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

[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.