A Strange Day on Planet Earth

We really need to bring an end to the paternalistic state dictating what people can do with their own god damn bodies. I mean, why does this even need to be said to the swerf ‘n’ terf ($29.99 at Red Lobster this week only, btw) contingent when they claim to be any kind of feminist?

That’s why I started the hashtag #SellingOrgansIsWork and have been interviewing organ vendors on my podcast, The Oldest Surgical Procedure.

Why do organ vendors make this deeply personal choice? Their stories are more complex and inspiring than you could imagine. Last week we even featured an organ vendor manager, who recruits organ vendors and then coordinates their autonomous choices to harvest as many as three organs at a time. Next week we explore the contentious topic of minor organ vendors, a discussion you don’t want to miss!

Globally, this surgical work has opened new economic opportunities to those outside the formal economy. The swerfs ‘n’ terfs will tell you the industry overwhelmingly harvests organs from poor black and brown bodies, exploiting desperation, and leaves many vendors disabled for life, if not dead. You may have heard the phrase “modern-day slave trade.”

I wonder why they hate organ vendors so much. It’s true that many of these women are former organ vendors, in which case they were simply in the wrong line of work. It’s not for everyone. As to the race of organ vendors, we need to ask why this choice may be more desirable to certain demographics: a sensitive topic that warrants further study. But would you rather people have no food than the option to work in organ vending? How can anyone support that kind of state interference in historically stigmatized procedures?

Does being poor mean a person can no longer make autonomous choices about selling body parts on a market? That is a deeply patronizing and patriarchal mindset. In fact, these transactions liberate us from a puritanical relationship with our corporeality and the constraints of five-sense-normativity. Anyone who argues otherwise probably just hates bodies.

While the organ trade has attracted certain unsavory criminal elements globally, to conflate organ vending and trafficking is hysterical disinformation. And the risk of death is greatly exaggerated, though no we don’t have quality data on that just yet. There are occupational hazards, just like with any work. But consider that unlike soldiers, organ vendors make an informed choice about their body modifications.

Once organ vending and buying are decriminalized everywhere, organ vendors will come out of the shadows and healthy local organ vending economies will flourish. No more black market — promise! That is what happened in New Zealand, according to organ vendor managers in that country. And that is why I demand an immediate end to all state regulation of organ harvesting.

As I support fully decriminalizing the sex trade, this is called being logically consistent.