It’s been over one year now since I took part in making my move in fat activism. I wanted to make small acts that would hopefully turn into something bigger in the future. The first was last year in January when someone called one of my relatives a ‘pig’ and I called them out very shortly. It happened again and I did the same. Not great responses came from them, but it had to be said. I’m not much of a talkative person in real life, never have been. But I still wanted to make my mark, calling out trolls online, attempting to make my own fat posi. group, eventually on my own YouTube channel start speaking out (which I plan to do this year). And from there, I can say I’ve made a lot of firm decisions on what I advocate for when I speak out about this.
Fat acceptance, from my understanding in simple terms is as the words state: Being accepted and treated with respect. That means not being misdiagnosed at the doctors, being able to fit into places like plane seats or movie theatres, not being called a disease or considered unhuman. Do I have experiences with fat discrimination? Not really compared to a lot of women out there who speak out, like Your Fat Friend, Ok2BeFat and MerQueenJude to name a few. Being a male, there’s the privilege of not being fat-shamed as much as women, even if my weight was mentioned. That said, I‘m not intended to be the face of a feminist movement for obvious reasons. However, I still wanted to try and be a strong supporter and help out where possible.
Over 2018, thin people have tried to shut me down time and again online when I speak out about how fat-shaming is a problem, or that basic respect not given to fat people is a bigger issue (because if we want to be treated right and be healthy like thin people claim they want us to be, it’s their attitude that needs fixing).
Looking back, there’s a lot of people I wished to call out in person, like at the beginning of my studies how a thin woman right near me talked to some classmates (not at me) about a woman she knew who was ‘disgustingly fat’ and that’s what she ‘liked’ about her (a boost in her thin ego?). Or when in the first classes the slides dropped the ‘o’ word in a sample sentence talking about making paragraphs and essays. Even my ex-crush from there, who ended up trying to justify fat-shaming with ‘agree to disagree’ online from one post, who is mind you a thin white woman. She was the same who was moralising health in a DM and calling me out as a hypocrite… much the same as most others who tried arguing.
So what did I learn from fat activism? What do I hold now as in a sense ‘my’ justice that hopefully is the same all the female activists are trying to convey? Here’s what I’ve learned and am holding onto…
- It’s a matter of common sense to give basic respect towards fat people. Anyone would treat any ‘healthy’ thin person the same as any ‘unhealthy’ thin person, so why is it any different to fat people?
- THAT SAID, as MerQueenJude has said, health is not a prerequisite to respect. I’d only judge you or not give my respect to you because of your attitude, including negative attitudes towards fat people as a whole. Whether you’re thin, fat, healthy or unhealthy, or part of a kink doesn’t matter. Justifying or defending fat hate makes you part of the problem fat activists are addressing. That includes glorifying weight loss publicly, or mentioning ‘but health!’ arguments.
- Food has no moral value. Making jokes like ‘diabetes on a plate’, or ‘this will give me diabetes’ comes off as fat jokes as well. And it’s unacceptable.
- As much as it seems feederism seems like positivity too, fetishisation is not acceptance. Fat activism is about treating fat people as people, not objects.
- This is more of a ‘me’ thing, but I feel it would be more important to die with a ‘clear’ conscious rather than to live a long life. Fat hate is so prominent that even in death we’d still hold onto fatphobic ideals, one story or someone’s comment I read years ago involved someone’s relative who’s final wish to someone before they died was to lose weight. For me, even if I am a bad fat (not exercising, eating ‘junk’ foods, etc.), it doesn’t change the fact that I would want to be a kind person and treat people nicely. Remind me, are we going to remember people by how kind they were to us? Or by how much food they ate and how little they exercised? (This ties in with how thin privilege would nullify this possibility).
In the end, I’m just solely wanted to reshare fat activist’s messages to anyone local or are generally following me. And at least on my part, I’m setting standards so that I’m not relentlessly wasting time on people who want to justify the humanity of fat people. I just hope eventually we wake up and understand the normalising of fat-shaming we’ve seen and experiences for an awful long time is not okay, and it needs to stop and be called out.
