fattypatties speaks for me

[firecat]

Others posted it while she was in the middle of writing it. Now it's finished, and it's fucking brilliant. Start at the bottom of the page and read up.

Top 10 Things I am Tired of Discussing in the fat-acceptance community

I'll have more to say about this later; I'm still taking it all in.

Comments

[syzygy.livejournal.com]

First a couple things: I didn't say that fat is a sign of health breakdown, I said if it was. One of those things where you criticize an argument by saying "Even if it's true." You guys would probably have said "Even if it were true," being of a more distinct view than I am. Second thing, I certainly don't think the problems listed above mean that fat people shouldn't be free of stigmatization, and I'm surprised that anyone would interpret it that way. And a third thing as well would just be that I don't think I was having cognitive dissonance... the head spinning came when I thought about the importance and complexity of the baby that was being disposed of with the bathwater.

*shrugs* I knew from the beginning that my comment was bordering on semantics, but perhaps it's to a far greater extent than I had thought. If fat acceptance communities are not supposed to talk about anything other than fat acceptance, and more specifically are not supposed to talk about subjects which can ever be manipulated for the uses of fat stigma even if they are otherwise important, then there's no objection to raise. Since fat does not make people immune to most of the issues in food politics, I would then hope that fat acceptance people are members of other communities as well where the subject of food politics is not taboo because of its potential for manipulation. I was sort operating under the assumption that fat acceptance communities were first and foremost communities, where people learn about life from each other and form relationships and hold conversations that sometimes branch off of the original topic to varying degrees.

"Well, there is this one -- where marketing will exploit every leftover
prejudice and insecurity one pretends not to have. I'm betting that this
problem is your Big Dissonator."

See, I read this one carefully and cleverly deduced that you were suggesting that I have a secret prejudice against fat people. *wry grin* Particularly coming from a stranger, I think it's perfectly fair to raise the possibility, but one should be cautious about oversimplifying people's thoughts and ending up with a "if you don't see it exactly the way I see it you're against me" situation or somesuch. First, I would say that the relationship between fat and health isn't something I've specifically explored very much, so I'm mostly agnostic on the issue. My operating guess, however, is that body size plays different roles in the health of different people. I'd guess that some people at their healthiest are naturally skinny, or medium, or fat. For other people, their body size may be a side effect of their state of poor health--that is certainly the case for me. Meanwhile some people may be unhealthy, but their body size is independent of that. However, body size would a poor indicator to use because it could mean, or not mean, so many different things. Do body sizes cause health problems? That's way over my head, so I am even more agnostic on that one. I certainly respect the view you seem to hold, that body size is simply unrelated to health, because I figure you're probably better informed than I am. But I'm not going to drop my view and adopt yours uncritically, of course. And I think my reasoning likewise should not just simply be dismissed as prejudice, though of course you didn't know what I thought to begin with.

[syzygy.livejournal.com]

"Fat acceptance isn't an enemy or a distraction, it's part of the coalition
you're looking for."

Absolutely--and I didn't ever suggest fat acceptance was an enemy or distraction, so I don't know why that came up--the useful application of food politics is seriously held back when nutritional health is equated with low weight, and all the more so when an emotional fat stigma is involved too, turning good intentions for nutritional health into subtle or overt fat bashing. Fat stigma reinforces denial and lack of information, whether it's from less fat people ignoring their own self responsibility because it's easier to try to control others, or from fat people being so worn out and turned off by the stigma that potentially useful information on food politics and health becomes inaccessible to them. All the more so if they aren't even supposed to talk about the subject in their own acceptance communities.

I'm quite sorry but I always spend too much time when I get caught up in internet discussions and I may not be able to respond fully after this--because yes for me a meaningful response is usually this wordy and overthought =P

[firecat]

and I didn't ever suggest fat acceptance was an enemy or distraction, so I don't know why that came up

It was the "you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater" line that suggested it to me, FWIW.

[firecat]

If fat acceptance communities are not supposed to talk about anything other than fat acceptance, and more specifically are not supposed to talk about subjects which can ever be manipulated for the uses of fat stigma even if they are otherwise important, then there's no objection to raise.

I belive that Patty's original post, which I can't access right at the mo', mentioned "forums" rather than "the fat acceptance community," which was my phrase and I probably should have stuck with forums. Most of the people I know who are aware around fat politics are also critical of excessive corporate growth, but that's not really on-topic for fat-acceptance forums.

The problem is that on fat-acceptance forums, discussions about actually accepting everybody CONSTANTLY get redirected into discussions about 'good' and 'bad' food. If you aren't on these forums it might be hard to understand what that's like. It might be like, on a food politics forum where you are discussing how to promote less processed / less corporatized food, someone constantly comes along and says "But Burger King isn't as bad as McDonalds. You guys don't want to put Burger King out of business, do you? I'm really healthy but I do like to eat Burger King fries once a year."