Homeless Americans face many daily struggles — finding food, lack of shelter and the fact that they aren’t getting banged.
According to a group of sex educators and activists at Netroots 2013 — on the wittily named “Free your Ass: Defining and Creating a Progressive Sexual Culture” panel — homeless people are sexually repressed by society due to their economic situations.
“When we’re working on housing, we’re working on housing because it’s a basic human right, but also when you have access to stable, secure housing, you have access to privacy to experience your own body,” said Jaclyn Friedman, an author and host of the podcast “F**king While Feminist.”
Friedman also said that all other social justice movements, such as race or economic equality, directly affect the ability for one to have sexual agency.
“What ability, what agency does a queer homeless kid have to pursue their sexuality?” she asked. “Even basic issues of privacy, different abilities, different accesses to education, leisure time, right? Like if you’re working three jobs to make ends meet, you don’t have access to your sexuality either.”
Another panelist, Kierra Johnson, executive director of Choice USA, took Friedman’s point farther, saying that poor people also don’t have the abilities to expand their families like they want.
“If we don’t reclaim our bodies and what it means to have agency, sexually and politically, we get these family cap bonds, where if you’re poor, you’re only allowed to have two children if you’re receiving federal assistance,” she said.
When it comes right down to it, ‘freeing your ass’ means owning your own home, working only one job and having tons of babies. So much for embracing progressive, alternative lifestyles.
