This has been popping up in the comments a bit, so I need to address it head on.
This is a fat acceptance site. If you don’t know what that is, google it (because this isn’t a Feminism 101 space). If the inclusion of those two words together makes you confused/shuddering/disgusted/snooty, this is not the space for you.
You do not have to believe everything I believe to post here. Disagreements are welcome, on most topics. And you do not have to believe everything I believe to read my blog. But this is a feminist site, and some arguments are not welcome to even be brought up in the comments. If they are, they will be deleted. Things you do not get to argue about here:
- A woman’s right to make full and free reproductive choices about her body (you can be personally pro-life here, but not politically)
- Any person’s right to exist without abuse
- The responsibility of victims to prevent attacks (note: it’s none)
- FAT!!!1!!!11!!!
Do you want to talk about your own body image issues? That is awesome. Do you want to talk about the “obesity epidemic” and how if people would just eat X while dancing in a circle with Y and clapping their hands for Tinkerbell they would win the anti-gravity BMI trophy of HAPPINESS? You don’t get to do that here. Everybody gets to be the size and shape they are, everybody gets to eat how they want here, and nobody here gets to tell them they have to change, or there’s something wrong with them. You are allowed to talk all you want about yourself, and if you don’t like your size and shape and want to talk about how much you want to change, you can do that. But you don’t get to shit on other people; nobody is required to be a fat toilet here.
Fugitivus 
I really really love this blog. I am fairly certain that this blog, or the book that this blog is hopefully going to be turned into, should be used as a textbook for Womens Studies classes in Universities and colleges. Thank you for keeping this blog.
Can I disagree with #3? No, wait, hear me out.
I completely agree with the idea that victims should not, and can not, be blamed for sexual assault. I completely agree that it is not the victims’ responsibility to prevent sexual assault from the point of view of what s/he wore, what s/he drank or did not drink… but all of this is on an individual level.
However, someone has to take responsibility for preventing sexual assault, and a huge amount of that is through education. And the people who are best able to education about sexual assault are going to be the people who have gone through it. That doesn’t mean that every victim (although, I hate the word “victim”) has some magical responsibility to be an educator. They don’t. But if someone doesn’t make a fuss, the status quo will be maintained. And so I disagree with your wording, because I think there is a responsibility to prevent sexual assault there. Not one’s own assault, but to try and prevent future assaults. To make people aware that – as I think everyone on this blog is aware – rape isn’t just something that happens in dark alleys. It doesn’t just happen if you’re drunk. And, that far more often that one might think, rapists aren’t going to consider themselves rapists.
“Responsibility” is a loaded word. As a society, we have a responsibility to prevent sexual assault. That isn’t just limited to the people who don’t have first-hand experience; in fact, to think that would be a bit absurd.
(Okay, I’m finished.)
As someone who had a cousin and a close friend come close to dying from anorexia, and who still struggles with an eating disorder herself, I completely applaud this. It isn’t fashionable or attractive, or a cult, it’s just painful.
This post makes me happy beyond reason.
I love your rules.
::love::
i had to delurk to say how very much i love you, harriet j., and your blog, and this post. thank. you.
I don’t think we’re disagreeing on anything here — I think you understood and agree with my original point, and I understand and agree with yours — but thanks for the clarification.
I love when you lay the smackdown!
Every time I see someone lay out a decent standard of behaviour as the minimum they are willing to accept in their space it makes me so, so happy. How I wish it could be the default. So, awesome and thank you.
Harriet Jacobs, you are, as always, awesome. (Although I have to admit that I would be willing to do a little dancing/clapping/etc if I could get an antigravity device. I’ve always wanted an antigravity device.)
“Do you want to talk about the “obesity epidemic” and how if people would just eat X while dancing in a circle with Y and clapping their hands for Tinkerbell they would win the anti-gravity BMI trophy of HAPPINESS?”
BRAVA!!!
Yup, you still rock. (Not that there was any doubt.)
<3!
You know, I might be willing to eat X while dancing in a circle with Y and clapping my hands for Tinkerbell, because while that’s never resulted in weight loss for me, I’m *so* up for winning the anti-gravity BMI trophy of HAPPINESS.
But even trophy-less? I must say you’re awesome. And thank you.
And this is why you rawk.
Seriously. You make me smile and think and I am really super glad you write and let all us weirdos peep at your brain meats.
The tinkerbell thing almost made me snarf my coffee btw. Epic.
Allow me to join in the “hellz yah” chorus with a hellz yeah!
I am so glad I subscribed to this blog.
You are made of win. Win, covered in yummy victory sauce.
My more-often-than-not happy thunder thighs and I thank you.
Awesome. Totally awesome.
Yay!
Thank you. For making good rules, mainly, but also for the judicious use of Tinkerbell.
Yay fat positivity! ❤
I am starting to find body fat-hate increasing distasteful and unreadable, so it's good that you are so committed to not tolerating that bs.
I applaud you.
Fatism (is that even a word?), is one of those isms that seem to be perfectly socially acceptable. Now that was a grammatical nightmare, wasn’t it?
I am a woman who has dealt with weight issues my entire life (back to Weight Watchers for at least the 20th time). When my beautiful teenage daughter began her journey with Bulimia I started to blame myself: was it my fault for being overweight her whole life? Some would say it was.
It is only through therapy (hers and mine) that I realized it wasn’t the case. But society would have me believe otherwise.
Just as society would have us believe that victims of abuse are somehow to blame. If she hadn’t dressed that way, if she hadn’t stayed out late, if the domestic abuse victim hadn’t made him angry.
All the ways we allow men (and women, sadly) to allow bad behavior.
Thanks for being brave enough to speak out.
I’ve heard sizeism (size-ism? sizism? I’ve never actually seen it typed out) for discrimination based on size. I like that particular term, because it encapsulates “too fat” AND “too thin” in one neat little package.
*applause*
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Totally with you.
“everybody gets to eat how they want here”
I assume it’s still okay to talk about the ethics of what we eat, though (when relevant)? For example, from an animal abuse standpoint, or a being-able-to-feed-the-world standpoint.
I’m vegetarian, and very anti-fat-hatred. But I wonder sometimes if (thanks to the horrible and harmful campaigns by PETA an the like) those two things are starting to be seen as mutually exclusive in some spaces (see womanist musings’ april fools post, for example). Probably I’m just being too sensitive. 😉
Yes, with a but. Food ethics easily bump up against fat-shaming, but they also easily bump up against a variety of privilege. As in, not everybody has the luxury of picking and choosing their food — accessibility and affordability are key components. We can talk about what would ideally be the best way to grow and consume food, and what it would take to reach that ideal, but we can’t assume that ideal is a possibility for all people, or assume there’s something wrong with a person if they’re not a part of that ideal.
All that PETA shit, that’s the very best example of how not to do it. I can agree with the principle of, “Vegetables! They’re really, really good for you!” But when you attach a value judgment against an entire class of people — “Vegetables! So you won’t be a chunkfat, you ugly asshole!” — you’re packing in a boatload of assumptions about the inherent worth of fat people, the diet of fat people, the ability of all people to access vegetables and make them a part of their diet, the shaky confluence between weight and health, and then you’re ladling body shame on top of it all. It’s okay to talk about sustainability and accessibility and distribution and consumption, and it’s okay to talk about the nutritional impact of food, but that can all be done without dismissing entire classes of people as somehow inherently wrongbadfucked.
It sounds like you’re on board with this, but just clarifying for anybody who isn’t.
Awesome. Totally on-board with that. Thanks for the clarification.
Kickass! And thank you. I feel welcomed. ❤
Do I have your permission to quote that last paragraph in my own blog? I want to give my friends a link to this post.
This is all public domain — you can quote whatever you like.
I ❤ you very much right now. You could have easily just blocked out any assholes making comments about fat but the fact that you actually came out and said something about it makes it even better. It's hard for me sometimes to come out and say something like "I'm involved in the fat acceptance movement," or "I am a feminist," because people like to bring up straw men the second I do. So kudos to you for doing it on here.
Okay, let me tell you. I totally thought I was on the FA boat and was up on my shit, but hello fat-privilege! As soon as I posted this, I got a boatload of (unpublished) comments from jerk trolls and concern trolls about, “Well, I agree completely, as long as you don’t forget that fat is UNHEALTHY FOREVER.” And I’m like, did I not just put up a post that says, “Hey, everybody, nobody gets to talk about fat is UNHEALTHY FOREVER,” and the only way you can think to respond is by doing exactly what I just told you not to do, and I am pretty sure you really think that is not what you have just done? I mean, really, “I agree, as long as everybody recognizes that it’s unhealthy and ugly and possibly the source of HIV!” is not an appropriate response to “Stop shaming fat people.” When did the common definition of “shame” get changed? Has the fat horror finally reached your brain, so that there is only the slightest of hair-triggers and the word “fat” in any context sets you into a hate-loop from which there is no return? Because I think that’s the fucking case!
I am not a small lady, and I have gotten progressively not-smaller over the last few years, but apparently I was not yet unacceptably fat enough to fully understand the extent of fathate, because I was surprised at how many pile-ons attempted to force their way into this comment thread. I get some nasty pile-ons when I put up a “hey, guys, rape is bad” post, but that happens over the course of months or years. As soon as I put up, “Fat is okay,” I got a goddamn deluge of, “Oh, that’s awesome you said that, because I agree completely, we should never shame fat people, though realistically they are ugly and need to change, but that’s not shame! That’s reality!”
It’s reminded me of a conversation I had once with a former friend of mine. I don’t want to make armchair diagnoses, but if somebody told me she had been hospitalized at any point for anorexia, I would be the least surprised a person could be, due to her appearance, eating habits, and the things she said about health and weight. While discussing our significant others once, I casually mentioned that I have what I believe is clinically referred to as “a badonkadonk with its own goddamn orbit,” and my bear loves it to death. She responded as if I had just said I was thinking of killing myself, turning and grabbing me by the shoulders before I had even finished laughing at my own cleverness and shouting, “YOUR ASS IS NOT BIG!” with horror and vigor. And, alibelle, let me tell you, if you saw my ass and said it was not big, I would suspect you had glaucoma. There is no getting around it, even if you wanted to be sensitive to my feelings (of awesomeness?) surrounding my big ass. It’s just HUGE. So I was like, “Um, no, I think you’re trying to make me feel better about my big ass, but that’s okay, I already feel pretty great about my big ass, which is, by the way, BIG,” and she just brought me over to the table and sat me down like I was about to give birth and stared deeply into my eyes and said, “You DON’T have a big ass. It’s really not that big. It’s a small ass. It’s okay.” And I kept trying to explain to her, I don’t think “big ass” means to you what it means to me, I like having a big ass, I think my big ass is awesome. But I’m pretty sure all those little words in between “big ass” were words she just couldn’t hear, because “big ass” evoked such horror in her, regardless of context. Later, my bear came in the room, and she was all, “BEAR! Tell Harriet she doesn’t have a big ass!” And he, gallant white knight that he is, shot back, “She has a HUGE ASS and IT IS GORGEOUS.” And then my former friend had to tear on him for a while about why he was so mean to me?
I am pretty sure the same thing happened here. I said, “Fat is okay, stop insulting fat,” and everybody full of fathate just heard the word “FAT” and had a fucking hate seizure. And no matter how many times I said, “No, guys, fat? STILL OKAY,” all they heard was “FAT” and, AS IF I HADN’T HEARD THIS ONE, felt compelled to tell me that fat was bad. THANKS FOR THE NEWSFLASH, I live under a fatrock!
Haha, yes. As an inbetweenie fattie I sometimes forget the privilege that comes along with that. I’m just aware of not being happy with my body at times, or having someone call me fat. When that starts to happen I have to slap myself out of it. I always just remind myself of this story my very large friend told me once. Her and her mother, also large, were walking from the store back to their house when someone drove by and shouted fat shaming insults at them and then threw a pop can with pop in it at them. It’s like this really acceptable hatred that people can have, and they really fucking relish it.