Director's Note

Sovereign Minds and Bodies

(10/2/2026) – I think about the Cornell Seven, and that drugging and gang-raping a woman isn’t enough to merit prosecution in the brutal and useless bureaucracy that we have the temerity to call a “justice system.” I think about the same system attempting to torture Christa Pike to death in the state of Tennessee this week. I think about the fact that there’s been not a single arrest related to the release of the Epstein files. 

Sometimes it feels like we sent Harvey Weinstein to jail and called it a day, content that a few bad men had gotten some share of comeuppance, while failing to root out whatever is so deeply ingrained in our culture that allows women’s bodies to be tortured and traded and treated as commodities. 

Humanists believe the greatest lie ever told is that our bodies are made for any purpose other than our own. 

So many stories tell us that it is acceptable for people to be used as means to an end, as accessories for someone else’s glory. Abraham and Isaac is my least favorite, or most instructive, example. Isaac’s body was not treated as something worthy of dignity but as a prop to showcase Abraham’s obedience, his willingness to brutalize it for the imagined honor of a vengeful God was, we’re told, what made him worthy of heavenly trust and anointment.

Some morality! 

And these stories aren’t just religious. They’re found in the epics of war that lionize the victors and gloss over the dead. They’re found in the praise that was showered upon now-discredited scientists like J. Marion Sims, who was made President of the American Medical Association after his brutal experiments in gynecological procedure on enslaved women.  

Nor are these stories simply anachronisms of the distant past. The rising Christian Nationalist movement, the one with the President’s ear, is talking openly about repealing the 19th amendment, weakening women’s ability to make their own reproductive decisions and promoting an ideology of rank male supremacy. 

But humanists believe people are not a means to an end. We believe people belong to themselves, that our bodies and minds are sovereign, and that the greatest and potentially the only sin is to infringe upon this independence, to demand someone be used for our pleasure or power or convenience against their will. 

Ernestine Rose was an atheist leader in the women’s rights and anti-slavery movements of the 1800s. Born into a religious family, she was nearly forced into an arranged marriage against her will, but successfully escaped when she took the case to a secular court, which ruled in her favor.

In her 1851 Address on Women’s Rights, she said it forcefully: Woman, in relation to man, “has been made to believe that she was created for his benefit only,” treated as “a play-thing to pass away an idle hour, or a drudge to do his bidding.” She said that would only change when a woman understands “that she is formed for the same aims and ends in life that he is.”

And she roused the crowd with one of my favorite humanist creeds: “Obedience to wrong is wrong itself, and opposition to it is virtue alike in woman as in man.”

We are not created to be used for the benefit of others, or to stand idly by while wrong occurs. The highest and best form of goodness is in disobedience in the face of systems that degrade others’ dignity or condition others’ worth.

If there is any sacred thing humanists believe in, it is this: I belong to me, and you belong to you. My body and mind are my own. Nothing can violate this. People may try, out of selfishness or anger or cruelty, and when they do, we must resist this for ourselves, and we must resist it when it happens to others. This is what it means to be human. That is the common obligation that we share.

For humanity,

Fish

The American Humanist Association

The American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of Humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming worldview of Humanism, which—without beliefs in gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

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