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

[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.