#läskiaktivismi

[tobeabatman]

From what I know (and I’m no expert (but neither are probably you)) all research and studies on fat people and bodies is based on bias.

We didn’t start studying fatness and fat bodies without any assumptions or biases. We started studying fat bodies because French biologists decided that fatness was a racial sign, and everything snowballed from there.

Yes, nowadays research on fat bodies is usually not focused on race. But we are still making the same assumption of fat being bad the old French eugenics and every researcher who came after them, has made.

When did we ever observe fatness without a lense of bias? Literally never. Fatness as a medical concern started because of racism and fat people nowadays are quite obviously treated worse than thin people, so there is automatically a lense of bias in all research of fat bodies and people. There is no neutral research on fatness.

And sure, not necessarily all biased research is false (and some might say all research is biased, although in this case we are talking of much more bias than what most studies have). But when we live in a biased society, any research can be used to justify further bias, and it doesn’t help when almost all of the research is written by biased thin people sponsored by biased thin people published on biased platforms.

There is no true objectivity when it comes to research, but to me it seems like the people who research fatness don’t even try to be unbiased (very unscientific).

Researchers make biased assumptions in their research that they don’t back-up with their own study or other people’s research: they just assume that well-known assumptions must be right. Researchers also use biased language (when has any fat person said that they prefer the term obese, even if it’s technically medical lingo). Researchers also just straight up forget to take into account things like how discrimination of fat people might affect their study results, even if that’s massively relevant to their study.

Sure, I’m just a random person who doesn’t work in the research field. But I’m also a random fat person unlike many of the researchers, and I would like an ounce of respect from studies that might be used to oppress people like me (this happening shouldn’t even be a concern in the first place).

[tobeabatman]

Freeform fat activist post

Did you know that weight discrimination has increased by 66 % during the last decade and is one of the only forms of discrimination actively condoned by society? (From Adressing weight stigma and fatphobia in public health by Amanda Montgomery, RD, LDN, at publichealth.uic.edu)

And it’s like, it makes me so mad. It makes me so angry to see a bunch of thin people spreading bs without our fat people’s opinions, worsening the social conditions of people like me. It makes me mad that the first time I experienced medical fatphobia was at age 7. It makes me mad that it feels like there’s nothing I can do.

I can’t go to public transport without hearing casual fatphobia, I can’t study without hearing fatphobia, I can’t go online without seeing fatphobia, I can’t even film certain things online because of fatphobia.

I try escapism. I read a bunch of books: No fat characters, casual fatphobic comments.

I watch a bunch of videos on Youtube: Most fat creators are disencouraged from filming by either the algorithm or by viewers. The left-over thin creators casually act like fat people are lesser-than, when something triggers the topic of fat people.

I flinch, I wait, whenever a topic comes up that could possibly elicit fatphobia. The word ”lifestyle choices” makes my heart beat just a bit faster.

At school, I have to sit through an entire 115 minute lesson on how fat people should lose weight. I am the only ”obese” kid in class, there is one overweight person besides me.

I can’t look the teacher in the eye for the whole class. All my future lessons I sit in his class thinking, ”You don’t say it out loud, but I think you think of me differently than my thin classmates”.

I surround myself activism. Disability justice, anti-racism, feminism, -ism -ism. Justice is important to me.

..But I notice there’s no attention to people like me. Even though there’s so many different communities, fat people have a small and incomplete one. Even my leftist friends don’t note our struggles.

I continue my activism, but I’m getting more tired.

Someone lists different communities, says that medical bias is bad against those groups. I notice that mentioning fat people would fit right alongside those other communities. But I remember we’re invisible.

Another person says that confidence is sexy. I think it must be easy to see it that way if you’re not statistically more likely to have lower self-esteem.

Third person is concerned about my mental health for living in a fatphobic society. ”Who am I supposed to get help from?” I ask. Body-positive therapists are easy to find, but most of them don’t understand the pressure of living in a body hated by most.

—

The future I want is where no one is oppressed. That includes fat people. Get rid of your ”what about” thinking, and realize that fat people are human too.

And if you’re fat, then you deserve none of the sh*t this world has manipulated you into thinking you deserve (until you change your body, of course). I know you most likely had super low self-esteem growing up, maybe you got bullied, maybe that bullying continued into your work life.

I wish I could say it gets better, that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. But for that, we need the help of everyone. Are you willing to help?

Thank you for reading.

[tobeabatman]

The fattie creep stereotype, aka authors be ashamed.

Tw: Mentions of r*pe + p*dophilia, short description of a fictional child getting k*dnapped by a p*dophile. Pretty extreme fatphobic comments.

At this point if you’re going to depict your p*dophile, s*x offender character as a fat person, you know what you’re doing. It’s not a coincidence that most of the time creepy men are depicted as fat in western novels and comics, when the author in question includes no other fat people in their stories.

And it baffles me because I strictly read queer romance. Like you authors can recognize queerphobia, but decide to turn a blind eye to another form of oppression (fatphobia)? Any of your readers would be disgusted if your creepy character was depicted as a trans woman, but suddenly it’s fine when the minority in question is fat people? (Do note that I’m not implying a creepy trans woman character is any more acceptable. It would be as gross.) Even though both fat men and trans women face a similar stereotypes that condemns both to be creepy p*dophilic r*pists?

I was reading a western comic earlier. In this comic a young child was k*dnapped by a fat creepy man. Here’s some comments from the comment section:

”Me, getting my guns and knives ready so I can k*ll that fat pig.”

”Get your fat*ss away from my baby.”

”Wtf this disgusting pig how dare you -”

”Just d*e p*dophile fatty.”

”F*cking fattie get away from my [character’s name].”

If you’re an author who makes a comic/novel that creates a safe environment for these horrible comments to arise, you should be ashamed of yourself. This was the only fat character in that person’s comic, and they oh just so happened to be fat? F*cking h*ll.

I know this is a rough topic, and I really hope that one day the sh*t we face as fat people gets better. It’s hard to keep hope knowing that fatphobia has gotten worse over the recent years, compared to other types of oppressions that have gotten better over the recent years. What we fat activists should focus on right now is empowering other fat people and finally getting recognized as a minority in the eyes of other marginalized groups. It’s not easy, but we can do it!

[tobeabatman]

I heard that Finland’s getting our own fat activist/fat liberation organization called Läskisti, and I’m excited!

They don’t have a website or anything yet and just have an Instagram account with no content yet, so I’m crossing my fingers that the organization will become active (and stay active) at some point.

[tobeabatman]

It’s so wild to me that all research on fat people’s eating habits is like ”yeah, fat people eat more often and that’s what made them fat.”

This, alongside of all research on fat bodies, doesn’t take into consideration the fact that fat people face more bullying, are statistically more likely to have low self-esteem, more likely to be stressed, etc. We are predisposed to binge eating, compulsive eating and stress eating!

It’s not as simple as ”eating made someone fat”. Medical professionals, researchers, media, etc., forget that there’s never just one thing that attributes to our body’s features. No one’s getting fat just from eating, there are a ton of genetics and environmental factors (such as stress) involved!

Also ask any fat person you know and they’ll tell you that they’ve either been on a diet, are on a diet, or strongly thought about getting on a diet. This whole society is on a diet right now and no one’s eating as much as needed! Fat people might eat more than thin people, but do any of us eat enough? I’ve yet to see a research address this.

Also even if we fat people ate more than the ”normal amount”, then that warrants us to look into the biological differences between fat and thin bodies, and redefine what a ”normal amount” even is. We can’t starve fat people because society thinks it’s best if all of us are thin.

There’s like no research centered around biological differences between fat and thin bodies, that are actually working to make this world a better place for fat people.

Toodles!

[tobeabatman]

fatphobic propaganda

There’s this one video that was getting around at some point where a confident-looking female TikToker showed pictures of dead fat people, making the audience think that those dead fat people had all died recently due to fatness.

This video is very concerning because it’s a classic example of propaganda. The TikToker didn’t state that those people had died specifically due to fatness, nor did she state that those people had all died recently, back to back. She had made her audience assume that based on the format of the video.

As I checked out two of the fat people in the video (whose names were shown), I found out that the other one’s reason of death was never even publicized (she could have died from anything for all we can know) and the other person’s death happened 1-2 years after hers.

Now, these were just two people from the video, but the fact that the Tiktoker felt confident enough to show these two people’s names despite their deaths being at least a year apart (and despite the other person’s reason of death being unknown), tells me that it’s likely that the deaths of the rest of the people in the video weren’t close to each other either, and were probably also caused by other reasons than just being fat.

I could make a similar video featuring blonde influencers, and manipulate people into thinking that blonde influencers have a higher chance of dying than anyone else. Even if dead blonde influencers made up 1% of all blonde influencers, I could influence people to think that them dying is much more common than it actually is, by taking a small sample and by not showing influencers with any other hair color.

It’s very important to recognize this kind of brain f*ckery, not only because this is about fat people and tools of oppression that have been used throughout history to influence the masses, but also because stuff like this is very common when it comes to science, and especially line graphs.

It’s also very important to fact-check these sorts of videos when you see them. If the person can’t even show the names of the people they’re showing, you shouldn’t trust them regardless of whether they seem confident and charismatic. In fact, you shouldn’t trust anyone who is comfortable with showing images of dead people just to make a point, whether their point might be valid or not.

I’m talking about this because I saw one fat activist who was distressed due to this video, even though the person in the video was just spewing propaganda-like bs. I don’t know how many other people saw this video and felt distress over it, but I hope that this can make you all feel a bit more relieved.

Toodles!

[tobeabatman]

If you have any ideas of possible messages for fat-positive pins and stickers, I’d be very grateful if you wanted to share them!

Of course I have a long list of my own ideas as well, but I’d just like to know if you have any message you guys think would be important to get into a sticker/pin form so you can share them with the world.

If I ever start selling pins/stickers, they would have (pretty cheap) international shipping.

[wenuitun]

Radikaalin joulukalenterin 1. luukku

Radikaalin joulukalenterin 1. luukku

“Mitkä olis hyviä baby stepsejä itsensä hyväksymiseen juuri tällaisena?” 

Tämä kysymys muodossa tai toisessa esitetään minulle aika usein. Jos haluaa ruveta olemaan itseään kohtaan hyväksyvämpi, mistä lähteä liikkeelle?  Minulle on myös tuttua se tietty negatiivinen kierre, mitä tulee itsensä vihaamiseen: olen vastenmielisen näköinen –> ää, miksi minun pitää ajatella, että olen vastenmielisen…

View On WordPress