I've been wanting to get back into writing for a really long time. I used to be on Tumblr all the time (the heyday of the 2010s, what a chaotic time). I used to write with abandon!
Now, I don't. Can I blame it on time? Work? Getting older?
Maybe it's all the above. I know there is a lot more to it than that, but I won't get into the details.
What I do want to do is write again. I don't think that I'll be writing fanfiction like I did back in the day. I cannot even be sure I'll write fiction at all right now. I hope to get back to that. But for now, I want to write essays.
I have been in graduate school for a couple of years now, taking the slow (and expensive) route to getting my MSW because I still have bills to pay. During that time, I've learned a great deal about myself, including how I think, how I perceive the world, and how I aspire to grow as a person. It has come with a lot of really wonderful memories and exploration, and it has come with a lot of loss as I've started to actually become someone I have always wanted to be. I'm more confident in how I think and speak. I believe that words and input have value. I know that I don't know what I don't know, and I am willing to do better after I learn.
So here I am, ready to start writing. I thought about Substack, but that felt too... formal, professional, journalistic. Tumblr was always a place of expression, authenticity, and passion. I don't want engagement for money and on a weirdly complicated UI. I want engagement to share ideas and learn from others (and a UI that is reminiscent of a time when I was unapologetically creative).
I don't know where this journey will take me. I'm not sure how consistent I'll be. Maybe I'll rant and complain about school more than I want (and I have plenty of classmates who have made me complain a lot). But I do know that even writing this has felt so wonderful and liberating in a way I have not felt in a really long time.
So... let me introduce myself (if you made it this far). I'm Kristina. I'm fat. I'm in my 30s. I'm a social worker (currently working with women experiencing homelessness). I'm bisexual. I'm in a hetero-passing relationship with a rare good man. I'm currently in Western North Carolina (#that bitch Helene).
I will probably write a lot about anti-fatness and weight discrimination, Appalachia, queerness, classism, feminism, politics, and all the intersectionalities of these various identities. I will probably write about books, movies, and TV shows (even ones that are no longer in the news, because I have a lot to say about The Hunger Games universe at all times).
I have a lot to say. I'm now at a point where I'm ready to say it.
Thanks for being on this unpredictable ride with me.
A few things I want to kind of preface as I start:
I use "black and brown people" instead of BIPOC or people of color. This is because my partner has told me, as a brown man, that he does not like those terms because he feels that it is a sugar-coated version of "colored people." I know that it makes people uncomfortable (and it did for me at first, too), but sometimes language isn't about the people we're talking about (or with) and more about the person talking. I don't want the use of "PC language" to be about my comfort when talking about things outside of my scope.
THE WORD "OBESE" IS A SLUR IN THIS SPACE AND WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. We do not pathologize the size of our bodies here. If you use that word in a non-quotational way, you will be ignored.
I am always trying to do better, so please provide constructive feedback, and I will always try to be gracious. I want to talk, to learn, to be better for myself, for people I love, for the people I will serve in my community and in my career. My feelings are soft but strong.
I believe in balanced perspectives. I know that is privileged to say, but I will stand with it. What I mean is that I will try to greet different perspectives with compassion and kindness. I am the lone blue dot in my family of conservative and performative Christians. I truly believe that trying to engage with folks like my family is important. However, if things get nasty, I won't have grace at all. But meeting in the middle, calling in rather than calling out, and trying to find empathetic connections is really important to me.
That being said--if it walks like a Nazi, talks like a Nazi, it's a Nazi.
Free Palestine.
In the vein of using language, I am currently working on using alternatives besides "straight" when talking about sexuality or body sizes. Straight implies "normal" or "the good one." That may seem like a stretch (and it does to me right now, but I get the logic, too). So I am practicing using "hetero." It's going to be hard with "straight-sized" because the alternatives are wonky for me (please give me ideas lol). I'm working on it.
I will correct anyone who uses the term "TERF" by calling them transphobes. TERF still implies they're feminists, and you CANNOT have feminism without trans women. TERFs are not feminists. They're transphobes.
refusing to apply first aid to the wound because "it shouldn't have happened in the first place, so what we really should be doing is making sure no one gets stabbed ever again"
your insistence on bandaging this wound is ultimately just you running interference for all the stabbers of the world and that's honestly really shitty of you
We have to let the victim bleed to death so that people will understand how morally wrong the stabbing was. It's short-sighted of you and selfish of the victim to want to bandage the wound.
I forget where I first heard this metaphor, but someone once told me there are two kinds of social workers: when you see kids floating down a river either you jump in to pull them out or you go upstream to stop whatever's putting kids in the river. And we need both kinds of work! You gotta stop kids being put in the river, but that's not going to do much for the kids in the river now
the reason most anti bullying psa's completely fail is because they fail to identify why people bully others, and fail to identify that kids actually do internalize oppressive structures REALLY early on. white kids understand that racialized kids are easy targets, and white teachers either fail to catch racism or are racist themselves. non-disabled kids understand that disabilities are easy to pick on, kids recognize the sissy archetype very early on, boys internalize that girls are lesser than them, kids notice they can take advantage of autistic behavior, and it flies under the radar cause teachers offer little to no support to marginalized kids or outright victim blame them. "ignoring bullies" is a model that assumes bullies just want attention. we should instead assume bullies are taking advantage of others.
My parter is listening to The Magnus Archives and he’s been making silly comments and great quotes.
However, tonight we had a lively discussion about the laser pointer toy for the cats.
Partner: *picks up laser pointer and looks at the cats* “Alright well I’m an avatar of the Eye.”
That’s how it started.
He corrected himself and questioned if it would be more the Web to play with the kitties (the boys) with the laser pointer. He said maybe both because he manipulating and watching. Then I asked if it would be the Spiral because they’ll never catch the red dot.
In conclusion
The laser pointer itself: Spiral-coded
Playing with the cats using the laser pointer: Web-coded
Me enjoying watching my cats chase the red dot my partner is moving around: Eye-coded
I’m so glad he’s listening. His theories are SO interesting.
His quotes are better.
I’m collecting them because I might just post them.
being anti ai is making me feel like in going insane. "you asked for thoughts about your characters backstory and i put it into chat gpt for ideas". studies have proven its making people dumber. "i asked ai to generate this meal plan". its causing water shortages where its data centers are built. "ill generate some pictures for the dnd campaign". its spreading misinformation. "meta, generate an image of this guy doing something stupid". its trained off stolen images, writing, video, audio. "i was talking with my snapchat ai-" theres no way to verify what its doing with the information it collects. "youtube is impletmenting ai based age verification". my work has an entire graphics media department and has still put ai generated motivational posters up everywhere. ai playlists. ai facial verification. google ai microsoft ai meta ai snapchat ai. everyone treats it as a novelty. every treats it as a mandatory part of life. am i the only one who sees it? am i paranoid? am i going insane? jesus fucking christ. if i have to hear one more "well at least-" "but it does-" "but you can-" im about to lose it. i shouldnt have to jump through hoops to avoid the evil machine. have you no principles? no goddamn spine? am i the weird one here?
‘Do Not Open’ is still one of my favorite episodes because of this absolute legend. He’s at the top of my list of badass people who survived encounters because they just ain’t with that shit.
i’ve started looking at weight and health the way i look at class and income and it really puts a lot of things into a new perspective.
let me explain: in america at least, the lower class have significantly worse health outcomes, even when accounting for other factors. just being poor is enough to make your overall health worse. we don’t know that being fat makes your health directly worse, like the data just isn’t there, but for a moment, pretend it does.
imagine going to the doctor with a health problem and the doctor looking at your chart and saying well, this problem will be less severe if you go up an income bracket. have you thought about becoming rich? it would really help. start by saving a little money every month.
ridiculous, right?? very few people successfully go from working class to rich, it just doesn’t happen on a large scale in society. maybe for a time you pick up some overtime hours, spend a little beyond your means, and appear rich. but eventually you burn out, your car needs to be repaired, and you return to being working class.
we do have this data: only some people can successfully lose large amounts of weight, and only a tiny fraction of people who lose that weight actually keep it off for more than a year. telling people to lose weight for their health is just absurd because they almost certainly can’t do it any more than they can double their income for their health.
and yet i see it everywhere. a little poster in my work breakroom tells me to improve my blood pressure by losing weight! a psa on the radio says you need to take care of your heart by losing weight! we can’t even conclusively prove that weight is the cause rather than just correlated with a lot of these problems but here it is offered anyway: have you tried being rich?
You hit the nail on the head. A lot of people tend to try and invalidate fatphobia as a form of oppression by saying its not an immutible quality like race or sexuality or gender. The old “you can lose weight, i can’t become white/straight/cis” argument.
That’s because fatphobia is a lot more like classism; i.e. it’s a form of bigotry that is only TECHNICALLY changeable. They’re both seen as a lot more changeable than they actually are, for all the reasons you’ve listed.
And even if it were very possible to change your class or your body, it doesn’t negate oppression. Religious minorities and ideological minorities have been oppressed in many places and times, including now, and you can change your mind about any of it. But they’re not “choosing” to be oppressed.
There’s something that my coworker said recently that has really been on my mind. I tried to ignore it because, well, this coworker bothers me 99% of the time and everything she says is annoying.
But this one has been bothering me.
She complains all the time she needs to lose weight. She talks about how she’s beat fibromyalgia twice with diet and exercise. She talks about her fatty liver all the time. She’s average sized (probably would be considered mid sized at most).
Last week, we had a going away party for a colleague and a lot of food was left over, so we shared it with everyone at the staff meetings the next couple of days. There were a lot of sweets. She was complaining that should couldn’t stop eating.
Mind you, my fat self was tired of eating at this point of this conversation. But she was downing her third cupcake that day (good for her tbh) complaining that she can’t stop eating.
Then she says that she never had sweets for breakfast but she found an ice cream that she eats for breakfast and after dinner every day.
I remember being told in health classes about food and nutrition with teachers and students all staring at me that sweets were bad and we should never eat a pint of gallon cream in one sitting. As if I would do that?
So then my coworker says she eats ice cream for breakfast and no one says a thing or reacts.
I guess there is just so much outrage at fat people enjoying a sweet treat and existing that it has gotten under my skin. I know if we stood beside each other and asked a group of people “who eats ice cream for breakfast,” it would probably be close to unanimous that they would think it’s me because of my fat body.
Fat aromantics have the right to identify as aromantic without people trying to dismiss their identity as the person being unlovable due to fatness. Fat people are lovable in every way, and a fat person is allowed to reject any amount or form of love they don't want. Autonomy is not granted based on the size of your waist.
-Mod Worthy
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