Aceing my life

Finnish | Ace | Fat | Endo | PCOS. You can support my blog at ko-fi.com/tobeabatman <3
Trying to carve out a place for my existence. I like reading and crochet, too. 🇵🇸🇸🇩🇨🇩...

[tobeabatman]

Hello! I’m tobeabatman.

I mainly write long texts related to fat activism. Sometimes other stuff as well. I try my best not to write too much but sometimes my fingers just slip and write full on short essays…

My ko-fi is https://ko-fi.com/tobeabatman in case you want to monetarily support my ramblings :) Even fatphobes can monetarily support me if you want my special attention… Hahaha. I’m trying to get out of a relatively bad housing situation but it’s fine if you don’t want to support me!!!!💕💕

If my writings sound good then you can also always comment or reblog :) I’ve turned asks off because they were getting a bit overwhelming for me. Also I don’t read you guys’s responses to my posts rn because I don’t want to accidentally spend hours on Tumblr, I just come here to quickly write posts rn 😅

Despite my usually serious content I’m actually a pretty chill person. I enjoy reading, crocheting, singing, and what have you.

You can always click off if my content’s seriousness overwhelmes you. I recommend watching cat videos to ground yourself <3

I’m asexual, grayaromantic, and also genderqueer. I use they/them but I won’t care if you try to get at me by using the wrong pronouns. Any feminine or even masculine terminology is fine. You will hear me describe myself more with the term woman than genderqueer.

(There’s a lot of abbreviations that start with endo so I must clarify that the endo in my bio stands for endometriosis which is a terrible medical condition that I happen to have (this is probably obvious to everyone aware of endometriosis who also saw the word PCOS in my bio that followed the term endo, but this is just for clarification)).

I won’t write any intricate rules or warnings for my blog but just don’t be a d*ck (this includes not telling me how my censorship of swearwords is annoying). I also try my best to trigger what needs triggering and so on.

Anyway,

Toodles <33

[tobeabatman]

You don’t have to not lose weight or love your body to be a fat activist

Being a fat activist is about trying to end the stigma towards people who are fat

People like to twist the meaning of the fat acceptance movement to be about trying to get as much people to become fat or about encouraging ”unhealthiness”

All I ask of people is to not be a dick towards fat people and understand that people aren’t fat because of personal failures, but due to an interplay of genetics, environment, and possibly medications, trauma, etc.

I spiral sometimes regarding my weight and I understand why people lose weight because us fat people do get treated differently in this society and sometimes being fat can be a health risk if you are over a certain size and being fat causes you joint pain, etc.

All I’m saying is that fat people get treated worse in this society and we shouldn’t be. All I’m saying is that to prevent the stigma around being fat we need to destroy the idea that certain bodies are inherently unhealthy. Actions and habits can be unhealthy, not people.

[tobeabatman]

People treat fat people saying that fat people are marginalized and oppressed on the basis of perceived health and the way our bodies look, like we’re saying that there’s an active genocide towards fat people

Like people are often so strictly against the idea as if we were suggesting something super radical like the idea of a full-blown genocide towards fat people. Even though disableism is already recognized as discrimination and fatphobia as a concept is literally a sibling to disableism. Both have to do with discrimination towards certain people in terms of perceived health, AND how people look (neither is purely based on just health)

[tobeabatman]

the state of plus-size clothing

😀

[tobeabatman]

some people are being purposefully ignorant about the topic of willpower and motivation when it comes to weight-loss

I told someone how conditions like ADHD affect people’s executive functioning and motivation levels and they responded to me saying that ADHD people can lose weight just the same.

Like dude I can not even do the stuff I like doing, regularly. It’s not about just pulling yourself up the bootstraps and deciding to do something. I’ve been trying to learn Chinese for like 6 years now and I’m really interested in the language but my Chinese level is that of a beginner right now even though I really want to learn the language.

And I’m not trying to make excuses for how I’m just bad at weight-loss or something, okay. I think everyone deserves to live freely as a human being without other people sticking their nose up their health business just because of their weight despite anything. I’m just tired of this one sided ”willpower” and ”motivation” talk without people understanding that motivation doesn’t transfer to actions. Some people have brains that are a bit fucked up like mine that struggle with even showering or brushing their teeth even

[tobeabatman]

it pisses me off how long it takes for the research community to find out basic stuff about fat bodies

”Hey guys, we found out that obesity isn’t a singular thing but that there are 11 endotypes of obesity!”

There are 11 types of obesity. Knowing yours could change your life

For decades now, obesity has been defined by a number on a scale or where you land on the body mass index (BMI) measure. But a groundbreakin

Like yeah?

This is what I mean when I say that the research on fat bodies is lacking. We talk a lot about dieting but it takes this long for the research community to start figuring out that we’re not all the same

(Which is quite obvious considering there’s not a single cause for all people being fat and not all fat people will get the same symptoms. Like my dad has been fat from childhood and has no issue with insulin)

[tobeabatman]

I was under the assumption that a lot of thin people didn’t even think about fat people and how they should draw us, but I came across an Instagram video that was full of artists talking about how they just refuse to draw fat people because they prefer to draw skinny people and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Let’s talk about why that’s your preference. Or maybe you already know and just don’t care.

There were also people in the comment section that said they don’t draw fat people because they don’t know how and they don’t want to offend us. Honey, you’re doing great if you even try. I’d be excited to see you develop your skills in drawing fat people, I’m not going to be offended if you don’t get it right. Most fat people I know would be happy to give you pointers if you do get it wrong.

There were also people saying that it’s the same thing as fat people only drawing fat people. That’s plain wrong. Most fat artists who draw art of fat people had to learn how to draw fat people. We don’t just instinctively draw people like ourselves because we look the same, we grow up in the same society that teaches us to only draw thin people. All my childhood drawings of people were of thin people even though I was fat. the reason fat artists start drawing fat people is not because we just grew up drawing people like ourselves, but because we realized that there is too little art of ourselves and we want to build community with other fat people through the art. You can’t compare the two when the fat artists had to unlearn their own biases and started to draw fat people to build community with other fat people, meanwhile thin people draw thin people because they think it’s the prettiest.

what I call privilege is seeing a minority not getting represented in art and going ”meh, that’s just not my preference to draw that minority”. Not all artists need to draw fat people but the problem is that I literally never see fat people represented in art. Thin people might not realize just how little art there is of fat people because they already feel represented by all the art there is, but art depicting fat people is rare. I can’t say how rare exactly, but the times I’ve seen art of fat people that didn’t depict fat people negatively during my whole LIFE, would most likely fall into about 100 art pieces, because it’s that rare.

So many times I’ve talked about fat people in art and how that tells about our place in society. Privileged people get represented in art automatically without having to fight for it

[tobeabatman]

”fatphobia isn’t real, people just care about fat people’s health!”

and then a comment section of a fat person talking about how both their parents died is filled with ”did you eat them” jokes

[tobeabatman]

The amount of people trying to frame fat activism/fat liberation as a delusion privileged white fat women partake in is crazy.

If you look at the famous fat activist authors, like half of them are Black, a lot of them are disabled, most of them are queer, a lot of us are neurodivergent, etc.

If all you hear from fat activism is from people who aren’t fat activists, it’s kind of easy to think that oh yes, fat activists seem crazy and they’re just privileged people and yada yada.

But if you actually interact with us, you’ll see that the majority of us are queer, neurodivergent, disabled, and BIPOC.

The amount of people who come to me saying that ”fat people aren’t oppressed, you should listen to queer, disabled and Black people” is crazy. You guys come to our fat activist spaces, and tell me, a queer person, to listen to queer people on oppression?

The whole idea that fat activists are privileged white women who know nothing about oppression is so wrong and also you guys are literally using this narrative to silence us who are a part of minorities. Just look at the amount of fat activist authors who are Black. Just look at the amount of the white women who you think are privileged, who are actually very much disabled— Because a lot of us are disabled (fat activism and disability justice are quite close to each other so I think a lot of disability justice fighters also become fat activists for that reason).

You guys come to fat activist spaces and don’t listen to us and then silence us by using our own minorities against us. Can’t you guys just listen to us? Don’t you realize that you’re acting like oppressors by ignoring our identities and using our own identities to silence us

[unsentimentaltranslator]

Welcome to literally any discussion about misogyny (fat women are hated more viciously than fat men because of the long history of men treating women as domestic, sexual, and reproductive slaves for them to pick out like products, to the point where an English idiom for a woman who stays single into old age is “left on the shelf”.)

Anyway as a fat low-income woman, poor people are at greater risk of obesity because of the lack of access to healthy food and the lack of time to exercise and then rest afterwards and the framing of obesity as something that fat people just didn’t bootstrap hard enough is something that right wingers push hard as part of a larger narrative that poverty is the fault of the poor so if y’all want to be leftists you can’t be talking that way about fat people bye.

[barbievspredator]

The only people who ever profit or gain any privileges from "fat activism" are men.

[tobeabatman]

That’s funny since most fat activists are all of the following: women, leftist, and feminist

There’s literally a lot of benefits fat women gain from fat activism. And regardless fat acticism definitely isn’t about thin men. Why are you trying to make a female and queer lead movement about men as a way to argue against said movement is the question 🙃

You’re trying to argue that fat activism benefits fat women in no way, have you ever looked at the comment section of a fat woman who posted any video with their body without necessarily even mentioning it? I feel like the stop of the constant bullying is a big ass benefit for especially fat women, for one

[tobeabatman]

The amount of people trying to frame fat activism/fat liberation as a delusion privileged white fat women partake in is crazy.

If you look at the famous fat activist authors, like half of them are Black, a lot of them are disabled, most of them are queer, a lot of us are neurodivergent, etc.

If all you hear from fat activism is from people who aren’t fat activists, it’s kind of easy to think that oh yes, fat activists seem crazy and they’re just privileged people and yada yada.

But if you actually interact with us, you’ll see that the majority of us are queer, neurodivergent, disabled, and BIPOC.

The amount of people who come to me saying that ”fat people aren’t oppressed, you should listen to queer, disabled and Black people” is crazy. You guys come to our fat activist spaces, and tell me, a queer person, to listen to queer people on oppression?

The whole idea that fat activists are privileged white women who know nothing about oppression is so wrong and also you guys are literally using this narrative to silence us who are a part of minorities. Just look at the amount of fat activist authors who are Black. Just look at the amount of the white women who you think are privileged, who are actually very much disabled— Because a lot of us are disabled (fat activism and disability justice are quite close to each other so I think a lot of disability justice fighters also become fat activists for that reason).

You guys come to fat activist spaces and don’t listen to us and then silence us by using our own minorities against us. Can’t you guys just listen to us? Don’t you realize that you’re acting like oppressors by ignoring our identities and using our own identities to silence us

[tobeabatman]

”There’s no such thing as fatphobia, people just care about fat people’s health”

Dude I constantly see people talk about how they were hesitant to take medication that might save their life or make their life way better just because a possible side effect is that they gain weight. People are literally hesitating to take a medicine that helps their health because of the fear of becoming fat. Fatphobia is very much real and alive.

[tobeabatman]

As a fat person i’m scared to visit doctors and nurses because it’s always a game of ”what fatphobic shit have they written into my notes again”

This time they wrote that I have high blood pressure after describing that I was fat. I literally do not have high blood pressure but now it’s in my notes when the doctor didn’t even ask me about it

[tobeabatman]

Whenever fat people (usually women) talk about fat people positively, there’s always this one thin person in the comment section that’s like:

”Well this person clearly has low self-esteem”

Do you guys understand the problem here? Fat people say we’re ugly, we have low self-esteem, but apparently we also have low self-esteem when we say fat people are actually pretty or any other positive thing.

Thin people weaponize self-esteem against fat people. Confident fat people (usually women) talking positively about fatness and fat people are labeled as having low self-esteem because then thin people can ignore our message easier: ”Oh that person’s just looking for validation, we shouldn’t listen to them guys”.

Also bad self-esteem and bad confidence aren’t things you should weaponize in general. You know how many studies show that fat people on avarage have lower self-esteem than thin people? You can’t use self-esteem as an argument against people who are statistically more likely to develop bad self-esteem due to life-long systematic oppression. That’s just you using your privilege to talk shit about people who always had a higher statistical chance than you to develop bad self-esteem.

I have pretty great self-esteem actually. And it sucks that thin people want to ignore all the work I’ve put into developing my self-esteem just because it doesn’t fit their idea of what fat people are supposed to think or feel, and it sucks that they’re trying to put down confident fat people by stating that we just have bad self-esteem. That’s just oppression

[tobeabatman]

Me: add fat activism to your activism

a random person: Okay but I’m tired of adding more things to my activism

Me: 😳😬🥱

Idk how to tell this to y’all but if you guys are tired of activism then I get that but also I’m tired of being oppressed

[tobeabatman]

Leftists and socialists i love you but f*cking stop only drawing fat people as negative charicatures and nothing else

Fat cops, fat landlords, I just saw a sticker with the text ”f*ck oligarchs” and the person was an uglified fat man.

Truly, your revolution isn’t revolutionary if the only time you even think of fat people is when you need to depict a person in power.

Add fat activism to your activism

[protectthecitizens]

“Oh no it’s okay! People are just using fat as a shorthand for gluttony!”

“They’re using hooked noses as a shorthand for being shifty”

“They’re using Blackness as a shorthand for being stupid”

“They’re using visible disability as a shorthand for being lazy”

THAT’S THE FUCKING PROBLEM!

[tobeabatman]

Being an activist who happens to also be a fat activist means I will find someone whose political opinions I agree with online, thinking that they seem like a decent person….

And then that person who usually talks about classism and poverty and what have you goes on a long tangent about fat people and how we should prevent people from becoming fat.

And it almost feels like a bad joke because how can you at the same time talk about classism and poverty and care about minorities and then ignore how fat people are discriminated against, and how we’re more likely to be poor and homeless and unemployed, etc., and perpetuate the same broken idea of how health is a look and how fat people are failed thin people and how fat bodies are wrong and ignore the classism related to fatphobia????

[tobeabatman]

Tell me why I saw a webcomic with a fat man as one of the main characters/a love interest and I checked what the author was saying on the description and they called the fat man hella ugly and that only the other main character could see his beauty

He wasn’t even ugly, the only different thing about him was his fatness. Either I’m missing something or the author was genuinely just making fun of their own fat character in which case that’s a new level of messed up fatphobic bs because why are we fat people never represented and then when we are, we have to listen to the person who created the character talk about how ugly they are.