NAAFA anybody?
So I know, in light of last year’s criticisms, it probably seemed as if there was no way, ever, hell no, that I’d go to a NAAFA conference. And of course, there are things from last year that I still wouldn’t attend… I won’t be going to a fashion show, or any of the dating or FA workshops, or the Grand Ball. I saw the schedule and was pretty sure that, again, I woudn’t be attending altogether. But then I saw this workshop listed:
Introduction of Fat Politics, by Marilyn Wann
And I thought, what the hell, why not propose an Advanced Fat Politics? Or a fat media advocacy session? Or a “rethinking NAAFA” workshop? Or something on radical fat feminism? But of course, I’m a) too poor for the registration fees, and b) not willing to go it alone. I’ve already got a couple of rad fatties on board (some coming from pretty far to do something), but I’d like to get a good gaggle of people who can commit to such a shindig.
So, open invite: if I’ll go through the motions of proposing a session (or multiple sessions), who would be down for helping construct/co-lead a session/sessions? I understand that most folks still have reservations (or EXTREME DISLIKE, HEY) for NAAFA, and I totally respect if you’d rather not be associated with the org. I figured, though, if we could get some folks together, we might catalyze some kind of… wake up.
And, since we’re talking about NAAFA and the last round of criticisms: I’ve gotten sporadic comments/emails about how, after that big hullabaloo about how the website would be fixed, essentially nothing happened. I wish I could tell you guys what’s up, but from the one time I emailed about it I get the impression that the one person who was going to do it had stuff going on, and they didn’t/wouldn’t get somebody else. I’ll leave my comments about their website/public image to that, I think, but suffice to say: don’t ask me about it, because I don’t know. Sorry!
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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 really don’t have the cash to take a trip out to L.A. this summer (and hopefully I’ll be making some cash by teaching a class), but otherwise I’d be SO SO SO down.
I honestly had a great time when I did my workshop last year and everyone I ended up meeting/hanging out with was definitely activist oriented, which made for a good experience. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help from here.
Hi!
I’ve been a member for over 20 years, and have served on the board for 2. I decided to join the board after all those years because people like Marilyn Wann convinced me that the board truly wanted to make NAAFA a REAL civil rights organization.
I soooo want activists to come (back) to NAAFA! Right now, we’re working really hard on passing the fat rights bill here in Massachusetts. We’re putting a lot of time and money into it…money mainly earned from the convention.
There is a HUGELY important hearing on March 25 at 2 p.m. at the State House in Boston. People are coming from all over the country. Please come if you can. If you can’t, and you live in MA, please contact your legislators. Go to naafa.org for more info.
This fight represents one of the most important things NAAFA can do. The board’s number one job has been to make our focus to fight discrimination. We’re moving the social stuff to the back burner. We have the same goals as you! We hope that we can grow the organization and make it easier for those with less disposable income to participate.
About the website…We are all volunteer. I do what I can (such as the bill). I’m clueless about websites, though. It has fallen to our chair to do the work on top of his full time job. It has turned out to be a lot more complex than he originally thought.
So….please check us out again! I think you’ll find that we’re changing. NAAFA has almost 40 years of history and can be found in press rolodexes all over the world. This gives us a leg up. We’re working to re-invent NAAFA into the civil rights organization it should be, and that fat people need.
Thanks for listening,
Jeanne Toombs
NAAFA Board of Directors
Withoutscene, I wish you could come! I’ll definitely get in touch with you if there’s enough interest.
And Jeanne, thanks for stopping by. I wish I could say I was more optimistic, but after the whole craptastic response many bloggers got over the summer, I (like a lot of younger fat activists, I imagine) am incredibly disillusioned in regards to NAAFA. A part of that has to do with some pretty misogynist/heterocentric program names/descriptions from last year (if not programming itself), and part of it has to do with a pretty offensive, heterosexist, incredibly privileged email exchange I had with someone from NAAFA last year in response to this event. So, at least for me, that’s where a large part of the general disdain comes from. For my part, I don’t imagine I’d join NAAFA as a member, and would probably only attend the conference for my panel (I don’t really need an “intro” to fat politics, and, at least last year, nothing else seemed relevant to me), but I do hope to get more engaged in activism with COFRA… I think it’s great that there are multiple fat lib/fat activist/fat rights organizations now, and I’m so glad to see people being interested in the many different organizations. Woo!
Hi Sheana,
Would you be willing to email me privately and let me know what happened, and who was rude to you? I sincerely want to make things different!
Thanks, Jeanne
I’m sorry if I’m coming off as really dumb (or nosey) but I’m relatively new to fat acceptance so I’m confused about the first paragraph of this post.
I thought most of the fat acceptance blogs supported NAAFA? Was this a bad assumption to make on my part?
Hey, Sheana.
As the Workshop Coordinator for the 2008 NAAFA Convention, I can assure you that I’ve been working quite hard to solicit a variety of workshops. I’m teaching a workshop on anger and activism, plus I’ve secured two teachers for a workshop on fat queerness/queer fatness. I’m also working with folks to organize activism events and youth- and diversity-based workshops *and* have someone who tentatively plans on teaching a pro-diversity workshop. I thought you and your reader might like to know.
If you or others would like to offer to teach workshops on any of the fabulous topics you discuss above, please let me know. I publicized a few calls for workshops and have done a lot of individual soliciting. I always welcome workshop ideas and, as a radical, queer feminist myself, would never turn down a workshop proposal regarding radical activism, etc.
Oops! I hate typos! In my post above, I meant to say “you and your readerSHIP”…
Des, if I may jump in here… It wouldn’t be fair to say that most fat blogs don’t support NAAFA. I do think it’s safe to say we all support fat rights. However, there are a lot of people who find NAAFA problematic in many ways. There was some discussion about it here on Sheana’s blog not quite a year ago. Some of that discussion involved whether people felt they should put their effort into trying to change NAAFA or whether people should start from scratch and start a new organization. And I believe that’s where COFRA comes in. Some people were/are worried that a new org will just take away from NAAFA, but others believe that having more than one org will be productive and strengthen the movement. There’s really not one viewpoint. I think what it comes down to is that everyone just really wants the best for the movement and for fat people and people of all sizes. Hopefully that fills you in a little bit.
I’ll be there and I would love to help, especially on a fat feminism event. I wouldn’t have much to say about media advocacy.
I think I’m not as critical of NAAFA as some people. Maybe because I came into the organization back when the NAAFA Feminist Caucus was still running their own women’s conferences. Those were the first fat-activist conferences I went to and I thought they were great.
From here it looks as if NOLOSE has more or less taken over most of the “women’s conference” energy in the fat community. Which is fine, and they’ve gone farther into queer/radical territory than NAAFA’s caucus did, which is good.