What fat activist topic should I speak on?

[firecat]

I'm going to be a speaker at the virtual Fat Activism Conference this year! Here is what it's about:

The Fat Activism Conference is "a virtual conference (so you can listen to the talks by phone and/or computer) for people of all sizes who are interested in creating a world that respects the diversity of body sizes, and who are interested in fighting the bullying, stigmatizing, shaming, and oppression faced by fat people, and want to do that work intersectionally."

I need to decide what topic to speak on! Please help me decide! I'm giving about a 30 minute talk with an opportunity for Q&A. Under the cut are some topic ideas, but feel free to suggest others (and/or suggest changes to the ones that are there.)

Fat and invisible: Do not want!

The fat activist movement, like society at large, insufficiently represents and accommodates many kinds of fat people - fat people of color, superfat people, fat people who are not cisgender, fat people who are disabled, older fat people, and so on. How can we make the fat activist movement a movement for all of us?

From sex positivity to sex inclusivity:

How can the fat activist movement honor and support asexual and less-sexual people as well as highly sexual people?

Disability in relationships:

Some fat people are disabled and some fat people are in relationships with disabled people. How do we help each other? How do we manage when our disabilities conflict?

Fat activist allies

How do thin and less-fat activists help the fat activism movement? How could they do better?

Fat and intersectional barriers to health care:

Quality health care is much harder to access for people of color and for fat, disabled, older, low-income, queer, and/or trans people. How does this affect our lives? How can we help each other?

Fat and trans/non-binary gender:

How does fatness affect our experience of gender and vice versa? How can the fat activist movement support people who are trans and/or nonbinary? And where can we get clooooothes?

Healthism in fat activism:

Healthism is the belief that health is a moral imperative for everyone and healthier people are morally superior to less healthy people. The fat activist community often reproduces societal notions about healthism. How does this affect our movement? How can we replace healthism with solidarity?

Comments

[thnidu]

Bearing in mind that I'm not going to be at the conference and unlikely to be tele-there either...
• The healthism topic sounds interesting, but they all do.
• Probably most useful to me would be the allies topic.

I'm going to send this link to an old friend and former co-worker who was and I suspect still is a fat activist. (She and I and a few others regularly played Illuminati at lunchtime, with lots of added power group cards. I created one for each member of us: I was "Esperantists", a nudist was "Nudists and Naturists", and hers was "Avoirdupois Liberation Front".)

[firecat]

Thanks for letting me know your preference and thanks for forwarding the post. I love "Avoirdupois Liberation Front"!!!

[thnidu]

Friend says "Thanks!"
...
The icon just proved itself. While scrolling thru my list of icons (63, iirc), apparently my thumb accidentally selected it.

[firecat]

Ha!

[shehasathree]

Awesome!
They all sound pretty great, but i think healthism, fat and trans/non-binary, and allies are the ones least likely to be spoken about by others?
/relatively uninformed but interested opinion.

[firecat]

Thanks for your comment!

[lilysea]

Thank you for doing this work! ^_^

[firecat]

Thanks - love your icon!

[serene]

Oh, my gosh, I love all of them. However, if all of them were happening (by you) (at the same time) (by, one assumes, magick), I would choose the last one, because I'm really concerned about the healthist trend in fat spaces, and it appears to be getting worse. "Get healthy, not thin" still privileges some bodies over others.

[jesse_the_k]

+1. Healthism expands the convo.

[firecat]

Thanks for your vote!

[firecat]

Thanks for letting me know!

[snippy]

The one that bothers me most is the healthism one, because agency. I get to make choices about my life, including not to prioritze health! To me healthism is just a subset of narcissism.

[firecat]

To me healthism is just a subset of narcissism.

I love this! May I steal it?

[snippy]

Freely granted!

I have actually said to people in meatspace, "I prefer to improve my character so that I learn to treat other people better; I think focusing on health is very self-centered."

[firecat]

That is awesome! The part of my head that stores fucked up societal values is tying itself into knots and turning purple at that. May I steal that too? (Would you like to be credited, and if so how? I will be giving a talk and providing a download, so I can include a link to your blog or whatever you want.)

[snippy]

You can't steal anything from me because I would happily give it to you. But yeah, you can steal it. :)

I would like to be Kai Jones and you can link my DW and gelasticjew.blogspot.com.

[firecat]

Thank you!

[selki]

Whoo!

[silveradept]

They are all excellent topics. I, personally, would like to see "Being supportive of your partner" with an emphasis on how to try and help them with negative self-talk, but that's a very specific need.

I think, of the list there, the healthism one is the one most likely to be unique and powerful.

[firecat]

Thanks for your comments!

As for helping a partner who has negative self-talk, here are my two cents as someone who has negative self-talk in my head and who has sweeties who also do:

$0.01: At a time when they're not full of negative self-talk, ask them how they would like you to behave when they do it. Possibly offer some suggestions about things you could do. Each of my partners wants something different from what I want.

$0.01: Unless your partner specifically tells you otherwise, don't hold onto the idea that you can cure them of negative self-talk or the feelings behind it, or cause them to see themselves the way you see them. If someone with that idea engages with me, I feel a lot of pressure. Your job is to witness and support, not cure. The thoughts might never go away, but a lot of people can eventually come to not believe in them so fervently. Nonjudgemental support helps me with that.

OK, maybe that's a nickel's worth...

[contrarywise]

Very cool conference. Also, those are all awesome topics.

While I agree with the rest of the commenters about the healthism issue being up there on my list, the lack of representation of fat POC in particular and trans/non-binary, PWD, and older fat people is also of great concern to me. The fat-o-sphere is notably white and cis, or at least it was a few years ago when I was reading blogs more regularly.

Also, go you! How cool that you get to present this year!

[firecat]

Thanks for sharing your viewpoint. And yes, it still is.

[leafrider.livejournal.com]

Healthism in fat activism seems very interesting to me. So often it seems that people are more concerned for others' physical health than their emotional well being, more than just being friendly, nice, connecting with another as an equal. Concern seems to me too often to be a form of condescension. I see a lot of that online especially. Maybe people don't realize how they come across, bringing up health "concerns" in comments every time they see a mention of a fat person or fatness.

[firecat]

Thanks for letting me know your preference!

[pameladean]

Congratulations! To be honest, I just want to carol, "Please firecat, talk about All the Things." But I think the last three are the most interesting of an interesting list.

P.

[firecat]

Thanks for letting me know your preference!

[sabotabby]

I'm really interested in Healthism in Fat Activism. I mean, they all sound fascinating, but as a (not very fat) someone with serious health issues, I bristle at the moralism inherent in discussions of food and exercise, and the whole "fat people need to prove that they're healthy to justify their existence."

[firecat]

Thanks for letting me know your preference!