Why I Don’t Blog Any More

You may have noticed that I haven’t blogged here for a very long time.  It’s not because I have stopped believing in the importance of fat activism, or because I’ve given up being a fat activist myself.  Quite the opposite – I believe that it is more important now than it has ever been.

I have stopped blogging because some of you make me hate you.

Some of you make me feel like a monkey being forced to dance for your amusement.  Others push me out in front of them expecting me to do all the work and take all the heat, while they benefit from it all with none of the negativity.  Some of you try to tell me how I should use my own spaces, or police my tone, demand that I am “nicer”.  Some of you don’t believe me when I speak my truths, and openly call me a liar.

A lot of you expect me to put in endless hours of hard work for free.

Why would I continue to subject myself to that? Would you put yourself in that position?

I want to make the world a better place for fat people, particularly fat women.  But I’m not willing to do so if it means that people are going to use me up and discard me the minute they find someone younger, prettier, more willing to smile sweetly and call you darling.  Someone willing to swallow the abuse, the disrespect, the bullying, the constant demands to give, give, give and do so in a way that suits everyone else but myself.

I gave a decade of my life to this, and people still show up on my social media demanding I perform for them, that I provide them a free service, that I step in front of them and square up to the bullies and get the black eye instead of them.

Fuck that.

I have met so many wonderful, amazing people thanks to fat activism.  People who I consider my dearest friends and whom I admire so much.  I wouldn’t change that for the world.  I hope you all know who you are – I love you all so very much.

I’ve also been able to find my own strength and confidence while doing so, which has been so invaluable to me.

But this constant demand, this entitlement from complete strangers who don’t even acknowledge how hard the work is for fat activists, has just burnt every good bit of feeling out of this work for me.  It has poisoned the very thing I love the most – my ability to write.

And I can’t imagine what it’s like for fat women of colour, disabilities, queer, trans, poor, and so on.  If this is happening to me, what is happening to them??

I’m proud of the work I’ve done over the past decade.  I’m proud of how often I’ve stuck my neck out, raised my hand, stood up and spoke up and took the flak.  I’ve got nothing to prove, I’ve given years of my life to this cause, lost friends, compromised on my career, given up my safety and privacy, given SO much, only to have people smack me on the nose like a naughty puppy when I didn’t perform to their standards.

Activists don’t owe you anything.  Activists are already giving FAR more to the world, which includes you individually, than should be expected of human beings.  They’re fighting to make the world a better place.  How dare anyone show up and start demanding anything from them as if they’re entitled to their attention, time, or energy.

Stop for a minute and look in the mirror and ask yourself “Am I doing anything to fix any the fucked up shit in this world?”   Pick one, pick many – poverty, racism, homophobia, ableism, fat hate, domestic violence, I could go on and on and on.  Ask yourself, are you REALLY doing anything?  Are you willing to be the one who speaks up?  Are you willing to put any time at all into making a difference?  If you are, I’m right there beside you, I value you and the work you do.  But for the vast majority of people on this planet, they’re not.  They plug along, grumbling that the world is shit and doing nothing about it, except demanding others do it in a way that they deem acceptable, and particularly demanding of those they have privilege over.

I’m tired of giving my life to people who won’t even stand up to their own families, friends and colleagues in the face of hatred and bigotry, who then whinge that I’m “doing it wrong”.

It’s someone else’s turn.

I’m done.  I’ve got a life to live.

Internalised Fathphobia is Still Fatphobia

First a tiny bit of housekeeping – thank you so much to all of those who have donated so far to my GoFundMe to get to Sydney for the Cyberhate Symposium.  Your support means so much to me!  If you’d like to know more about that, please click here.

Now, on to the topic of the day.

Yesterday I posted this to Instagram, and it struck some really strong chords with people:

I posted this because yet another high profile, supposed fat positive person in the public eye has cropped up in the mainstream media trumpeting about their weight loss surgery and how they are only doing it for themselves, their own health, their own happiness.  In a huge article in a mainstream publication where they were likely paid for the piece, if not they are going to get commercial benefit from doing so.  Simply because there is massive societal benefit in publicly trying to not be a fat person.

Sigh…

I am not going to talk here about personal choice, the pressures fat women face and I am not going to to recite the litany of evidence that shows that weight loss surgery (gastric mutilation) does not cure any illness long time, does not cure depression and has vast detrimental health risks including a high death rate.  I’ve done that before and other people have done it time and time again and it’s all easily retrievable with some simple Google searches.

What I want to talk about today is the damage that these “personal journeys” in the mainstream media do to fat people in general and secondly, the sheer hypocrisy of people who have been in the mainstream media and big business arenas selling themselves as fat positive role models, only to turn around shortly afterwards and in the same media, throw fat people under the bus with their narratives of “personal choice”.

There comes a responsibility with public visibility.  That responsibility is that you are to do your best not to do any harm to those out there that don’t have the platform that you do – be they people you have privilege over, or those you share marginalised identity with.  I take that very seriously with my small platform, and while I will inevitably fuck up, I am always working to do my best to avoid doing so, and I will do my best to own it and fix it when I do fuck up.  I take the time to think about what I am saying, to ask myself who I am leaving out, and who I might be doing harm to.

Personal narratives are important, yes.  But there is always a time and a place that must be carefully chosen.  It is not OK to just jump out into the mainstream media or major business platform with your personal narrative when that narrative is going to do damage to other people.  Having a mainstream media or business platform is a position of power that most marginalised people simply do not have, so there is little to no reply or rebuttal to damaging narratives that are given air time.

Put simply, it’s in no way a big risk to put yourself in the media and parrot the dominant paradigm about fatness.  It’s a safe bet that is going to get you support from the majority, because the majority actually do believe that fat is bad, and that one must go to any length to not be fat.  This is not a brave step, or one that has never been heard before.  It’s a safe bet that to do so you are going to have people patting your back and telling you “You go girl, good on you.”

But what is also a safe bet is that people are going to read/see your story, and regardless of whether or not you’ve put any caveats in that it’s your own personal story, they’re going to see it as a reassurance that they are right, that all fat people are unhealthy, sad, depressed, gross, sickly and miserable – you are simply reinforcing the existing narratives.

The other problem I have with these types of stories is that they are so often coming from someone who has made themselves a name, a business, a career, money and fame from other fat women – as the post that Virgie Tovar shared on her Facebook page this morning says:

Image text: These celebrities are escaping their fat bodies to more fully engage in capitalism, period. Their justifications for doing so are gaslighting defined. They were willing to utilize the language of bopo/fat acceptance to open the door for themselves. They used the right coded language to tacitly ask for our fidelity, and they’re using the same coded language to disavow/escape us all the same. It is so insidious and hurtful when things play out like this. Fuck choice feminism.

 

Meaghan O’Malley is so right when she says this.  It is a deep hypocrisy to have stood up and said “I love my fat body and I’m here for you, my fellow fat women!” to build a career and platform, only to throw them under the bus down the track by using the same coded language to declare in a highly public platform that you are taking drastic steps to not be a fat person.  Particularly galling is that some of this was in a HUGE media campaign for a major department store less than a year ago.  It’s all well and good to jump on the bandwagon to sell yourself as radical self love, build a career, align yourself with several brands using the language and works of decades of fat activists, and in fact getting several very prominent fat activists to stand beside you, only to turn up in a major tabloid magazine not even a year later saying that all of those things you said are not true.  Particularly having launched a major new product line aimed at fat women mere days beforehand.

Of course, this is only one example of a prominent fat person declaring publicly the opposite to the very things they were saying and riding to their fame after gastric mutilation (or any other type of intentional size reduction).  We’ve seen it from singers, actors, models, writers, all kinds of very public people.

Every time this happens, there are those who have absolutely nothing to do with fat activism at any other time who get themselves in the media and start screaming for the “mean fatties to leave [insert famous ex-fat person] alone”.  When we critique the messages these very public people are putting out on their sizeable platforms, we are accused of being “mean” towards the person or being “bitter and angry because we’re still fat”.  It’s fucking exhausting to constantly have to argue straw man arguments from people who refuse to listen to what we are saying.  The other particularly galling argument is that by somehow critiquing the messages put out by these narratives that fat activists lack compassion or empathy.  Fuck that bullshit – nobody wants to have compassion or empathy for the fat people they are pummelling into the dirt with their lies about health and happiness being unattainable to fat people, or their faux-moralising to hide their open loathing of us, but the minute we raise valid questions about the damage being done by those who are suddenly pro-weight loss after having built careers off our backs, we’re the ones lacking compassion and empathy.

There is no shame in feeling disappointment and hurt that yet another of the people you believed were on your team is in the media very publicly trying not to be like you.

Nobody is saying that your body is not your own to do with what you will.  What we are saying is that if you have a highly public platform, perhaps you should examine the rhetoric you are spewing out and how it harms people who don’t have the same platforms.  It’s not like you’re saying anything new with these narratives that fat = miserable/unhealthy/disgusting.  You’re saying the same thing the world has been saying about you all along, now you’ve jumped the fence and are saying them about other more vulnerable people.  You have become one of the bullies.

How anyone can wear that on their conscience, I don’t know.

Nothin’ To See Here Folks

Apparently a nest of you has been stirred up again, and y’all think turning up here and yelling “TRIGGERED!!” is some kind of ace slapdown that showcases the best of your wit and intellect.

Yawn.

Look, I know you probably feel WAY AWESOME COOL coming over here to leave some sad little hate masturbation on my page.  But not one of you is original, nor are you even entertaining.

I have heard it all before.  No seriously, I have.  Look…. Frequently Heard Asshattery.

Get a hobby.  Meet some people.  Perhaps try some therapy.  Life is so much more interesting and fulfilling than spending your day masturbating over your keyboard.

 

Not Now, Not Ever

Sigh… my dear fellow fats, there’s something you all need to know…

You don’t owe anyone jack shit.

No seriously, you don’t.  You don’t owe anyone any of the following:

• An excuse for your body/health/size/weight.
• Justification for your existence.
• A “debate” (or argument, whatever they want to call it).
• Justification for your fatness.
• Proof of your “health”.
• Proof of what you eat, or what physical activity you do.
• Apologies for taking up the space your body happens to take up.
• Answers to any of the private information people demand of you.
• Proof that you are “happy”.
• An education into the human rights of fat people.
• Corrections for dodgy science.
• Politeness or respect when they demand any of the above.

Further to Lindy West’s excellent piece in The Guardian this week, where she quite rightfully points out that after having answered the same question publicly for six years, she’s no longer going to bother responding to it any more, I think it needs to be expanded upon to include refusing to engage in any of the above activities with people who demand you jump through hoops for them, and then completely disregard your response anyway.

We’ve just got to stop doing this.  And we’ve got to stop tiptoeing around the people who demand we do this.  We’ve not only got to start saying “No.” but also we’re completely justified in telling them exactly where to shove their intrusive questions and demands.

Oh I know, those same people demanding you do all of those things will say “Well you’ve clearly got no argument then.”  Or they’ll say “I’ve approached you respectfully and now you’re being RUDE to me.” while clutching their metaphorical pearls in horror.

Here’s the thing.  Demanding fat people justify our existence, asking intrusive personal questions, trying to force us to “debate” them about your rights as a human being, and expecting us to educate them are all acts of violence towards fat people.  These intrusive, disrespectful behaviours are deliberate attempts to push us into a “lesser” category of humanity, to waste our time in repeatedly answering their demands with absolutely no intention of either believing us or allowing us to move on and to generally just be disrespectful.  It is NOT polite or respectful discourse to demand or expect you to respond to these things, and therefore you’re not beholden to some kind of polite response.

Tell them where to shove their damn demands for you to justify your existence.  Because the truth is, even if you were to respond, you’re not going to change their mind anyway.  Trust me, I’ve been doing this for YEARS now, rapidly approaching a decade, and I have never, ever had anyone who came at me expecting me to either justify my existence or prove my life to them in any way, actually change their mind and start recognising my right to exist in this world as I am, a fat woman.

The people who are genuinely going to change their minds actually just listen – they don’t demand you jump through hoops for them.  The people who are going to respect you are going to take their time to do their own reading/research.  They’re going to listen to you when you speak in the first place.  They’re not going to demand you politely respond to their intrusive grilling of your right to exist fully as a human being.  This constant waving of “Well I WAS going to consider your argument but… “ under our noses as though if we just answer them the right way, and show them the right aspect of our humanity, they’ll treat us with respect, is so false.  You’re not going to get respect from anyone who expects that of you.  Not now, not ever.

What you do owe is to yourself.  You owe living your life to the fullest you can, in whatever circumstances you find yourself in.  You owe yourself kindness and value for your body, even if it doesn’t always look or behave the way you want it to.  You owe yourself the right to exist in the world, as you are, right now, no matter what changes might or might not come in the future.

You Are Not Subtle With Your Hate

Inspired my my dear friend Ali over at Mean Fat Girl, I want to expand upon her post That Thing Thin People Do.  The thing is, we see you, thin people.  You think you’re being OH SO SUBTLE in your little judgements and smirks and insincerity towards us, but there’s one thing I can promise you – you’re not subtle.  You’re not even original.  Because when I sit down and talk to other fat people, particularly fat women, I hear the same things over, and over, and over again.  So perhaps if I lay them out in a nice, easy to read list, you can all see just how blatantly obvious you are with your cruddy behaviour, and maybe you’ll understand why so many of us simply don’t trust you, or even like you.

Oh you might not do all of these things, nobody is saying that.  But I’m quite sure you do some of them, because I and other fat people have seen you do it.  Time and time and time again.  And if you are one of the few who DON’T do these things, then this is not about you.   Don’t get all “not all thin people” at me – it’s no different to #NotAllMen or #NotAllWhitePeople

Things Thin People Do

• Expect their fat friends to hang out with them for hours on end while they try on clothes that are not available to them, without ever returning the favour, or being cognizant of how fat people are excluded from clothing
• Scowl at fat people in public
• Laugh at the idea of fat people dating, being in love, having sex.
• Laugh at fat people in public
• Assume that fat people are all lazy gluttons
• Decide how much and what fat people should eat.  Those “Are you sure you want that?” comments.
• Nudge their partners, friends, family and point out fat people in public
• Take photographs of fat people on their mobile phones
• Talk about our bodies to other thin people, particularly about whether you think we are lazy or gluttonous.
• Say things like “If I ever get like that, kill me.” In reference to our bodies
• Inspect our shopping carts and baskets
• Watch us eating, staring, following every morsel of food from our plate to our mouths.
• “Compliment” us only when we wear dark colours, or clothes that hide our bodies, but if we wear anything colourful or that shows skin, you’re suddenly silent.
• Talk about how fat you are, in front of us, like being fat is the worst, most disgusting thing you could be.
• Use us to make yourself feel better about yourself – “at least I’m hotter/better/thinner than her.”
• Speak to us as if you’re our intellectual superiors.
• Assume we’re exaggerating or over-sensitive when we talk about how rude and hurtful people are to us.
• Talk over us about fatness, bodies and eating disorders, as if you have more expertise on our bodies than we do.
• Tell your children “You wouldn’t want to get fat now.” Right in our hearing, again, as though that’s the worst thing that a human being could be.
• Laugh when your children parrot the hateful things to us that you have taught them.  As if saying something mean to a fat people is funny or cute.
• Do absolutely nothing when someone says something hurtful or hateful about fat people in front of you.

And most tellingly;

•  Get offended when fat people point out the many ways that you behave rudely or hurtfully towards us.
• Make excuses for all of the above.

That’s right.  Ask yourself right now – has the list above pissed you off, or offended you?  If the answer is yes, then I’m talking about you.  If you’re bothered that I and others are pointing out all of these appalling behaviours, then perhaps ask yourself why you’re so invested in being “allowed” to treat fat people with such disrespect and hate.  What kind of person are you that you think any of the above behaviours are acceptable towards another human being?  Would you accept people behaving like that towards you?  Would you respect, trust or want to be around people who exhibited those behaviours towards you?

As I said at the beginning of this piece – fat people see you doing this stuff.  It’s not subtle at all, you’re not sneakily engaging in something that nobody will notice.  We see you.  And instead of internalising your disrespect and hatred of us, we’re learning to shine a spotlight on it for what it is.  That might make you feel uncomfortable, or ashamed.  Good – that’s how you’ve been making us feel about our own bodies for so long.  The difference is, our bodies are not harming you, they are just that – OUR bodies.  None of your business.