Movement as Resistance: How Fascism Polices Bodies—And How We Fight Back

👋 Hey you.
If movement has ever felt like punishment, this one’s for you.
If “wellness” has ever left you out, this one’s for you.
If you’ve been taught your body is a problem to fix, this one’s definitely for you.

This week, we’re talking about movement—not as compliance, but as rebellion.
As joy. As grief. As survival.
And as something fascism deeply wants to control.

But before we dive in, here’s a space for softness…

🪷This Week’s Practice

Take Up Space: Restorative Hips + Embodied Reflection
🗓 Sunday, June 1 at 9 PM ET
📺 Click here to watch on YouTube »

This 60-minute restorative class is about releasing tension, reclaiming space, and inviting ease into your hips and your whole damn body.

We’ll explore deeply supported postures—including reclined hand-to-big-toe variations, folded deer pose, and Supta Baddha Konasana—with the option to practice on a mat, in bed, or from a chair.

Class closes with a guided meditation on what it means to take up space—in your body, your breath, and your life.

✨ Created for fat, disabled, neurodivergent, and chronically ill folks who deserve softness without apology. Pajamas welcome. Shame not invited.

Props you might want:
🧣 A yoga strap, scarf, or rolled blanket (plus your usual cozy setup)

🩻 The Violence of “Wellness”

When I say exercise, what floods your body?

For many of us—fat, disabled, queer, neurodivergent, traumatized—that word carries the echoes of gym class humiliations, weight-loss bribes disguised as “wellness programs,” and the silent scream of being measured against standards that demand our disappearance.

Mainstream fitness culture isn’t about health. It’s about compliance.

It’s the calorie-tracking app that reframes lunch as a debt.
It’s the doctor who ignores your pain but lectures your BMI.
It’s the yoga studio that claims “all bodies welcome” while offering no chairs, no variations, no space for your cane.

This isn’t an accident.
Healthism—the belief that health is a moral obligation—is eugenics in pastels.
It says: Only the “fit” deserve care, space, survival.

Reclaiming Movement: Joy and Intention as Rebellion

But movement can be something else.

Joyful movement asks:
What if your body’s purpose wasn’t to shrink, but to feel?
To revel in the sway of a dance, the stretch of a yawn, the weight of your limbs in water.
No quotas. No repentance.

Intentional movement acknowledges:
Joy isn’t always part of the equation.
The mental health walk. Physio for our injured knee.
Choices we make in service of ourselves.

This isn’t “exercise.”
This is agency.

The Fascism Connection

Here’s what they don’t want you to see:
The same forces that demand thinness are defunding Medicaid.
The same systems that pathologize fatness are banning trans healthcare.
The same rhetoric of “personal responsibility” is dismantling disability rights.

This is bio-political warfare.

• Medicaid cuts mean disabled and low-income folks lose home care, medications, and lifesaving equipment.

• Anti-fat legislation (like BMI-based insurance penalties) frames our bodies as “burdens.”

• Anti-trans laws criminalize bodily autonomy, just like abortion bans.

• Public officials claim that chronically ill and disabled folks don’t provide a “return on investment” and therefore do not deserve treatment.

Fascism doesn’t start with camps.
It starts with categorizing which bodies are “worth” saving.

How We Resist

In Your Body:

• Opt out of tracking. Delete the apps. Move (or don’t) without metrics

  Reminder: data stored with corporations can and will be seized by fascist governments.

• Reclaim rest. Nap like your worth isn’t tied to productivity.

• Name the harm. When someone jokes about “earning” food, say:
  “That’s how diet culture keeps us hungry and weak.”

• Protect your joy. Move for you (if you choose to), in ways that refill your cup.

In the Streets:

• Flood your reps about Medicaid cuts. Script: “I oppose the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act.’ Healthcare is a right, not a privilege for the ‘deserving.’”
  🔗 Find your senator here

• Participate in civil disobedience—especially if you are white, cisgender, and able-bodied.

• Be loud. Write zines. Make political art. Don’t let them continue to normalize eugenics.

In Community:

• Mask. Disabled and chronically ill folks deserve the same access to space that anyone else does. Don’t wait for a government mandate that will never come.

• Support disabled, transgender, fat, and chronically ill folks in your community.
  Donate cash, drop off goods, or check in on folks who need support in your physical and digital neighborhoods.

🔥 A Litany for the Unruly

May we move in ways that terrify the algorithms.
May our rest be a middle finger to grind culture.
May we fight like our joy depends on it—because it does.

Solidarity, not fitness. Always.

💜In rest and resistance,
Shannon

💨P.S. Need a breath after all that?
Try my 5-minute grounding practice:
🎧 “Body Sovereignty” Meditation on YouTube »