"Your Body, My Choice" flips the longstanding feminist slogan "My body, my choice" by swapping the possessive pronouns to imply control over another person's body. The original phrase dates to roughly 1970, when feminists at a Philadelphia protest held signs reading "My Body, My Decision," a slogan that evolved over the following decade into "My body, my choice"2. By inverting that language, "Your body, my choice" strips out the autonomy and replaces it with dominance.

The phrase functions on multiple levels. At its most surface reading, it's a provocative troll designed to upset pro-choice and feminist audiences. At its most literal, critics and women's rights groups interpret it as a rape threat or declaration of ownership over women's bodies3. The ambiguity is part of its design. As the New Yorker put it, "It's a joke, first of all! Get a grip, you easily triggered libfems! Everything started with a tweet"2. That layer of plausible deniability, the ability to claim "it's just a meme," is what makes it effective and what makes it alarming.

The ISD report on the phrase's spread became one of the most cited pieces of post-election analysis, with coverage in CNN, Vox, the New Yorker, the Guardian, NBC News, and the Independent123. The 4,600% increase statistic was widely reported as evidence of emboldened misogyny following the election.

At least one school district issued formal warnings to parents. Stevens Point, Wisconsin superintendent Cory Hirsbrunner told parents the phrase was "simply unacceptable" and that students using threatening language would face disciplinary action1. Vox reported that a BuzzFeed analysis found similar patterns after Trump's 2016 election, with over 50 incidents of students invoking Trump's name or message to attack classmates during the 2016-17 school year3.

The incident raised questions about platform responsibility. X's harassment policy generally only prohibits targeted abuse of specific individuals, leaving broad catchphrase harassment in a gray zone1. TikTok took a clearer stance, confirming the phrase violated community guidelines and removing content that used it non-critically1.

The Australian columnist Van Badham wrote in the Guardian about receiving the phrase in comments on a post about her mother dying, noting that far-right trolls appeared to be "searching the word 'feminist' or 'feminists' to find targets"7. The harassment wasn't confined to American politics. It reached women across the English-speaking internet.

The "My body, my choice" slogan has a long history as a target for rhetorical inversion. Before the 2024 election, the most significant co-opting came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when anti-vaccine and anti-mask protesters adopted the original phrase for their own cause9. Some public health advocates pushed back with their own inversion, arguing that because viruses are transmissible, an individual's vaccination choice affects the "collective body"9. A 2022 essay by Dayna Tortorici in n+1 explicitly framed the Dobbs decision as the government saying "your body, my choice" to American women2.

The 2024 explosion was something different. Fuentes, a 26-year-old self-described "proud incel" and Catholic integralist who has praised Hitler and expressed desire for "Catholic Taliban rule" in America, didn't stumble into a slogan. He weaponized it deliberately as a victory lap2. His rhetoric went beyond the catchphrase. In one video, he stitched together footage of women at a rally and yelled, "Hey b---h, we control your bodies. Men win again and yes, we control your bodies. It's your body, my choice"8.

The backlash organized quickly. Women on TikTok responded with counter-slogans, some humorous and some threatening. "Your c*ck, my Glock" became a popular retort4. References to the 1993 Lorena Bobbitt case surged, with TikToker @jordanthegreywitch posting a video on November 9 that gathered over 1 million views and 290,000 likes6. X user @GeoRebekah posted "Starting January 20, we're all Lorena Bobbitt" alongside a photo of a male symbol being cut by scissors6.

Interest in the South Korean 4B movement also spiked. The feminist movement, which involves women refusing to marry, have children, date, or have sex with men, got fresh attention from American women processing the election results1. The movement offered an alternative framework: rather than respond to "your body, my choice" with threats, simply remove yourself from the equation entirely7.

On November 9, women began doxxing Fuentes, posting his home address and phone number across social media. X user @guelphgirlchris posted his full address in a tweet reading "Hey, Nick. Your home, my choice," gathering over 500,000 likes6. Google Street View images of his house circulated before the address was eventually blurred at Fuentes's request4. People left sarcastic reviews on his address, and user @ashleelorrainex noted the reviews in a post that collected over 190,000 likes6.

One woman, Marla Rose, 57, actually went to Fuentes's house in Illinois. According to her account, she was about to ring his doorbell when he opened the door, sprayed her with a liquid, took her phone, and pushed her down the stairs5. Rose shared video of the encounter showing Fuentes opening the door, spraying toward the camera, and shouting "Get the f--- out of here" before grabbing the phone and going back inside5. The Berwyn Police Department confirmed responding to a call involving both parties, but said "neither party is willing to cooperate with the investigation"5. Rose later told Vice she went there "to ask him, 'Why do you feel comfortable saying the things that you say?'" as "a Jewish person living in a town with an actual, proud Nazi"5.

Fuentes's response to the doxxing was to play victim. He asked Elon Musk to take down tweets revealing his address and hinted at the confrontation by reposting content from Andrew Tate's brother Tristan, who wrote that if roles were reversed, a man showing up at a woman's house could legally be shot5. Candace Owens commented that Rose "is lucky she wasn't in a 'stand your ground' state"5.

A parallel trend emerged among conservative women who embraced the phrase. Starting around November 7, accounts like @BasedBlondex and @emilysavesusa began posting "My body, his choice" alongside couple photos and thirst traps, framing female submission as desirable6. One poster wrote, "Posting this just to watch liberal women on TikTok have mental breakdowns"2. The irony was thick: X user @crotchner2 gathered over 500,000 likes for responding to a "my body, his choice" post by asking, "why would your 15 year old gay son have control over your body"6.

Amazon briefly sold "Your Body, My Choice" shirts before pulling them by mid-November 2024. A handful of "My Body, His Choice" shirts were also removed from the platform2. TikTok confirmed the phrase violated its community guidelines and began removing content unless it explicitly spoke out against the language1.

Seven states passed ballot measures protecting abortion rights in the same election that fueled the catchphrase's spread. Maryland, Missouri, Arizona, Colorado, New York, Montana, and Nebraska all added constitutional protections, and Missouri's total abortion ban was completely reversed8. The disconnect between the on-the-ground political reality and the online rhetoric made the situation even stranger: men were declaring control over women's bodies while voters in their own states were expanding reproductive rights.