Problems with NAAFA
I posted a somewhat different version of this in a comment over at BFB, but lest it get buried in the archives, I wanted to say it here. I know it’s unpopular, and perhaps I should be thankful that at least there’s an organization out there doing fat activism. But I have both political and practical problems with NAAFA, and I have a hunch a few other folks do, too.
Political: Currently they have a feminist caucus, a fat lesbian caucus, and a “lavender” caucus for gay, lesbian and bisexual fat folks. What about queers who aren’t gay, lesbian or bi? Where do transfolk fit into the picture? What about people of color? With statements like “insults to a person’s race, ethnicity or religion rank as completely unacceptable”, the organization (or at least the website) shows itself to be out of touch with reality, at least reality as experienced by people of diverse races, ethnicities and religions in the U.S. Whether the article was written by a NAAFA member, or just featured on the website as an example of fat-positive rhetoric, it shows NAAFA’s lack of commitment, not only to fighting oppression in its many forms, but to diversity itself. By having an article on your site that tells people that racist comments are no longer acceptable, you gloss over the fact that racism (and racist comments) still abounds, and by glossing over that kind of bigotry, you perpetuate it.
Political: NAAFA is hard at work on the MA anti-discrimination bill - I know this because I’ve been in contact with Marilyn Wann. They also have a conference this summer. But what else are they doing? Are they organizing protests? Marches? Weekly updates to the website? Do they have a column on the site where folks offer regular commentary on law, science, politics, popular culture? An interesting weekly podcast? An easily-accessible call-to-action page? Nope. Just the newsletter.
Practical: Which brings me to Public Relations, or News, or the Webmaster… whoever is in charge of their public face to the world, whoever is getting the word out about fat prejudice and how NAAFA is fighting it, and how everybody can fight it… is doing a terrible job. Terrible.
Case in point: I looked all over the NAAFA website before I posted here about the bill, and I didn’t even hear anything about them being active… until Peggy Howell (their Public Relations chair) left a comment here in an older entry. What’s wrong with this?
While it’s great that their PR chair took the time to visit the site and let me know what’s up, it’s also a little troubling to think that they must have checked Technorati or Google for news on the bill (or commentary on NAAFA itself), and instead of pushing for the organization to update it’s website, it was more pertinent to… comment on my blog? I fail to understand why NAAFA can make the time to tell me what they’re up to, yet they make the time to update their own site – which is arguably more trafficked than the comments section of one of my posts?
Furthermore, why is their website so horribly NOT-user friendly? Why do their “News Archives” stop at 2004? Why do they not have an easily-accessible non-discrimination statement of their own? At the very least, is there any logical reason for not having a search function?
Political? Finally, the PR problems aren’t merely practical – they’re also political, in that (as a fellow fat lib blogger recently pointed out to me) their lack of attention to the site seems to demonstrate, not just a laziness in their activism, but a lack of serious commitment to the cause. The internet is not brand new, and if NAAFA wants to establish itself as an important, reputable organization, their website (and indeed, entire PR strategy) needs a serious make-over.
Who knows - maybe, as the aforementioned (anonymous, for now) blogger wrote to me, it isn’t a bad thing. Maybe NAAFA’s problems will inspire the rest of us to reinvigorate the movement, or maybe they’ll get so bad that the organization itself will decide they need to start cleaning house from within. In the meantime, I’m glad to see the rest of the fat internet - BFB, Fatshionista, Fat Fu and others – working their hardest to pick up the slack.
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The criticisms of my students would serve as a good warning to visitors of Seeworthy: she talks too fast, she's too hard on us, she assigns too much work, and you have to be a dyke to get a good grade.
In other words, I'm a big, fat, queer, feminist meanie, and I am totally out to get you. Graaagh!
I’ve often wondered about NAAFA’s web site. Surely someone there knows a fat-accepting web designer with mad skillz. Most webhosts will let you install a site manager/builder like Joomla for free, and you can build a pretty damn good and functional and accessible web site with it - a human-rights activist friend who had only basic skills set up a professional-looking campaign site with it in a week.
Thanks for this, Sheana — I was going to write something similar, but now I can just link to you.
It is unbeLIEVably ridiculous that their website is so out of date. The fact that the “news” on their front page is from 2004 is just mortifying to me, as a fat activist. This is the public face of the movement? A group that appears not to have read the news in three years?
All right, I’d better go blog this instead of ranting here.
Oh, god, I can’t believe I just used two smileys in one comment. I usually try to use them more sparingly than that, if at all. Blech.
Morrie, I think at least part of the problem is that many of the members of the board, at least, are what I suppose you’d term of the “old guard” of fat activism, and they just aren’t aware that there *needs* to be a change in the technology of the site. While Joomla is a fantastic CMS, I honestly think that it must be beyond the capabilities of the folks who put together the NAAFA site. As for recruiting new designers, who knows - it may be that they’re unwilling to compensate for time, or it just hadn’t occurred to them, or there’s too much bureaucracy for any prospective designers to wade through in order to make progress.
Kate, thanks for the link, and your fantastic post! You put a lot of what I was trying to say very well, and with much more gusto than I was able! I think you really hit the bullseye when you said that the org is sort of an embarrassment to folks right now. Some of the problems with their PR strategies aren’t just aesthetic, they show a plain lack of commonsense.
And no worries about the smilies - I’m probably the worst smiley offender I know!
Excuse my long-windedness ahead of time, as I’ve been longing to have this conversation for some time now…and thanks in advance for starting it.
Deconstructing NAAFA is so complicated I often get lost when I try. It was started in the spirit of activism, but didn’t get moving until the social element really took over because it seems fat people were so desperate for social solace. It has obviously never done well to organize with the LGBTQ community or be very inclusive because it has been organized around compulsory heterosexuality.
Membership, from what I gather and what I’ve been told, consists mostly of generations older or much older than us. When I first found out about NAAFA I was truly startled it didn’t have any university chapters…what activist group doesn’t have university chapters or affiliates? I have also been continually perturbed that the site lingers in 2004 and that there are more calls to action in the Fat Studies group, Fatshionista, or Fat Blogs than in the Fat Activist Task Force, which is bone dry. Other groups have informative action e-mails with simple links to write your officials and much more. Such a lack of organizing and support from a national organization is disappointing to say the least…yet it’s THE national organization.
Most of the time I feel that, while it’s entirely necessary to have a place to socialize, NAAFA serves as more of a social group than a political group. And I want a POLITICAL group, a civil rights group that takes on these issues seriously and swiftly. It’s sad when fat bloggers and individuals are more political than a national civil rights organization. That’s a huge part of the reason I get frustrated, even though I love fat bloggers and grassroots fatties. Maybe the reason for the social emphasis historically is recruitment, but that’s not working. Even so, I want fatties who want to fight about it.
I’ll stop there because it’s late and my thoughts are getting blurry. BStu commented on Kate Harding’s blog that he thinks NAAFA is irreparable…and I wonder all the time if that’s true. Maybe we should shake the foundation. And if the foundation won’t shake, we build our own foundation…hell, we are already here. Movers-and-shakers, whaddaya say?
Beyond my personal reasons for wanting nothing to do with NAAFA, there are literally decades worth of infighting that are in play. I don’t even really know most of the dirt, but having been active online with fat acceptance for over 10 years, I know enough to know that there is a LOT of dirt and bad feelings that have prevented NAAFA from moving forward for going on 20 years. Its frankly tragic because there was a moment of opportunity that I think came and went in the late 90’s to bring fat acceptance to the next level. I think the blog movement that is blossoming right now is maybe the first step at belatedly realizing that potential, but so much more needs to be done that I’m not sure it can be done from NAAFA’s masthead anymore. Really, its more an isolated group of activists doing really great stuff more than it is an organization with any kind of infrastructure. It just doesn’t exist enough to do the things it needs to right now. I really suspect that it’d be easy to do those things separate from NAAFA than to try to do them with NAAFA.
BStu, I really appreciate your thoughts. I am a relative newcomer to fat-acceptance, but I have heard of and possibly seen first hand some such bickering, resentment, and whatnot. I love the grassroots activists and bloggers we have right now. I have never felt more connected and empowered by the movement and it is fabulous. But I still long for a central organization with direction and a plan of action…and this conversation has started to convince me that NAAFA will never be that. However, I am attending part of the NAAFA conference next month, and I am all kinds of interested to see what the climate is like in person en mass. Let’s just say I have low expectations.
By all accounts, the annual conference is still one of the really good things NAAFA does, so I hope its a productive experience for you. I wouldn’t be too discouraged at all.
I just wanted to mention, your link in the Political section doesn’t point to NAAFA, it points back to your own site.
I think it’s instructive to remember that NAAFA has been around almost 40 years now, and like others have mentioned, is run by much older folks. In the world they know, transsexuals are “celebrity freak shows” like Renee Richards and Jayne County, not anyone they’d encounter on a regular basis. And the fact that they don’t update their Web site regularly with news items speaks volumes. It’s not as if they don’t have technically adept people in their ranks who would be happy to do it for them, if only they were asked.
I remember when I lived in the Bay Area I never got to any of their events because they were always in the suburbs and you had to drive to get there, and I didn’t have a car (this was in the pre-Flexcar era). It’s like the basic assumption was of a certain socioeconomic class, and they didn’t want anyone around who was too scruffy. So even though I’m Caucasian and heterosexual and monogamous, even I felt left out!
So if they don’t want to enter the 21st century, and they don’t want to hand the reins over to anyone who has, maybe someone else needs to take up where they left off.
Hey Meowser, thanks for the tip about the link! It should be all fixed now.
Your comments are pretty much spot-on, though I’d argue that the org being 40 years old is no excuse for them to still be ignorant of these important issues, or at least remain silent on them (which I know isn’t what you were saying… I’m just continuing on that). There was a pretty alarming instance of ignorance of trans issues on the fat studies list not too long ago - pretty much your textbook example of some of the tragic cluelenessness of the old guard.
The problem, and what I don’t really understand, is why it hasn’t gotten any better. I personally know people who at least have a vague (if not good) knowledge of trans politics and transfeminism who are also NAAFA members, and there are plenty of young-ish folks in NAAFA. So why are things so stale, still?
To be fair to them, though, it’s hard to get it “right.” I’d be scared to death to start my own SA organization, because I know I’m going to do or say something that’s going to offend someone or make them feel left out. Like, when I prepared the brochure I forgot to include a woman with a shaved head, and who the fuck do I think I am to be so coif-centric? And that would make me want to die. So I’d rather leave it to people who are good at being totally seamless. When they started out, they didn’t have to concern themselves with such matters, because in 1969 even being gay meant you were shunted to the margins and moreoever, that you expected to be.
Oh, I definitely agree that it’s hard to get it 100% right - I’d venture it’s nearly impossible. NAAFA’s problem, failing that, is that they can’t just acknowledge that, hey, they messed up. A lot. I know I, and lot of folks, would have a whole lot more hope for NAAFA if they did just come out and admit their mistakes and say how they’re going to try to fix them.
And actually, I’d disagree that they’ve devolved. I’ve read their first few newsletters from the early 70’s, as well as correspondence between them and members of some pretty radical fat feminist groups, and I’d say they were closer to going in the right direction back in the 70’s than they are now. At least back then we had the Fat Underground, a pretty formidable force that NAAFA had to reckon with. Now, they’re accountable to precisely nobody.
Oh, and BTW, Sheana, thanks for fixing that link. Did you know it said the following in the upper right hand corner?
The New York Times - November 1992
So those aren’t even the words of NAAFA itself. They are from a NYT article that is 15 years old!
Hey Meowser,
Yup, I did see that - I noted in my entry that “Whether the article was written by a NAAFA member, or just featured on the website as an example of fat-positive rhetoric, it shows NAAFA’s lack of commitment, not only to fighting oppression in its many forms, but to diversity itself.” I’m not so sure it *wasn’t* written by a NAAFA member - it could have been someone from the org writing in the Times. Either way, it says volumes about the group that they chose it as a “good” article for the site.
Would it be bad of me to comment in This Old Post to remind folks that this is still an issue? I sure hope not.
Yeah, Paul, I’m gonna go with “hell no it wouldn’t be bad” on that one. I’ve thought to email, but it’s been made fairly abundantly clear that if I’m not a member of NAAFA, my opinion of NAAFA is not valid.
Oh well.