John James Audubon - before 1851 - via Bonhams

Katayama Yōkoku, late 18th century

Agyness Deyn and Amar Akway by Carlijn Jacobs for W Magazine October 2024

various F1 cars reflected in a woman's sunglasses during the 1970 FRENCH GRAND PRIX

Skeletal sci-fi art by Takuro Kamiya, Bruce Pennington, Alberto Pujolar, and Angus McKie.

Turtle Frog (Myobtrachus gouldii), family Myobatrachidae, found in SW Australia

photograph by Andrea Ruggeri

"WAOUH" for DS France by Robert Wagt (1998)

Yahya Sinwar interviewed by Francesca Borri, 2018

skopje 2019

Spectacled caiman By: Unknown photographer From: Wildlife Fact-File 1990s

the olympics are inherently rooted in eugenic ideals (who is the “best” of humanity, as decided by ability) and it’s no surprise that they repeatedly result in discourses and practices of racism, intersexism, and transphobia. no matter how it’s whitewashed through the liberal lens of hard work and achievement, the underlying currents of policing bodies, which are integral to the practice of judging ability, will continue to emerge.

even the sort of surface-level 'anti-TERF' discourse I see still cedes ground that I never want to cede, personally. people will bring up that an athlete is cisgender and has “naturally” higher testosterone levels as a way to articulate the irrationality of the accusations against her, but to me all I can think is— I take hormones, is my body “unnatural” or inauthentic in some way?

The policing of drug use is seen as obvious and naturalized (that would be cheating!) but why? Cheating at what? At one's own embodiment?

(cheating implies being awarded with a value of which one is undeserving. what value would they be given "unjustly"? why does that value exist politically? what is the implied "danger" of awarding it to an undeserving body?)

It's more subtle, to be sure, but I feel if you dig into the logics of it, it comes from a similar logic of the transphobic idea that people are deceptive/unnatural for intentionally altering our bodies. It comes from a similar logic as the claim of “in nature this disabled person would die”— what is “nature” here? If isolated from all other human beings and sources of care, anyone would die.

(deceiving to whom? who is the implicit authority on what is natural? whose gaze must we be authentic before? and why is an "unnatural" body cast as immoral and deceptive? why is survival cast as "unnatural" for some bodies and not others? why is there a negative moral judgement attached to survival for disabled bodies?)

Why invoke the “natural” when justifying our discomfort with people using drugs to adjust their bodies and abilities?

Human bodies are not isolated, they are part of a physical world and constantly altered and influenced by their interactions with it. What enters our bodies--whether that's food, water, drugs, pollution, antibiotics, ammunition, oxygen, heart valves, semen, bacteria, catheters, viruses, vitamins, all of it--fundamentally impacts our bodies and how they look and function.

there is nothing that makes a trans or intersex or disabled body uniquely "unnatural" on a material level--these are all just eugenic judgements leveled on politically devalued bodies.

it is not "cheating" or "deceiving" on any material level to have a body that is intentionally shaped by hormones any more than it is to have a body intentionally shaped by exacting exercise and dieting, or by escaping from warfare, or by getting an abortion.

we all have bodies deeply impacted by the world around us, intentionally and unintentionally. there is no "natural" isolated state of a body to be in.

when bodies are deemed unnatural, that is a purely eugenic designation. it's not a material one.

that's why this bodily policing is leveled, primarily and most severely, on Black women, colonized women, transgender women, intersex women. It is no surprise that these eugenic mechanisms for "proving" someone is disqualified from being considered "physically superior" are brought out specifically for those most deeply politically devalued.

Landscape suicide, Chih-Hung Kuo

Nicolas Faure, Untitled, September 1980

Kazuma Yamamoto (Japanese, b. 1998)

Formless SKY 5, 2022

Oil and acrylic on canvas