Dan Savage. Again.

Ooooooooh. That explains all my stat hits relating to Dan Savage hating fat people.

Dan Savage has called for a ban on fat people marrying. Satirically, I guess, but he betrays a deep misunderstanding of what satire is. Some days I wonder if the world would be a better place without Jonathan Swift if only because there would be fewer assholes emboldened by an incomprehensible misreading of "A Modest Proposal". Swift's famed satire about eating Irish children made sense because Swift was, in fact, Irish. Had his writing career been instead made up of regular bouts of Irish baiting and anti-Irish demagoguery, the work would take on a different tone. Something would-be satirists like Savage often miss. Using your established hate to make a satirical point doesn't actually make said satirical point. It just reminds people of your established hate.

If the point is advancing the cause of gay marriage, why try to do on the backs of fat people? How does one have anything to do with another? You don't make a point about why gay marriage bans are bad by bashing fat people. You just end up bashing fat people.

I fully support marriage equality. It is a tragedy that we deny such basic rights to people because of their sexual orientation. I am proud to live in a state which has recognized this. I am proud to have friends and colleagues who were legally able to celebrate their love with marriage. My straight marriage benefited from gay marriage in a purely utilitarian manner due to an utterly fantastic wedding planner who started her business to meet the needs of gays and lesbians when they won marriage equality here. She was able to help my wife and I put together a wedding that represented our values and our wishes in a way I cannot imagine a planner accustomed to traditional ceremonies could have. Not only do many of us fat people support marriage equality, there is a dirty little secret Dan Savage wants to ignore.

Many fat people want to GET gay married. I know some. Fat people are not the enemy of gay marriage. They are beneficiaries. Fat people who get inadequate medical care because they can't go on their loved one's insurance. Fat people who become at the mercy of other people's desires for their health because their partner's aren't allowed to represent them to doctors. Fat people who want to be mothers and fathers but face extra hurdles in adoption.

Dan Savage, as usual, thinks he's being witty and daring by going after fat people. That by perpetuating hatred for fat people, he avenges hatred for gay people. Really, he's just acting as enforcer for the status quo. The same cultural status quo that demands gays and lesbians be denied their basic rights also denies fat people their humanity. The same culture which demeans him for being gay, stigmatizes me for being fat. Shame on anyone who trades off this culture of hate and bigotry. Doing so to fight a culture of hate bigotry doesn't make it okay. It just makes it a joke.

Here is a great piece by Lindy West at Dan Savage's home publication taking him to task. Living 400lbs has done a great job, too.

Fictional Fat Admiration

So, I've watched the Glee episode that saw one of its main characters find himself pondering fat attraction to a fat character. Its always tough to judge a TV show by a single episode, but at least thus far I find myself pretty apprehensive about how this is being developed. It can still go in a lot of different directions, and while it didn't go anywhere really bad, it was also steering very clearly of anywhere really good, too.

My concern is I felt like the arc of the episode had the man in question consider the possibility that he was attracted to a fat woman, try this one for size, and conclude that nope, he's not attracted to the fat women physically, just emotionally. Everytime we hear him pondering his feelings, he is weighing being physically attracted or emotionally attracted, as if this were sort of binary decision. And the turning point for him comes when he stops weighing the two options and commits to being attracted emotionally. This kind of concerns me as a message.

Mind you, the idea that fat attraction is bad is, at most, subtext, so things could have gone much worse. And genuine romantic interest in a fat partner is a pretty radical thing for TV regardless of physical attraction. Still, I think its fair to be sensitive to how attraction to fat partners gets portrayed. While subtext, I got a strong sense that the character was being chided for expressing physical desire for a fat person. Every time he tried to convey that, he gets slapped down. Granted, his expressions were pretty uniformly artless, but its not like the resolution was to express the desire better. It was to not express the desire at all. So, we only every see expression of fat admiration as something clumsy, blunt, and more than a little objectifying. Except, this has a powerfully stigmatizing effect by implying that there is something necessarily wrong about being attracted to a fat person.

There is a real problem in how our culture tends to depict fat attraction. Fat characters are often left with a binary choice. Be objectified by someone who desires you or enjoy the righteous tolerance of someone who'll love you "in spite of" your body. Which, to me, sounds like two shitty choices but always plays out as good vs. bad. And guess which side gets to be good. Fat attraction is a deviation. Something othered. This doesn't just impact fat admirers, though. Indeed, the brunt of this kind of perspective is felt by the fat people since it their body being othered. Their body that is stigmatized as deviant. The admirer is shamed for how they relate to fat bodies. The fat body is the point of difference.

The truth, I'd suggest, leaves both of those binary choices as being really lousy. Better options would be someone whose physical desire was just a part of what drew them to a specific fat partner, or a person who doesn't identify with any specific physical desire who can still incorporate physical attraction into their relationship with a fat partner. Those two scenarios are the cause of happy endings. Not the partner only interested in one's fat body or the one who tries to disassociate one's physical presence with their emotional engagement.

While Glee definitely had a subtext of showing the fat attraction to be foolish, it still wasn't the text of the show and there is nothing to contradict either non-binary scenario. I'd hope that he can recognize that he does desire fat partners, but that he's looking for more than a body, mostly because fictional fat admiration is pretty rare and it'd be great to see better examples of it.

Which got me thinking about other examples. One showed up tonight on the new Matthew Perry sitcom Mr. Sunshine. A young, conventionally attractive female references an as yet unseen character as "gorgeous" in a fairly breathless delivery. When the character is revealed as the identifiably fat Nate Torrence, its obviously played as a gag of misplaced expectations. THIS is gorgeous? Doesn't help that she's already been established as possibly mentally unstable, meaning her attraction might not be meant as a quirk but as a "symptom".

The quirk aspect reminded me of Dr. (Jo) Mahoney, the late addition to the cast of Scrubs. She's established as being interested in fat men, but this attraction is immediately regarded as necessarily suspect. It's "explained" as enjoying their insecurity and desire to please her. This actually worries me about Glee, too, as it often seemed to be trying to justify the attraction to a fat woman. Though with a more positive justification ("She's confident!"), I don't like the idea that wanting to be with fat partners always needs to be justified. Frankly, a lot of fat admirers themselves do this, deluding themselves into thinking fat women are just better people and not just fatter people. At any rate, she also had a totally meaningless fat attraction since she never really acted on it and entered a relationship with a thin male as soon as the plot demanded it.

Something also seen on "American Dad" where the CIA chief voiced by Patrick Stewart declares an interest in fat women to establish him as being a deviant, and then quickly forgotten about it. Less quickly forgotten was Debbie, the fat girlfriend written for Steve, the son on the show. Oh, it got forgotten about, but briefly it was actually a pretty decent way to show a character who isn't specifically interested in fat partners going beyond "in spite of" in their attraction. Steve is fully attracted to Debbie even if her body was not relevant to that. He wasn't shown as martyring himself and his interest was actually treated very respectfully. When they broke up several episodes later, her size was a total non-issue. Shame it was introduced and dispensed with so quickly.

Most of the time on TV, fat characters are only allowed love "in spite of" being fat and this is routinely seen as a good thing. Having someone "look past" one's body is a display of extreme nobility in this world. I remember several shows when I was a kid introducing a fat girl for a male lead to learn to woo in order to be a better person. And they never even had to do anything about it after the episode, either, so win-win. It was a textbook example of the lionization of "despite". If someone actually was into fat partners, they were always a deviant and more than a couple times portrayed as necessarily a feederist with the implication that desire for fat partners and feederist interests were one and the same. This is a backdrop that gives me a lot of room for caution with Glee's still being written treatment of the subject. I could see them going in several different directions here. Some good, some bad. I'm hoping to go for something really radical and let a main character be genuinely attracted to fat partners, but I'm apprehensive that he'll be another person just learning a lesson by dating fat partners.

A Spectrum of Privilege

My fat body is privileged. Not by by virtue of being fat, of course. But by a lot of other things that interact with fat prejudice and impact the way I am treated.

I experience privilege as a white fat person. I experience privilege as a fat male. I experience privilege being fat and straight. And in what is a tricky thing for Fat Acceptance to respond to, I experience privilege because I am thin.

Except, I'm not thin. Still, while I am not privileged by virtue of being fat, I am privileged by the comparative level of fat I am. As the male equivalent of a mid-size fatty, I experience a number of advantages over my fatter brethren. The chances of being of being publicly harassed are sharply reduced, I can buy clothes at many mainstream retailers, I can fit into most airline seats. I didn't ask to be privileged in these ways, but I am. This is what our culture has done and I cannot pretend that doesn't exist

Which doesn't mean I don't face challenges. I have been publicly harassed because of my size. While I can shop at many mainstream clothing stores, I can only just barely and even then only online for many. Fitting in an airline seat actually doesn't provide me much protection from being forced to pay for a second seat given that I am visibly fat. So, of course, there is a reason to speak out about the ways my fat body is stigmatized, but I still need to be mindful of the ways I am privileged compared to others, such as those who experience harsher fat stigmatization.

I feel like there is often an eagerness in FA to accept the false equivalency that a fat person saying something like "Skinny people are evil" is the same thing as the stigmatization that fat people experience. I always see haughty declarations about how this is about accepting all people. While that sort of declaration is profoundly nonconstructive and entirely unacceptable, we do a disservice to reality by treating it as two sides of a body hating coin. They aren't. To say that they are same thing is actually feeding into a culture of fat stigmatization by minimizing how fat bigotry enforces itself in our culture. Its akin to those who act like "reverse racism" or "man hating" are somehow equal evils to the subjugation of non-whites and of women.

I feel it is imperative that we follow the lead of other social justice movements and strive to respond to these kinds of resentments from the underprivileged without endorsing false equivalencies about them. That we find ways to express our dissatisfaction with these examples of resentment while still acknowledging that they are not a cause of what we are fighting, but a product of it. Especially when we are, ourselves, the subjects of this resentment because of where we might be on the spectrum of thin privilege.

As long as I've seen FA, I've seen smaller fat people complaining about how they don't feel welcome. As a bonafide smaller fat person, I don't buy this. I don't deny that some resentment is real and sometimes gets expressed in counterproductive outbursts. Still, I feel there needs to be some responsibility on the part of those of us who experience privilege to not make these resentments all about us. The privileged cannot put the burden on the stigmatized to make us comfortable. That is a very common dynamic but one which always serves to enforce stigmatization. This is easier to see when, say, straight people insist that the gay rights movement be more "comfortable" for straight people. It feels odd when you suffer stigmatization to realize that you can also be a beneficiary of the same example of privilege that stigmatizes you. This is the reality, though.

Its a challenge to find the right balance to respond to resentments that are ultimately counterproductive but still come from a very honest situation. It is a challenge we must take up, though. We cannot just lump in these forms of resentment from the underprivileged with the stigmatization from the privileged. They are not the same thing and cannot be responded to in the same way. I can get the allure of taking such a position, but it is not actually reasonable. Without the power dynamic seen with the privileged, this resentment simply doesn't mean the same thing. We do need to push past these resentments because they manifest in outbursts that are not fair or constructive, but we still must acknowledge the truths that produced them and recognize that they are a product of what we are fighting, not what we are fighting.

A choice between nothing or nothing.

You may recall a story about Whole Foods a year ago where they bragged about a new program that would discriminate against fat employees. Basically, they set up a program that tied one's weight to their employee discount. Thin employees could get up to 10% extra off in-store purchases. For a single individual, that can easily be hundreds of dollars each year. If you're shopping for a family, it could easily be more than $1,000 annually.

Its pretty obnoxious stuff, but also old news. Still, I referenced it in a tweet a couple days ago because I was frustrated to see Whole Foods being lauded for being so good to their employees while they have an official policy discriminating against fat employees. This got their attention and I got a response from their official Twitter feed tersely telling me I was "incorrect". So, I elaborated by specifically referencing their discount program as the evidence that I was actually quite correct. They responded with:

"Sorry you feel that way but our Team Member incentive program does not discriminate against anyone....everyone can participate"

Frankly, I'm dumb-founded at how insulting a response this is. Looking at the comments of the f-word article, it also seems like they've been this insulting for a while. Because the extra benefits being given thin employees are optional, its not discrimination. That is deeply twisted logic. Fat people have no option for the extra 10% off their purchases. It is functionally invalid to claim this does not discriminate against fat people. The ability to participate in a system which will give them nothing is not a choice. It means they have a choice to get nothing or alternatively nothing. Its like they respect fat people so little that they don't even need to bother making sense when spitting on us.

So, while it may be old news, its still very actively discriminatory. I can't say I boycotted Whole Foods over this (though, I did stop going for several months). I respect the choice to do so, but I tend to feel like fat stigmatization is so taken for granted that its hard to penalize just those who are known to do it. Still, I find their justification for discrimination insulting enough that I am reconsidering. They are hardly alone in thinking fat people don't deserve the same things as thin people, but its pretty audacious to do that and then tell fat people that this isn't even harming us. The whole point is to harm us. Don't insult me and tell me this is nothing. If you can't stand by your policy of fat discrimination, maybe you should reconsider it.

White Knights

If you've been on the internets for more than a day, you may well have come across mention of "White Knights" or "White Knight Syndrome". Its an actual thing, but it gets widely overused online for a very specific purpose. In principal, its meant to describe men who impulsively come to the "rescue" of women. When it is actually happening, "White Knights" are generally a prelude for "Nice Guys™" where they resent that their constant rescuing doesn't produce fawning women. As an actual problem, its not about respecting women so much as belittling them.

Is this a reason male voices should never come out in support of feminist causes and in opposition to misogyny? Of course not. Usually when you see people start to chide others for being "White Knights", though, that is what they are actually talking about. Its not about shaming men for infantilizing women but silencing men who resist hostility towards women.

I've seen this phenomenon a lot where awful behavior is defended by simply labeling opposition to it as "White Knighting". Its an extremely common tactic in fat sexuality forums where treating fat women with respect is regarded as necessarily suspect by far too many. Not surprisingly, it is also common in discussions of feminism where supportive male voices are simply disappeared by dismissing them as "White Knights". Male allies rarely get engaged when they speak out against rape culture or Men's Rights Activists. We, after all, are not the point. The point is putting women in "their place" and confronting other men would just be a distraction. So there will be a quick mention of us as "White Knights" with the implication that this invalidates what we have to say to people can get back hurling threats at insults at women.

Whatever real problems "White Knight Syndrome" might create pale in comparison to the damage it serves as a tool for silencing male voices who speak out against rape culture, sexism, misogyny, and male privilege. Most male feminists aren't speaking out to "rescue" women or curry sexual favor. Most of us speak out because we recognize that men have a stake in this, too. It would be easier for men to retreat to our privilege and let this be someone else's problems but I think its important that we step up and try to be a part of the solution. Misogyny should offend men. Rape culture should horrify men. We have a responsibility to bring our voices into the discussion. Not because women need us, but because it is the right thing to do. "White Knight" accusations are always about protecting male privilege, but this isn't something men are obligated to do. There is NO necessity that we defend male privilege or fall silent in the face of violence and hatred against women. I believe male privilege is unsupportable. Aside from issues of fairness, I would still fight sexism for purely self-interested reasons. Other men treating women poorly damages ALL men and men suffer from the damage a misogynistic culture does to gender relations and our own identities. It limits us and limits our possibilities as men. That it is wrong should always be enough, but I firmly believe it does serve my interests to combat male privilege.

Speaking out doesn't make me feel like a hero. For true "White Knights", this is the problem. They do these things and expect praise. I don't deserve praise for doing what is obvious. Saying that consent should be the cornerstone of my sexual life is a low bar to have cleared. That this may ever feel significant doesn't make me feel pride. It makes me feel the need to keep speaking out. It makes me feel like we should be able to expect more of ourselves. I've gotten used to people calling me a "White Knight" to silence me, but I'm not shutting up. Fact is, this sort of cursory dismissal is far less reprisal than what women face for speaking out. It does cow some men into silence, though, and that's a shame. Men who want to speak out face so few obstacles, but often than minimal impact is enough to convince some men to just retreat to the sidelines. To any man intimidated by "White Knight" accusations into being silent in the face of hatred, I urge you to take inspiration from the women who are speaking out. Male privilege affords us the unwanted benefit of facing far less hostility when we raise our voices against those systems of privilege. Its not fair to let what little we do face keep us from take responsibility for our own lives and our voice.

Rape apologists and the need to speak out

If you've seen my Twitter feed today, you've no doubt seen me tweeting about the #Mooreandme issue. While I normally focus on fat issues, I felt it was important to weigh in on rape culture. I think this is a serious concern in our culture and frankly men don't do enough to speak out against rape. Myself included. I was really moved by the eloquence of so many of the people who have spoken out against the rape apologies that are coming from progressives in the wake of Julian Assange's arrest. I didn't want to just keep letting other people speak so I joined in. The defensiveness people are having over Assange is really troubling. None of the critics are saying he doesn't need to have his day in court, but I feel like a lot of Assange's defenders ARE saying he shouldn't have his day in court and that the charges should just be disregarded. This is wrong. Period.

The justifications are really unhinged, too. Some say that the charges are obviously politically motivated, and therefore false. Well, one doesn't follow the other. Yeah, they are politically motivated, but that doesn't say anything about their veracity. Its easy to make up excuses why THIS TIME its okay to dismiss rape allegations, but what they fail to get is that this is the dynamic that ALWAYS happens with rape apologies. There is always a reason when these rape charges aren't worth taking seriously. The whole mindset is unsustainable. This only seems to happen with rape with this kind of regularity. No other criminal accusation is so routinely dismissed. So even if you think that this time its okay, you need to really question yourself. Because all those other times, someone else made that same judgement and this pattern is a problem.

I'm really bothered by those who say these rape charges should be ignored because most rape charges get ignored so it'd be insulting to those victims to care now. Important, serious people have made this argument. Which I would characterize as "You guys NEVER care about rape. Why you gotta start now?" Yes, the way rape isn't taken seriously is a problem. No one thinks this is a signal that rape is being taken seriously, either. Its obviously just politically expedient to do so. But thinking its politically expedient to keep ignoring rape is even worse.

Anyway, I hope no one minds getting off Fat Acceptance for a bit. For further reading on this issue, please check out the following...

At Tiger Beatdown...

#MooreandMe: On Progressives, Rape Apologism, and the Little Guy

Day One of #MooreandMe: Or, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Being Blocked by Keith Olbermann on Twitter

From Bitch Magazine

From Kate Harding

And probably lots of others. Thank you.

Fat Admirer or Fat Fetishist

I was listening to the latest episode of the Two Whole Cakes Fatcast and Marianne and Lesley were discussing fat admirers and fat fetishists. Its a discussion that comes up a lot when discussing fat sexuality and specifically fat admirers. It struck me, though, that this common distinction is one I'm not convinced there is a justification for.

I know I didn't always think so. Indeed, fat admirers commonly talk about fat fetishists. Thing is, that's always something someone else is. The distinction is usually drawn as one group being good and the other bad. Now, to be fair, the Fatcast rejected that understanding, but I still think that's how most people view it. Fat admirers are fine, but fat fetishists are a problem. I know I've endorsed that idea in the past, though I've never been totally comfortable with it.

The problem is, I don't know what would usefully differentiate these two groups. Having been exposed to a lot of communities focused around attraction to fat partners, I just don't see any real camps of "admirers" and "fetishists". As to how both might respond to fatness, I don't think there is a meaningful distinction. I may not always feel comfortable with what they do with their feelings, but I can't say that what I feel seems any different from what other men like me feel. I think it'd be easy for me to say that I'm different or better, but I can't do that in all honesty. What I feel for fat is what they feel for fat, so I'm not comfortable singling some people out as fetishists. Not because fetishes are wrong, but because I just don't think its the right word for what this is and I'm not convinced there is something else it would describe. A point made on the Fatcast is that we never talk about having a fetish for penises. This is my sexuality.

Which is not to say that different men (and women) don't do different things with this. I have a post I've been wanting to write for a while called "The problem with Fat Admirers" because while I know I've been a bit of an apologist for Fat Admirers lately, I am actually acutely aware of how earned a lot of the perception issues are for my sexuality. I don't tend to last long in Fat Admirer communities because I invariably spend my time telling them to be better and being told to shut up for my troubles. But I can't divorce my sexual identity with their sexual identity. On a very basic level, the physical attraction we feel strikes me as essentially identical.

I also think this division is born out of trying to accommodate fat stigmatization rather than confront it. Outside fat communities, we're ALL fat fetishists. And this is not for any nuance of behavior but for the essential desire for a fat partner that we share. I feel like the dichotomy was born (quite some time ago) from an effort to flatter this conventional ignorance. Oh, sure, there is fat fetishism but that's not me. Well, I'm not prepared to make such allowances. I think many of the distinctions raised about the differences often have less to do with this sexuality as it does with male heterosexual identity in general.

I'm going to keep writing about this because its way to large to get into one post and I really do want to get into the problems in fat admirer behavior and how that links to male sexuality in general but also how the problems relate to the stigmatization of fat attraction. But I'm not going to try to draw very hard lines to credit myself over other men. On a very essential level, I think sexual attraction is a wonderful thing. Sexual desire is a wonderful thing. There shouldn't be shame about that. It is okay to sexually desire a fat body and in our culture that really needs to be said straight on and without reservation. My reservations absolutely will come, but I want to push that as far away from the essential act of sexual desire for a fat partner as possible. That should not be stigmatized in the least and I feel on that level there is no dividing line between so-called "fat fetishists" and so-called "fat admirers". On a fundamental level, we are the same thing.

A new conversation: fat and health

In my last couple of posts I've been looking at the backlash Fat Acceptance often faces. A common "stray fattie" charge is that fat activists are in denial about health concerns. Basically, they are so certain in their righteous that we don't merely disagree but are in denial. The fairly broad "nuance" of what Fat Activists actually are saying is irrelevant to them. We disagree with their assertions so they declare we are claiming the exact opposite of what they are. That fat is the paradigm of good health just as they claim thinness is.

They aren't interested in discourse, but rather enforcing the rules the powerful have set for our social conversation about health. We will never win playing within their rules, because their rules already dictate the outcome. That's why they want us to play by their conventions and dictates. Their conversation about fatness only allows one outcome and this enables them to distort our claims as they try to force them into their guidelines.

What Fat Acceptance must do is forge a new conversation. I think we see a relation to this in fretting about "good fatties" and "bad fatties". That moral dichotomy is informed entirely by the rules of fat hatred. They've decided we are bad. We will never be able to prove our "goodness" within their rules, but likewise we will never be able to excuse our "badness" either. I honestly haven't seen a fat activist suggest the former, that being "good" fat people was a solution but I have seen the later where activists bristle at discussions about so-called "good fatties" preferring to argue that health is not a moral imperative. Neither, though, would be effective although both speak to a truth that I think could be our key. We need to tear down the conventions which confine us in order to start a new conversation about fat health. We can't play by their rules, but we can't deny them, either. We need to confront them to dismiss them so we can move forward.

In the comments of this article, Silentbeep made a very astute observation about why we talk about so-called "good fatties". The point is not to exault them but to demonstrate "health variance when it comes to fatness". The current rules to discuss fat and health deny this. There is one outcome. One option. We need to show that this is a sham, that how they are defining health is functionally flawed. "Good fatties" aren't playing by the rules, they are invalidating them.

But this isn't an end. We need to move past this lest we be offered defensive indulgences where we are "allowed" to be fat so long as do all the "right" things. Its not about winning acceptance on their terms but completely revolutionizing what we understand to be right. And that means refusing to promote health as a moral imperative.

Fat activists don't deny that fat can impact health. We deny the conclusions drawn about that. Both about individual health and about personal morality or responsibility. Fat people have unique health concerns that need to be addressed. The issue is that our current system doesn't do that. It fails the health needs of fat people by insisting on stigmatizing fat and promoting failed treatments that do nothing to address one's health. They say that fat activists don't care about the health of fat people, but I say that's 100% false. We DO care about the health of fat people and that's why we demand better than futile weight loss dieting. They've had decades to enforce their views and its done nothing. We need to stop this and start finding ways to serve fat people's health needs with respect for their body. Not with an insistence that the body change before you start caring. That's not the conversation they want to happen, but its what must happen.

It isn't wrong to be fat and have diabetes. It isn't wrong to be fat and have high blood pressure. It isn't wrong. It just is. And we need to demand treatments that address what is an issue instead of trying to change our body into something else. Not only does this ignore what's actually going on, it doesn't work. We need to say that and demand better. We need to demand a new conversation.

Shame isn't a very useful tool in improving health to begin with and its utterly perverse that we shame people into treatments that will fail them. A dieter who regains the weight lost is not a failure. Those results ARE typical and is our cultural dictates on fat and health that are failing them. It needs to be okay to talk about how we are "good fatties" as well as how we are "bad fatties". Because this isn't about good vs. bad. This is about something different, something new. That is the conversation we need to have.

What Fat Acceptance actually threatens

So, in my last post I was grousing about the straw fattie attacks we so often see. These people accuse fat activists of threatening dieter's rights. We threaten body autonomy. We threaten the health of fat people. We threaten our national security. We seem to threaten a lot for a loose assemblage of unfunded political activists. Of course, none of these charges are remotely true and we should recognize them as such. But we should remember why we are subject to these accusations. Because we actually are threatening something many people hold very dear. Privilege.

What are really fighting and really threatening is thin privilege. Diet privilege. And that's what scares people. In my last post I pointed out how other marginalized groups face the same attacks of threatening their oppresses. The same dynamic is at work their. Gay marriage doesn't remotely threaten straight marriage but it sure threatens straight privilege. Feminism doesn't really imperil men, but male privilege is absolutely at risk.

All of these fights are about disadvantaging the dominant group but only in relation to their unearned advantages through cultural privilege. If women get a fair shake in the workforce, that is a loss for men in the workforce because right now men benefit from the unfairness. As FA grows, it does endanger the privileged position of the dieting culture.

Many people have placed a great deal of their self-worth on the privilege of dieting culture, though, so they take it personally when we attack the culture. That is what fuels the straw fattie arguments that we are trying to hurt people by presenting an alternative to fat hatred. That is what internally justifies the wild accusations. These people are consciously lying. They don't think they are inventing attacks. They sincerely believe them because they take things we say even about our own lives as a slight against them. But they are still mistaken and we cannot allow this to dissuade us from speaking truth to power.

I've said this before, but on some level FA needs to be about making dieters uncomfortable. Not with personal attacks, but by upsetting the privileged position of fat oppression. We need to present and advocate for alternatives, and those deeply embedded in the culture that harms fat people are going to be upset by this but we need to keep pushing. Marginalization doesn't reverse because you accommodate those who want you marginalized. Fat acceptance is a threat. Its a threat to fat stigmatization. Its a threat to diet culture. Its a threat to those who profit off destroying our lives. This is a feature, not a bug.

They are talking about you

I was reminded lately something that I don't think most people in Fat Acceptance always realize. A lot of people make complaints about horrible fat activists who were so hostile to their dieting. I gather a few activists are inclined to take these complaints seriously and concur that such behavior is just plain wrong. What I'd like to tell those activists is that the complaints are about YOU.

It might be confusing because these complaints are almost always made without attribution. And, to be fair, they usually are transparently about straw fatties. The ones who say fat people are perfectly healthy and who spend their days screaming at dieters. The ones that don't exist. Which might make it easy to think that they are referring to other people. But they aren't. They really do mean you.

The few times I've seen any specifically called out as one of these mean fatties, its invariably someone I consider much more moderate about FA than me. People like me aren't on these people's radar screens, much less any of the activists who are actually radical who frankly don't participate online much to begin with. The FA activists they've encountered are usually the tip of the iceberg about FA thought and discussion and even that is completely intolerable to them.

I hope we can dispense with treating these kinds of straw fattie arguments, but I imagine that's not coming any time soon. We are disenfranchised and yet will constantly be called on to explain how we aren't using our total lack of power against anyone. Our marginalization should be the argument against criticism of our supposed oppressiveness but perversely it works in favor of those intent on enforcing our marginalization. They count on us not having the means to fight back. Because we can deny the absurd charges all we like, but more people will hear them than hear us. Because our culture is set up to define us as wrong, people will accept it just the way men honestly believe that women are oppressing males, just as whites feel discriminated against, just as heterosexuals feel threatened by a gay agenda.

While we struggle to get our message out, I wish we could spend less time denying those kinds of charges because its really about holding us back. About defining as tight a sphere for us to advocate for our beliefs as possible to make us pointless. Feminism didn't successfully refute to charge that it was oppressing men. It just moved past it. The charge still exists but its recognized as being as laughable as it is. Those who try to make FA about the rights of dieters should be dismissed with as much ease. Because it is laughable.