therotund:

madgastronomer:

fckthehighroad:

thisisthinprivilege:

mccormcorp:

- fat shame is not the last acceptable prejudice, seriously. Look around you. Get it together.

- if you blog diligently about thin privilege but are unable to check your own privileges? GTFO. Stop looking up at the privilege you lack and start looking at the ones you’ve got.

- yes fat phobia sucks but if you shout to the rafters about being fat bashed but then say nothing about racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, ageism or any of the other bad isms? You’re doing it wrong.

- if your message is “fat is beautiful” but the subtext of every post you make is that fat is only beautiful when white, youthful, “beautiful”, able-bodied, hetero, cis-, economically advantaged, and always falling in a lockstep line with the slavish & brutal corporate fashion industries? umm you’re not helping, bro.

- let being fat inform the way normativity works in our world, how those of us with fat bodies fall outside the “norm” which is a system of classification set up to place on a pedestal the white, the young, the wealthy, hetero & cis people of this earth, and yes, thinness is part of that but only a slender fragment of the larger picture. Let your experiences being fat bashed inform the way you process race, class, gender, sexual orientation, class status, age, “ability”. Don’t just rally to be treated the same as other thin, young, white, pretty people.

thank you and much fatty loveness.

The above is very important. Read it, then read it again.

And WIN on the gif. 

-ArteToLife

Fat people clearly should acknowledge all the intersectionality of privlege, but the way this is written, it sounds a like weight priviledg takes a back seat to the other ones mentioned. That is called oppression olympics and most people make a policy of not doing that. Fat people no more need to constantly be dealing with race in their activism than race activist should be dealing with sexuality. Yes, recognizing that no privileged and no oppression stand alone is important, but choosing one cause and making that your focus is also okay.

This last here? That’s privilege talking.

It’s bullshit. The OP takes thin privilege as a given, and does not, anywhere, engage in oppression olympics. What it DOES do is call on white, straight, cis, TAB, and/or male fatties to acknowledge their privilege in other areas because it’s the right thing to do. Because if you call other people on their privilege over you, but don’t acknowledge or talk about the privilege you have over others, you are a fucking hypocrite.

This is an absolutely classic privilege-person whine. I’m a white feminist, and I see other white feminists pull the same kind of bullshit when WOC try to talk about racism in feminist spaces.

White fat people ignore and talk over fat POC in fat spaces all the fucking time. And you’re doing it now.

If you cannot grasp intersectionality and different axes of privilege, or if you can’t stand to acknowledge ways in which other people are oppressed, then you need to go adjust your thinking and educate yourself. And in the mean time, get the fuck off my side.

To paraphrase Flavia Dzodan, my activist will be intersectional, or it will be bullshit. And when your activism is bullshit, I will fucking call you on it.

On of the places where fat acceptance is FAILING is in building an intersectional foundation. There’s nothing in the original post that plays Oppression Olympics, nothing that questions or hierarchizes the existence of fat hate. What there IS, and what we as fat people should in fact be conscious of as we work in an activist way, is the acknowledgment that we exist within a system that is built on oppression — and if we fail to let that inform our fat acceptance, then fat acceptance fails to be anything other than a movement for white pretty (mostly middle class and able-bodied) people who just happen to be a little bit fatter than the “norm.”

When we talk about making fat acceptance inclusive, this is the meat of it — we build a movement that actively welcomes EVERYONE by explicitly addressing the issues of intersectionality and using that as our framework.

The OP said, “Let your experiences being fat bashed inform the way you process race, class, gender, sexual orientation, class status, age, “ability”.” I would add to that — let all of those things inform the way you think about and talk about fat bashing. Because your experience is not universal and all of those things impact body politics on a fundamental level.

There is not, to my mind, any such thing as “choosing one cause” — we all have finite energy and we might put the bulk of our efforts under one heading but no cause is functioning in a vacuum and the movement we build as fat people should not simply replicate the current oppressive social paradigm in the way it deals with other oppressions. If you cannot even begin to make an effort to see how other oppressions are related, then you are not paying enough attention to the other people involved in your “chosen” cause.

Bolded emphasis mine.  This thread addresses the some of what I was writing about a few days ago, around relative size privilege and the difference between body positivity and fat acceptance.  It is impossible to make an effective, honest, and truly inclusive social justice movement without constantly acknowledging the intersectionality of oppression.  Though, as Marianne said here, and I sad yesterday morning, it is totally OK (and in fact perhaps more practical) to focus your limited energy to one or a few areas of identity politics, but if you don’t remain vigilant and open about your own privileges and fail to acknowledge how the oppression you are fighting against intersects with others, your politics will fail.