Fugitivus Discussion Forum

Awww, thanks. I'll gladly accept those hugs, even if I don't feel sad about what happened anymore. Just sort of angry and indignant. XD

I think there's a fair bit of truth to that. Fat-hate is the denial of rights and dignity based on moral judgments of perceived behaviours. To accept fat is to accept that fat people deserve more than the right to diet, or to alter one's behaviours. FA cannot succeed if it imposes any judgments - to ask, "Who is healthy enough to deserve dignity?" would be its anathema.

Any other -ism is, similarly, the denial of rights based on perceived behaviour that carries a perceived moral value. Thus, any other social justice movement has to refute both of those perceptions to justify why the class in question deserves rights. It would be preposterous for an anti-racist to suggest that speaking Black English is grounds for discrimination. But feminism, and particularly its earlier iterations, have struggled with this. A fair few strains of pseudo-feminist thought seem to suggest that women deserve rights only if they act like men.

Addendum: The reason I think FA distills these concepts is that weight is viewed as a changeable thing. Some of the rationale for eliminating other -isms is that the oppressed class can't change themselves into the ruling class, but that notion allows for the ruling class to still seem desirable. The general population does not see this argument as applying to fat-hate. Thus, the message of fat acceptance cannot simply be, "Stop hating fat people," but must be, "Start loving them."

Yes, Smoovie, yes it did. I feel enlightened now.

Yes, Smoovie, you made a ton of sense and I agree completely. I'd also like to note that fat phobia and ableism are very much tied together - "fat" is "unhealthy" and "unhealthy" is inherently BAD and INFERIOR.

Makes sense to me, Smoovie.

Karalyn, my extended family also subscribes to the idea that it is OK to be fat if you are a mature adult (well sort of OK although weight loss is to be praised) but not if you are young.

There's a lot of "young people should be active!" from that side of the family and there are some really weird behaviors because of it. Like my dad doesn't like the fact that I spend so much time online, and sometimes when I'm inside on my computer he will insist (well, this hasn't happened since I was a minor I guess) that I go outside and read a book. It's similarly sedentary but because I'm outside getting fresh air that makes it more "active."

In my night class tonight, the professor showed a video on THE OBESITY CRISIS OOGA BOOGA BOOGA.

And I got to hear my classmates going "ewwwww, that's so groooossss, ewwww look at the size of her boobs, ewwwww he has man boobs".

And I just...couldn't deal with it. I left class early. Some of the people they "eww"d were skinnier than me, and I just...ugh.

Gods, that's so fucked up. :/

Argh Karalyn, I'm so sorry.
I also have a fatphobia in the classroom story today, unfortunately. I had my comp students read an article called "the Famine Mystique" today about eating disorders in young women and the consequences of toxic beauty standards (part of the race/class/gender in American media segment), and predictably, one of the young fit white dudes brought up the obesity epidemic and how mad it makes him because "America has so many fat people that Europe makes fun of us, and if they'd JUST EXERCISE they wouldn't be fat!" So much fail. I explained that most people, fat and thin alike were well aware that exercise was good for them, but obesity in this country was rather more complex than "stupid fatties too stupid to exercise" as he so charmingly put it. I brought up the tendency of repeated dieting to lead to increased weight gain (trying to bring discussion back to the article), and the correlations of poverty, food deserts, and obesity, and one of my other students brought up the labor and material costs of a "healthy" lifestyle (fresh food rather than packaged, gym membership, etc) and how that placed them outside of the range of most working-class or lower income people. I didn't want to go into a full derail, since I wanted them discussing the readings, but I hope I got through to him. Also, I could have just hugged the second student.

Awww, this story is made so much better by the second student's input. <3 YAY!