My Issue With “Body Positivity”

This article is dedicated to a Twitter user named Zuza, who uses the handle @h8erbieber. On 6/28/2022, Zuza posted a thread with the following as the inaugural tweet:

Transition is not body positive, a thread. The slogan “born in an wrong body” is terribly harmful and does not reflect reality at all — because there are no evil bodies. We are all born in bodies that are good because they serve us.

First off, we are not “all born in bodies that are good because they serve us.” According to the CDC, roughly three percent of all babies are born with some kind of birth defect. These birth defects are also responsible for roughly twenty percent of deaths that take place before a baby becomes a year old.

Even limiting this to bodies that do not have birth defects, the claim that our bodies “serve us” is still one that simply does not make sense. What does it mean for our bodies to “serve us,” exactly? What would it look like if our bodies were in conflict with us? For that matter, what about situations where our bodies are actively hindering us from engaging in something we want to do? For example, I may very much want to stare directly at the sun, but my eyes will not allow me to do so without risking that I go blind.

Zuza goes on to write:

If there are any abnormalities that prevent healthy…