many eating disorders, especially restrictive ones, actually have fucking nothing at all to do with weight or health or anything. Eating disorders are frequently about an unhealthy or disordered relationship with control and autonomy, like in the above example. They can be a result of religious or sexual abuse; physical abuse, especially that suffered by child athletes; traumatic experiences related to poverty and food insecurity; forced hospitalization, institutionalization, medication, or feeding; and - extremely extremely extremely quietly commonly - the trauma experienced as a marginalized person, especially a racialized or transgender person. The frequency of eating disorders among transgender people in particular is staggering.
does fatphobia enable and promote eating disorders developed in these circumstances? Obviously. But treating eating disorders like they are a choice people make as a deliberate expression of fatphobia is... well, you tell me. What would I know? It apparently isn't a mental illness, or a coping disorder, or even a real problem on anything other than a personal and individual level, right? And if we were all just personally stronger and better and had more discipline and control over ourselves and our minds and our bodies, we'd be saved from it? Huh, okay
