Commonalities are not similarities

[firecat]

This post on riotsnotdiets.com promotes the notion that fat people should adopt a disabled identity. That's too simplistic.

http://riotsnotdiets.com/post/4058647475/fat-disability

fat people—just like all people with devalued, non-normative bodies—are disabled. NOT because our bodies can’t do things, but because we live in a world that STOPS our bodies from doing things.

I am all in favor of coming up with an analysis of the sociopolitical experience of "people with devalued, non-normative bodies."

And I think there can be common cause between disabled activism and the fat activism. Some societal changes would benefit people who identify as disabled, fat, or both.

But I definitely don't think being fat, in and of itself, counts as being disabled, and I think it does damage to fat people and disabled people and people who are both to conflate them.

I'm saying this as someone who has been fat all my life and who has developed some mobility and pain problems over the past five years. Having both things going on is way different for me from having only one of those things going on. And the not-fat people I know who are disabled don't have the same experience of the world that I do.

Comments

[deakat]

But I definitely don't think being fat, in and of itself, counts as being disabled, and I think it does damage to fat people and disabled people and people who are both to conflate them.

Exactly. The word "disabled" leaves me squirming, anyway. Having a hearing-impairment or mobility-impairment may limit one, depending on the environment, but it doesn't remove ability.

[firecat]

Do you mean that the "dis" part of "disabled" seems binary to you? I sometimes call myself disabled because of my mobility impairment--yeah, it's not a complete lack of ability, but many kinds of limitations aren't, and yet are still very limiting.

[deakat]

I think that's part of it, but it's also what meloukhia mentioned below. If someone wants to identify themself as disabled, that's up to them, but it's not something that fits for me.

[meloukhia]

Yeah one thing that essay kind of ignored was communities forcibly labeled as 'disabled' that reject disability as an identity, like the Deaf community.

[supergee]

The world stops (or at least tries to stop) gay people from having their kind of sex. That doesn't make gayness a disability.

[redbird]

The other reason I don't think this one works is that it's missing some important points about discrimination and bodies: in the culture I live in, an African-American person has a devalued, non-normative body, and people are stopped from doing things because of assumptions and prejudices about those bodies. There are senses in which being female, in many places, is having a devalued and non-normative body.

Not all discrimination fits that model: there are religious prejudices that don't map closely only ethnic/racial ones, for example. But given that none of us are beings of pure thought—we are all experiencing the world as, or in, bodies—so much does that I don't think this is a useful equivalence (or assertion of a subset relationship: "fatness is a disability" doesn't imply "all disabled people are fat". Yes, some fat people are disabled. Some women are disabled. Some African-Americans are disabled. Or, if you prefer, some disabled people are fat, some are African-American (or of other non-white groups), some are women, some are in more than one of these groups.

That said, I think there might be value in looking at the ways that some discriminated-against groups, identities, or behaviors are more volatile than others. Fat is more like disability than like some other sometimes-stigmatized identities in this regard, I think. Most people think of gender as binary. Religion is a yes/no for a variety of properties: a person is considered to be, or not be, Jewish or Catholic or Buddhist or Muslim or…. While that gets into "Is s/he really a Christian?" sort of questions, those are more likely to be about what qualifies a person as a member of a group than about the idea that someone could be partially Christian, while "partially disabled" is a fairly common idea, and people talk about increasing or decreasing disability. Race is an ambiguous one here, because race as a cultural thing is different from ancestry, and those differences and entanglements produce different answers at different times and places. We're expected to be willing/able to define ourselves briefly in terms of sexual orientation: even people who accept that there are more answers than lesbian/gay and straight may become uncomfortable with complicated answers that try to include something like the real-world variety of a person's experiences.

[snippy]

Speaking only for myself: I have found that identifying myself as disabled is helpful. I'm not as able as some people, because I have chronic conditions that limit my choice field. And I do perceive that as making me lesser--but accepting that instead of fighting it was the right thing for me to allow myself permission to acknowledge and respect what I need instead of holding myself to the standard of TAB people. This fits into my struggles with the idea of normal and my desire to be normal.

[firecat]

Pretty much the same here.

[noelfigart]

I probably qualify as being disabled on several levels. I have arthritis, and yes, the pain does cause me to curtail activities from time to time. I had mononucleosis when I was fifteen and I haven't been quite right since. I expect that I probably would be diagnosed with some fatigue syndrome thingie if I really got into it with my doctor.

That said, I don't self-identify as disabled. Even if I did, I wouldn't feel disabled because I am fat.

I think people should self-identify according to what's right for them, but that's just how I feel for myself.

[staranise]

I'm a thin PWD, and I'm really giving that post the side-eye. There is a real difference between having a non-normative body and having a disability. There's even a difference between having an impairment and having a disability. (My hand has a birth defect so it only has three fingers--I can't play musical instruments or buy gloves for it--but I don't really see it as a disability. Mobility impairments and mental illnesses, on the other hand, count.)

But as a PWD I spend so much hearing "Oh, that's just like [my experience as a TAB]!" ("Oh, that's like when I sprained my ankle!" "Yeah, I'm totally OCD about the dishes") that the post got my hackles up.

ETA: On rereading, I almost want to send a caustic email to the writer. "Fat is just like disability, except for the parts where we're actually disabled! Let's appropriate their terminology for a movement that has very few of their goals!"

[originalpuck]

But as a PWD I spend so much hearing "Oh, that's just like [my experience as a TAB]!" ("Oh, that's like when I sprained my ankle!" "Yeah, I'm totally OCD about the dishes") that the post got my hackles up.

Very much this.

[azurelunatic]

I have intersection, and um. Er.

It can definitely cause accessibility problems -- can I use the normal toilet stalls, or must I use the accessible one? In some older buildings there is no accessible toilet stall, and what's available would be small even for a small person. Can I sit in the booth at the restaurant, or must we request a table? Can I trust the chair to support me, or will I have to choose between standing for the entire function, or sitting on the floor, or god help us all, asking if another goddamn chair can be found.

But. Damn. That entry you linked was not at all helpful.

[firecat]

Yep, I have the same access issues.

[eggcrack]

But I definitely don't think being fat, in and of itself, counts as being disabled, and I think it does damage to fat people and disabled people and people who are both to conflate them.

Agreed.

[originalpuck]

But I definitely don't think being fat, in and of itself, counts as being disabled, and I think it does damage to fat people and disabled people and people who are both to conflate them.

Yep. I'm fat and a person with disabilities, and I agree with you on this.

Yeah, there are some intersections between the communities, but that doesn't mean that the TAB fat community should be appropriating the label of PWD. My fight as a poor person often intersects with my fight as a PWD, too, but that doesn't mean TAB poor folk should appropriate the label, either.

Here's the thing: as a fat woman, I'm constantly fighting my doctors tooth and nail to get them to understand that my fatness is not the cause of my disabilities. I'm constantly fighting family and friends to get them to understand that I won't magically get better if I can equally as magically figure out how to lose weight. Having the fat rights movement appropriate the label of disabled (not talking about fat PWD claiming the label that is appropriate for them) would make that work that much harder.

And that work? It's one of the things that effects how I'm treated as a PWD. It effects what treatment options are open to me, what sort of funding I can get, how my family reacts to me, and how society as a whole understands me. That work, that fight, can mean the difference between pills and no pills, between check-ups and no check-ups, between surgeries or no surgeries.

I'd love to live in a world where that wasn't so. I'd love to live in a world where fatphobia didn't mean I have to come in with pages of studies showing fatphobic doctors that they're wrong (and still not getting anywhere), in a world where being a PWD means that people will automatically give me whatever accomodations I need (HA!). But that's not the case.

In the end, I feel that there are ways to work together without appropriating another community's identity.

[firecat]

That work, that fight, can mean the difference between pills and no pills, between check-ups and no check-ups, between surgeries or no surgeries.

Yep.

If you find that world, I'll be on the spaceship heading there right next to you.

Linketies

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User moominmuppet referenced to your post from Linketies (http://moominmuppet.livejournal.com/1564189.html) saying: [...] Commonalities are not similarities [...]

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. I also cannot totally define "disability" as the result of society's limitations not allowing our bodies to function in it; I have to see it as the intersection of society and our bodies.

[tanteterri.livejournal.com]

I agree that being fat, in and of itself, is not a disability.

However, I find it important to remember that under the ADA a person is protected when others perceive them to be disabled (even though they are not). And I think that very much applies to fat people.