privacy between woman and clinician rather than between the afflicted and a group of nameless arbiters. In the face of violence at home, law must be broad enough to create exits-shelters, orders, relocation, and funds which reach the survivor without passing through the abuser’s hand.
Our methods fit our ends. We will witness, document, and publish. We will fund shelters, clinics, and legal defenses; build networks to shift women out of danger and into work; teach young girls to hold tools, read contracts, and keep their names on the things they create. We will boycott institutions that launder discriminatory practices as “culture” and reward those working openly on the arithmetic of equity.
Consider this no mere petition awaiting approval. It withdraws consent from arrangements that equate suffering with acceptance. We will say no where “tradition” demands yes; we will say yes where gatekeepers expect quiet. The test is sufficiently applied everywhere: less fear, more freedom of movement; fewest apologies, more names of authors; pay that matches value; choice that remains choice with the dawn.
Women will not beg for the acknowledgment of their humanity. They will live it. Our signature is solidarity, our seal is accountability, and our receipt is the open flourishing of half this world’s population. Under our names, let the epoch of qualified personhood cease here and now, while there is still time to create a living for all in a society that does not need courage just to participate.
I hope you enjoyed it. I am going to share more statements here. I am excited to hear your ideas about the statements.
The Sovereignty of Women was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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