Red No. 3

But at the end of the day, I also feel like fat liberation has suffered from a lack of unambiguous and unapologetic fat positivity. I think we could have better handled the nuances there but too often the community was reluctant to allow space for fat positivity because too many didn’t really feel positive about fatness and that was a bad fucking reason that has left all of more vulnerable, more targeted, more stigmatized. At its most well meaning, I think people thought we could build a bigger tent if we didn’t challenge people too much. At its most bad faith, people scorned fat positivity and wanted to rationalize not wanting to engage with it.

Fat politics and fat liberation shouldn’t even need to make room for fat positivity. It should have always been a core ambition and I feel angry for what collectively neglecting that has resulted in. It’s a theme I often wanted to come back to, sometimes with a playful irony that I hope no one ever mistook for shame or self-mocking. Fat people deserve celebration, not just tolerance or acceptance. Some people who only barely ever tolerated us were waiting for “permission” to hate us with all their spirit and I loathe that so many of us knew that but have been stuck watching the predictable play out.

Pink text on a black background with white stars surrounding it. Text reads, "Don't talk to me about your weight loss journey."

Except the actual real world outcome has become queer leftists abusively dog piling any actor they deem "inauthentic" leading to actors being forcefully outed against their will before they were ready in an attempt to make the abuse stop. Including children. People have been justifying psychologically tormenting literal children for not publicly disclosing (and being firm and set in) their gender and sexuality in order to work.

In many wants it's set back queer media and made people just as afraid of queer roles ruining their careers and their lives as they were when bigots were doing it. Which is not an improvement to the situation! It's really only giving cover to people who want none of this to exist.

We could have just praised the process we wanted to see. Personally I love seeing Jim Parsons take that big normative sitcom money and fucking off to make emotionally powerful queer films with it casting queer actors whenever he can. But praising that will always be more constructive than bullying Kit Connor. If Daniel Craig wants to spend the rest of his career making charming gay detective movies about helping marginalized woman get revenge on abusive rich assholes, then I don't care what his sexuality is because it's still pushing queer media far forward.

We could have positively addressed rainbow capitalism by supporting queer-owed business. We could have accepted that mainstreaming queer iconography at Target (much of it designed by queer people who got to pay their bills making it) would make space for people buying that small batch t-shirt at Pride. It's not like people only ever buy one t-shirt in their life.

A closeted-for-safety trans boy buying his first binder at Target could have created an opening for the next one to be from Shapeshifters. Instead he may never get the chance to know what it would feel feel like to take the first step because the wrong packaging could endanger him and the (fair) price mightbe unaffordable.

We can't built perils into doing better. We can't keep calling nigh-impossible next steps"the bare minimum" and tearing into them for every imperfection if we want people to do them at all. At minimum that's a burnout machine. At worst it gives bigots leverage to maker sure we have nothing. Kindness and enthuses support of what we want to see happen makes way more progress.

But at the end of the day, I also feel like fat liberation has suffered from a lack of unambiguous and unapologetic fat positivity. I think we could have better handled the nuances there but too often the community was reluctant to allow space for fat positivity because too many didn’t really feel positive about fatness and that was a bad fucking reason that has left all of more vulnerable, more targeted, more stigmatized. At its most well meaning, I think people thought we could build a bigger tent if we didn’t challenge people too much. At its most bad faith, people scorned fat positivity and wanted to rationalize not wanting to engage with it.

Fat politics and fat liberation shouldn’t even need to make room for fat positivity. It should have always been a core ambition and I feel angry for what collectively neglecting that has resulted in. It’s a theme I often wanted to come back to, sometimes with a playful irony that I hope no one ever mistook for shame or self-mocking. Fat people deserve celebration, not just tolerance or acceptance. Some people who only barely ever tolerated us were waiting for “permission” to hate us with all their spirit and I loathe that so many of us knew that but have been stuck watching the predictable play out.

I am pro fat liberation as in "I want to dismantle the systemic biases against fat people and the diet culture and medical industrial complex that feeds into the very real systemic oppression that fat people face"