Fatties Brainstorming
Last Thursday, Kell Brigand over at Disturbing Brew posted “Fat Activism: A Call for Brainstorming. This is an excellent idea, and something that has been so needed in fat activism communities - something which, I’m happy to say, is already happening in various online communities, but which should definitely extend to the blogs. I think a lot of good came out of Paul’s survey on fat orgs, and there’s a lot to build off of there. Kell says
If this were a planning meeting, I’d have “Brainstorming” on the agenda. You know, where people throw out ideas without worrying about whether they’re good or not. It seems one reason fat activism is stalemated is that we’re stuck thinking solely in terms of the web. So, here follows what I hope will be one of many Brainstorming sessions here and on other blogs and in conversations, and maybe soon even in real, live meetings.
Excellent idea. And speaking of live meetings, here’s my offer: this spring, in San Diego, I’ll host a fat think tank. I don’t know many details, yet, but I’d invite folks from all over Southern California and the southwest - Nevada, Arizona - to come talk. Let’s talk about what fat activism is doing right, what it can do better, what we want it to be, and, most importantly, how we can make it become that. A few folk are working on a media kit currently, and I’ve volunteered to help with that. It’s a huge first step, looking at how we educate the media, helping them to deconstruct the stereotypes they’ve been perpetuating about fat people and learn better, more accurate language to talk about us, our issues and our community. This is the kind of brainstorming that needs to happen, and I want to help it happen. I’ll post more on the spring fat think tank here in San Diego as things simmer along. In the meantime, I encourage other fat folks to get out there, post to Craigslist and any other community you’re on, and organize real live meetings.
Kell posted some excellent real-world fat activism ideas. Here are mine - they may not necessarily all be things that only involve off-line work, but they’re all things that MUST also involve off-line work.
- Fat activist groups being established on college campuses. Up to now, I think the activism of youth hasn’t been appreciated, but so many historical social justice movements have been carried along, at least in part, by their youngest members - youth in college and even high school. I’d love to see fat students organizing on their campuses, and their local fat communities supporting them.
- Coalitions need to be established with other social justice movements. Our movement needs to learn from other movements - why have feminism, civil rights, environmentalism and queer rights made such inroads over the past forty years, yet the progress of fat lib has been much slower? Recognize the connections. If we work with other groups, we can help make things better, not just for fat people, but for all oppressed people. This doesn’t mean every single person needs to know everything about every SJ movement, but we need to have people working at coalitions, educating themselves, and looking at the way privilege works - even in our own community.
- We need a global movement. We just do. Fat oppression does not just affect straight white women in America. How many fat activists out of the U.S. can you name? How much do you know about the history of fat lib in England? Have you ever spoken with someone about what it’s like to be a fat college student in South Korea? We need to get in touch with the international fat activist community - through conferences and think tanks (come to San Diego!) here in the U.S., events elsewhere in the world, and (what’s easiest for some of us) online interaction. Until we do this, our understanding of fat oppression - and our ability to fight it - will always be limited.
- Marianne posted about this awhile back, and at the time I didn’t entirely get behind it - and then I realized it was me still perpetuating fat oppression (yeah, even against myself). We need to get fat people together in public. Go bowling, volunteer at a shelter, go to a baseball game. Be visible, and don’t fucking be ashamed to eat while you’re in public. People who aren’t fat are allowed to socialize and eat - why the hell aren’t we? So if you hear about a fat event, go. It’s supporting your community. Even if you hate bowling, or you know nothing about baseball.
As long as you’re not supporting the Yankees.
So those are some of my ideas. 75% political, 25% personal… but then, the personal is political. We need to get organized. Scratch that, we are getting organized.
What are your ideas?
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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’d note that while feminism, civil rights, GLBT rights, and environmentalism has made a lot more progress than fat lib in that last 40 years, all of those movements existed past the last 40 years. Fat rights has pretty much only existed for about 40 years. I think the movement’s maturity plays a large role in the slower and often stunted progress we’ve seen. This, of course, isn’t to say that there isn’t much we can learn from other social justice groups now that we shouldn’t build coalitions with such groups. Just, we also need to remember that there were people fighting for these other causes for a very long time before they saw the progress of the last 40 years. While we should see their work as a model for our own, we can’t necessarily measure ourselves against where they are now.
I do think college outreach needs to be expanded. When I was in college, fat acceptance community basically shut me out. All activism meetings were held far away from the colleges in Boston. Even when they held a national convention in Boston, it was actually well out of reach out of town. Its not just what students do on college campuses, but what student activists can do for the movement when they graduate. This is a largely untapped resource that we need to develop to take the movement to the next level. I think there are now more than a few college groups which can be used as a template for expansion to other schools. Ultimately, they need to be more than isolated campus groups and they’ll need an infrastructure to plan and act on a national scale. I don’t have many answers on how to do that, but I guess that’s what brainstorming will ultimately be for.
I’m delighted to see new and improved approaches to fat activism being discussed here, at BFB, and other FA sites.
I think I’m older than many of you posting on these sites (55 yrs) and was involved in all the major human rights / social justice movements of the 60s and 70s (they continued, I burned out). Since recently becoming seriously interested in being a fat activist, I’ve asked myself what this effort does and does not have in common with the movements of the past. I think the most important differences are these:
1) There is no fat community — I realize that NAAFA and the many online sites have a loyal, active following of thousands around the world. But there is no hard and fast constituency in the same way that people of color, women and gays have already-defined communities of people who believe in the rightness of their own liberation.
Which leads me to…
2) Most fat people hate fat — They hate it in themselves, they hate it in others, they buy into all the anti-fat and pro-diet propaganda. It’s very hard to organize people who don’t believe in their own cause — indeed, are convinced that those who defend fat are sick, crazy, and at the very least, in denial about our “problem.”
3) We have no natural allies, no highly visible & charismatic leaders, no professional lobbyists — Please, I mean NO disrespect to those who have been working diligently on this issue for many years. But I know of no other movement that would take fat acceptance seriously and fold it in with their own. Many of our own friends and relatives aren’t behind us. And we have no equivalent of an Al Gore, a Gloria Steinem, etc. It’s very difficult to make much headway when you’re working without a net, and a network.
4) Anti-fat attitudes permeate every aspect of culture in most of the world and have done so for hundreds of years — I’ve always been mindful of anti-fat messages and images in film, TV, and daily life as a whole, but now that I’ve had my FA epiphany, I see it all the more, everywhere, all the time. It’s in the air!
Having listed these dreary obstacles, I hasten to add that I firmly believe fat acceptance is a viable concept and offers many important messages, both to fat people and the larger world. I think the brainstorming ideas currently posited here and on other fat sites are excellent. I appreciate that progress has already been made and there are further inroads to come. But there’s no escaping the fact that certain core ideas about fat — it’s ugly, it’s unhealthy, fat people are lazy & self indulgent, diets work — are virtually universally accepted as gospel and that’s a tough nut to crack.
I’ll close by saying that so far, my brief and limited activism has been limited to speaking out online. But as someone with a strong background in activism and organizing, as well as a 30 year career as a writer and communications consultant, I’m ready, willing and able to put my skill and experience to further work. For a variety of reasons, I very rarely leave my apartment — but thanks to email, the Internet, the telephone and the post office, I have many ways to communicate, participate and contribute. I’ll keep reading and blogging and looking for ways to better do my part. If there are folks out there working on definite projects you think I could be useful in, please let me know.
I 150% agree that we need proliferation through campus groups…I always wondered why that wasn’t more widespread. But I hear the people now organizing Size Matters, the incredible group you started, are urging others to use the Size Matters name. I am aware of several people who want to start campus groups, and I really hope that mobilization happens.
All your ideas are fabu. I love that these conversations are being started and the mobilization that is going on. Also, thanks for giving MAFRAD a shout out on BFB. I am grateful to have such brilliant minds involved.