#fat oppression

They understand those concepts purely through examples. Like we’re taught that black people are oppressed and discriminated against, queer people, etc.

People don’t actually learn what discrimination and oppression mean outside of the examples that we’re given on how oppression affects certain groups of people like how racism often looks.

People have trouble understanding the concepts on their own without any examples

That’s why people are scrambling to come up with arbitrary clauses on why fat people can’t be oppressed. The biggest one being ”fat people aren’t oppressed because they can become thin”.

That is literally just coming up with an arbitrary clause to oppression because they’re COMPARING fatphobia to other forms of oppressions in their minds. They have this preconcived notion that fat people can’t be oppressed because fatphobia doesn’t belong in the group of examples we’re taught are oppression, so they’re scrambling to make up differences between fatphobia and the other examples we’re taught are oppression.

People do everything they can to deny there is a systemic oppression of fat people because they want to keep enjoying the benefits of oppressing fat people---undeserved privileges garnered for the mere fact of not existing in a fat body.

Thin privilege is dangerous because it obstructs social change. As long as fat oppression grants thin privileges, people who benefit from thin privilege will be incentivized at worst to actively oppress fat people and at best to pretend that fat oppression and thin privilege doesn't exist.

If there were no privileges from simply existing in a thin(ner) body, why would people go on unhinged rants about "there's no thin privilege, only fat consequences"? What would they stand to gain by scolding fat people? What they're doing is acting their part in the morality play around fatness in order to preserve the advantages they get for being thin(ner). If they can't convince others, or even just themselves, that they are superior to fat people, then they would have to face the fact that the advantages they enjoy for being thin are undeserved.

Fatness and tallness are similar in their hereditary nature and association with certain health outcomes (I have an ancient blog post that touches upon this here). I have yet to hear anyone finger-wagging a tall person for the burden they place on the medical establishment, or shaming a tall person for not being able to fit in a plane seat with a narrow pitch, or systematically complaining for not being able to recline when a tall person is behind them, and so forth.

There isn't a systemic oppression of tall people. This isn't because height is less controllable than weight. Only a tiny fraction of people can lose a significant amount of weight and keep it off in the long term (look in our FAQ if you are curious). It's because short privilege isn't as much of a thing as thin privilege. So there's no social-oppressive infrastructure for short people who want to keep enjoying undeserved short privileges to maintain.

My hope is that, someday, thin privilege will seem as absurd as short privilege. Because only then will we have a chance to end fat oppression once and for all.

2015 article that I missed at the time, but it's a great antidote to the constant push from doctors and the diet industry (especially at this time of year).

Excerpt:

One of the principles driving the $61 billion weight-loss industries is the notion that fat is inherently unhealthy and that it’s better, health-wise, to be thin, no matter what you have to do to get there. But a growing body of research is beginning to question this paradigm. Does obesity cause ill health, result from it, both, or neither? Does weight loss lead to a longer, healthier life for most people?

“Body positivity but only for bodies that don't make me jealous“

-- Reply

“One of the things that is a classic trope of the religious bigot, is while they’re denying people their rights, they claim that their rights are being denied. While they are persecuting people, they claim to be persecuted. While they are behaving colossally offensively, they claim to be the offended party. It’s upside down world.“

-- Salman Rushdie

-

It’s remarkable how much body shaming of women comes from other women who have deep-seated self-hatred and envy. And especially from the “body positivity” set.

The problem isn’t that Bekkah lost weight, it’s that her weight loss shows Leah could too. Since Leah has committed her identity to this obese persona, and seeks attention and validation through it from others with the same anti-science, reality-denying ideology. Bekkah losing weight is akin to ex-Muslim apostasy. It’s a moral-religious betrayal.

Not only is the language hyperbolic and emotionally charged, it’s intended to reconfigure and hide the dynamics here, in the hope that you don’t notice. Which is that this tirade could never go in the other direction. Only one of these people could scream at the other and not just get away with it, but perhaps even be cheered on. Only one of these people can disparage and dehumanize the other as a matter of moral virtue.

This shows you where the real power lies. Who is the Rebellion and who is the Empire.

P.S. Way to go girl, going from 363 lb to an under-10 minute mile. Amazing. 👍

"[L]ife expectancy [...] statistics include early deaths of fat people due to dieting an reduction surgery. [...] [C]rimes that are committed against fat people are then thrown back in our faces -- "we've killed you, how dare you die!""

and it’s like, have you ever talked with fat people?

The majority will not say fat people are oppressed, they will say that in general fat people are treated worse than thin people. It’s your job to recognize that that’s literally what oppression is.

The start of the road to ending queerphobia didn’t start with most people, including both queers and non-queers, knowing queerphobia was oppression, neither did the road to fighting sexism or any other form of oppression. The road to fighting any form of oppression starts when people of a certain group start waking up to the idea of them maybe being oppressed. And even then it will take some time for people to really understand what that means. We fat people are at the start, waking up and trying to wake up others of us.

Like the fact that the mainstream hasn’t yet officially recognized that fat people are oppressed doesn’t mean it’s just something we fat activists are lying about.

Just wait a few decades and oppression against fat people will earn its official recognition as oppression. I already see weight discrimination listed alongside racism, sexism, and ableism when some people list forms of oppression. When I told an activist page to add fatphobia to a list of different forms of discriminations they had listed, they responded to me with an enthusiastic yes. It’s just a matter of time

Can we talk about how people in non-weight related Discord servers be like:

tw weight-loss ||blah blah just lost this amount of weight||

in like general chat as a celebratory message?

The fact is that even if I don’t read your full message I will still read the ”tw weight-loss” and people responding to it with ”congrats!”

And by congratulating people who lose weight it’s clear to me that people don’t prefer bodies like mine unless we change them. then they’ll congratulate us. They’ll shut their mouths when we look undesirable unattractive and ugly to them, and then they’ll immediately be like ”I like you better this way” after we lose weight

I know many fat people who’ve been approached at work with a “nice, it seems like you’ve lost weight” and they literally haven’t even lost any, but it makes the mentality clear: we’d celebrate your body only if you changed it/we don’t prefer your body like this.

A lot of mainstream feminists are talking about how changing the way one’s body looks is one’s choice. And you do have the right to change your body but it shouldn’t be a celebration

I feel like a lot of people get stuck in the ”everyone has the right to their own body” and then associate changing one’s body with freedom or progression and don’t consider the larger context of the society we live in.

I know a lot of mainstream feminists get angry whenever fat people feel disappointed that yet again another famous person has lost weight, and they talk about how everyone has the right to their bod

But why are we ignoring the larger context of the society we live in? People had the choice but at the same time we’ve been, since birth, pushed into the direction of the choice some ended up making. And the world celebrates that you chose the direction they thought is right, so you also end up celebrating.

Weight-loss is not a celebration. If we truly had the choice from the beginning and no oppression was involved, weight-loss would be a neutral thing and staying in a fat body would be acceptable.

Currently fat people are pushed into a certain body type from childhood and celebrated when we give in. There’s weight-loss ads, campaigns, doctors and nurses who recommend weight-loss for everything…. We are all being pressured into losing weight and the moment we do lose some we are told we did the right thing.

People will argue that weight-loss is an individual’s choice, but they never acknowledge all the ways society tries to pressure people into losing weight.

Weight-loss is not a neutral choice until staying fat is a legitimate option. Weight-loss isn’t a celebration because staying fat should have been an option as well.