Pseudo Justice #12: This Is Thin Privilege
Sorry everyone. I kind of fell out of doing this for the longest time. Because I was feeling lazy and uninspired. But I have a few of these posts in the backlog that I wanted to get into.
Iâve already covered the racists using movements like BLM as cover and the cringe feminists and the MOGAI people. but I havenât gotten to thin privilege.Â
Now, I know this topic has probably been done to death by now. But itâs the perfect low hanging fruit for me to return on because these people take âdonât fatshameâ and then stack all sorts of bullshit on top of it that they need to cut out
Basically, This is Thin Privilege is a blog ran be 3Â âfat acceptance activistsâ who all went too far down into the echo chambers and came out detached from the medical consensus, reality, and the original movement itself.
TITP: âWould you suggest that someone whoâs too tall get shorter? No? Didnât think so. Youâve been sold a pack of lies by the healthists and their corporate sponsors, the diet industry. Educate yourself.â
Celeste: TITP literally thinks itâs impossible to lose weight, if this quote is anything to go by. Never mind that it takes work and people have physical proof like before/after pictures.Â
Just because you canât or donât want to lose weight doesnât mean other people arenât able to.Â
Completely unscientific and invalidates peoples personal experiences. Itâs a twofer on BS!
TITP: âThin privilege encourages thin shaming because it creates an oppressive dynamic.â
Celeste: My mind is full of fuck. So itâs okay to shame thin people because all of them are inherently oppressing fat people?Â
TITP: ââThinâ is the social state of thinness, the state of being seen and/or physically accepted as not fat.â
Celeste: Yes, and itâs also a physical descriptor. People have a different perception of what counts as thin.
And you shame them all because of insecurity and jealousy. example:
TITP: For a while Iâve been having knee problems, so naturally I went to the doctors to see if anything was anything wrong. Well after a few fatphobic questions such as âHow long have you been obeseâ
Celeste: They treat simple investigation into health issue causes as being equivalent to âHey fatfuck, lose weight, have you always been such a fatfuck?â
It isnât. Itâs doing their job to cover all the bases and possibilities.
TITP:Â In my high school's PE class, they would come around and check our heart rates every 15 minutes. If we didn't maintain our heart rates constantly over 150, our grades were docked, because that was how they rated our effort. No consideration whatsoever for any circumstances that might make that dangerous for some students. Kids regularly vomited or passed out in PE. If someone started throwing up, nobody stopped running. I thought that was completely normal for years.
And with that, we have the cream of the shit sundae here. The FAQ page! The first one Iâd like to break up into âquick repliesâ, a new format where I just stick a meme arrow with a single sentence after posting a single sentence off the blog of my subject.
TITP:Â What about when someoneâs so fat itâs medically unhealthy, shouldnât you tell them to lose weight, out of friendly/familial concern? - Hell no. Why would your friends be a better witness to your experience than you are?
>Because a real friend would be honest, people arenât always honest with themselves.
 If they are, then donât you have bigger presumed problems than your weight?
>Yes, and you have that problem.
Why would they know whatâs healthy for you, better than you do?
>Because they might be more educated on the subject, nobody knows everything about everything.
 Again, if they do, donât you have bigger presumed problems than your weight?
>Yes, and once again you are the prime example of the problem.
 How in the world could you possibly avoid hearing, in our current cultural climate, that fat people should âlose weight for their healthâ?
>I donât know. It seems both sides are inescapable, especially on tumblr dot hell.
 Treat people with respect. Donât infantilize or condescend to them. This is Adult Interaction 101, here.
>Ironic, considering you condescend to your own audience by signal boosting full-on âthathappned.txtâ stories.
TITP:Â This blog is one tiny corner of the internet that doesnât talk about thin peopleâs problems. Everywhere, all over the place, people are talking about thin hurt feelings. Thin love. Thin hopes and aspirations. Thin success and failure. Everywhere else youâre the lead character in all the stories worth reading or watching. That is thin privilege.
>Fat privilege is having a whole social media chamber that thin people donât really see an equivalent for.
Okay enough of that, I think I should go a little bit deeper for the response to this.
Celeste: *ahem* Youâll notice they basically use âthinâ to mean ânon-fatâ, erasing all the body types in between and also the muscular people.
TITP:Â Â "IâM TRYING TO LOSE WEIGHT. AM I ALLOWED TO SUBMIT TO TITP?â
Sure. This blog is about thin privilege and fat discrimination. If you post on those topics and donât engage in fat shaming or promote a culture that privileges thin people in your post, then your post is relevant. Promoting weight loss for everyone (or extrapolating your experience to others by praising yourself for weight loss, and so on), however, is engaging in a culture that shames fat people and privileges thin people. Those kinds of submissions will not be posted.
Celeste: This strikes me as a vague platitude trying to pretend they wonât weight-loss shame you if you meet some standard.
Why shouldnât someone losing weight be allowed to praise themselves for the work it took to achieve their goal?
TITP:Â As for the word âobese,â itâs a medicalization of the human body, and the pathologization of a natural state. In short, I abhor it.
Celeste: Medicine is a science involving the human body. The human body is a natural object that comes in different shapes and sizes and so those states are natural states.
Pathology is studying cause and effect of diseases. Diseases are natural and are part of medicine.Â
This argument is nothing but nonsense jargon that boils down to âIâm offended, change/ignore science and medicineâ
TITP:Â People who deny thin privilege and fat discrimination are trolls. Even if they donât know it. Thereâs a variety of troll-types: the most common in fat-positive spaces is the concern troll, hiding behind concern for âhealthâ as they spew the same common wisdom mythinformation as the haters, ignore the science like the haters do, demand we change our bodies like the haters do. Get the pattern?Trolls often hide behind the âbut Iâm entitled to my opinion!â to say some really fucking heinous shit â like blanket generalizations about how some groups of people donât deserve dignity, respect, or to be trusted. And when you arenât willing to engage it, they cry âcensorship!â like youâre the Internet Emperor, or something. Itâs a derailment tactic. (ArteToLife)
âConcern Trollingâ is an easily abused term that people use as blanket statements to shame people who are allies to a cause but disagree slightly with whatever the person they were talking to said or did.
Yâknow, since we want to talk derailment tactics here.
And with that, Iâm done with this. I might cover this blog again in the future if I find something really egregious but for now, Iâm signing out.
titsay
ellievsbear
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
snowghoul
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
stormborns
gracieabrams
