anti-fatness is not just body shaming.

anti-fatness is discrimination. anti-fatness is having next to no legal protections for being discriminated against. anti-fatness is being denied housing, jobs, receiving less pay and promotions (legally) because of your size. anti-fatness is being denied access to clothing, seating, transportation, and other human rights because infrastructure has been designed to exclude you. anti-fatness is less likelihood of receiving a fair trial. anti-fatness is dehumanization. anti-fatness is being denied necessary surgeries, but not surgery that amputates the digestive tract with the intent to starve and shrink you (it doesn’t work either). anti-fatness is mutilation. anti-fatness is being subject to torture devices that bolt your mouth shut. anti-fatness is being told by close friends, family, and professionals that you are better off living with an eating disorder or other life-threatening illness. anti-fatness sells you starvation as a guaranteed opt-out of oppression, but doesn’t tell you that bodies will always regain weight to survive. anti-fatness blames and punishes you for failing at an achievement that is quite literally impossible. anti-fatness is a $90 billion dollar industry. anti-fatness is being denied gender-affirming care. anti-fatness is being barred from in vitro fertilization and reproductive healthcare. anti-fatness is being barred from adopting children. anti-fatness is being removed from your loving parents because they couldn’t make you thin. anti-fatness is intentionally starving your own baby so they won’t get fat. anti-fatness is disproportionately high suicide rates. anti-fatness is being killed at the hands of medical neglect and mistreatment. anti-fatness is the world preferring a dead body over a fat one.

“Fat Chance” Dance Group, Berkeley, CA 1979, photo by Cathy Cade via leslielohman.org

hi! i know you don't read books about identity anymore, but as a fat nonbinary person who doesn't fit into transmasculine or "woman aligned nonbinary" boxes but wants to read both more experiences of fat nonbinary people who are neither men or women (especially those who choose to be fat), and also wants to read more about fat transfeminine experiences because that experience tends to be sorely missing from the world (especially fat transfeminine people who CHOOSE to be fat), do you have any books centering fat nonbinary "not transmasculine or transfeminine" experiences, especially those of people who got fat out of choice to be fat, and fat nonbinary or (for lack of a better term, as i think it's personally reductive) binary transfeminine experiences for fat transfems who choose to get fat? sorry if this is worded weird, i have self admitted problems with word salad, cluttered speech, and circumstantiality from (self diagnosed) schizo-ocd, and i struggle to sound coherent at times, but personally i think that makes my fiction writing and poetry writing more fun so :\. planning to buy your poetry collections as well, i love poetry! thank you for tolerating this ask!

hello! no worries, I'm the same way for similar reasons wrt long and digressive writing, i'm really enjoy it and find it similarly generative. regarding transfem / non-aligned ppl who choose to be/stay fat, I can certainly try, though these narratives are still so heavily erased from collective conversations around fatness - which center white, cis, perisex, abled women - and ofc around trans subjectivity.

Mel Baggs z"l was fat and genderless [x] [x] [I discuss/analyse hir work here.]

Gretchen Felker-Martin writes transfem (body) horror, erotica, and other mostly-speculative work that routinely centers fatness.

Caleb Luna, who wrote REVENGE BODY and is also a scholar.

Da'Shaun Harrison, Belly of the Beast, as well as their website, where they write about being Black, fat, and non-/anti-/ante-binary.

Evelyn Berry, who I'm friendly with, wrote Grief Slut and has lots of other publications.

here are the ones that came to mind for me, though as i re-read, i realize i may (?) have misinterpreted your question –– I'm not sure one way or the other whether or not these authors chose to get fat, but i can say with certainty that they all choose not to deliberately lose weight/diet and embrace, in a number of ways, a liberatory fat politic.

i hope this helps! (and thank you for the kind words re: my work!!!)

hey these are some tips for some of the little details in drawing fat folks that some people might not know!

everyone has fat on their bodies so its a worthwhile skill to have, but most art tutorials leave it out. heres some other good tips from artists!!

it's okay to be fat and like to eat. it's okay to be fat and enjoy cooking, baking, grilling, canning, drying or preparing foods. it's okay to be fat and work a restaurant or bakery and enjoy what you do. it's okay to be fat and not ashamed of eating in public. it's okay to be fat, but it's especially okay to be fat and have a positive relationship with food. people are supposed to enjoy eating, it's where we get our energy from, it's a very positive and nourishing experience for our bodies, it's okay if it's positive and nourishing to your mental health, too. fat people are allowed to eat, and we're allowed to enjoy doing it, too.

Please, please be considerate of your fat friends' needs and limitations. Fat bodies are heavy to carry around. I move about the world slower than my thin peers, and I've often had to choose between pushing myself to keep a pace that takes absolutely all my energy, or being left behind, when walking in a group. I don't always feel safe to ask that everyone walk slower, because there's a prevalent idea in society that fat people need to exert themselves as much as possible at all times in the service of weight loss, and that we never "really" need rest, therefore it's a good thing whenever we're exhausted. Fat people and thin people alike are taught that fatness is a flaw, one that fat people ourselves are to blame for, so we're not entitled to any accommodation or consideration. A friend of mine who is fat recently told me about a dinner party she went to where the chairs were far too small for her and she was sitting very uncomfortably. After the meal she politely suggested moving the party to the couch, but the others didn't want to. She spent another couple of hours in unnecessary pain, and didn't dare tell them about it. I love my thin friends, but some of them just don't realize that I weigh probably twice as much as them, and yet I balance it all on the same size feet and carry it on about the same size bones. I'm like if they had a whole other them to carry around at all times. Why would that not have an impact on how I function? Please - take us into consideration when we're part of activities. Ask us which activities work and which don't. Adjust the pace so no one has to be dry heaving and sweating barrels on what's supposed to be a casual walk. Make sure venues have seating that fits us. Make it safe for us to speak up if we need something. When we do, don't treat us like we're the problem. Finally: yes, we have heard of losing weight. Even those of us who might (and many never will, whether you like it or not), won't do it on a moment's notice. If your response to "fat people deserve accommodations" is "what if they weren't fat though", you're playing a fantasy game. It's pointless. We are fat and we are here and we do partake in society. Work with that.

ohhhhh my god u made your greedy rich villain fat? should we tell everyone? should we throw a party? should we invite jk rowling

Turning reblogs off until the onceler version of this post dies out. Please stop joking around on a post criticizing fatphobia

Just thought people may enjoy this :)

From the zine “Fat Is Beautiful” by Crystal Hartman

Thing is, I'm not just anti-fatphobia as in "I don't want people to be mean to fat people"

I am pro fat liberation as in "I want to dismantle the systemic biases against fat people and the diet culture and medical industrial complex that feeds into the very real systemic oppression that fat people face"

I don't see fatphobia as a mere interpersonal issue where if you are being nice to fat people or saying things in a polite way to them you're automatically free of fatphobia. I see it as essential to challenge every bit of diet culture myth that we might encounter and break the unscientific ideas of "health" as defines by weight, fat, calories, bmi, and other nonsense. I see it as essential to view fatphobia as the political issue it is and take it seriously as such, and to unlearn and help others unlearn oppressive baseless ideas we have assumed to be true and natural.

the fact that fat people are made to feel bad about everything down to how loud or hard they are breathing says a lot about this society

fat white person compares body shaming to racism. more at 12

This ask tells me you don’t believe that systemic fatphobia is a real issue. It goes so, so much deeper than body shaming. I don’t compare fatphobia to homophobia, racism, etc to say that they are the same, they’re not, although they absolutely do intersect - I compare it to those things because it’s discrimination and we should treat it as such. people should be called out on it like they should with any other ism.

Although I would never equate the two, fatphobia is a form of anti-Blackness. Its roots are in white supremacy. The ideal thin body was constructed as a marker of Whiteness and ‘purity’ before any of this was ever made to be about health. Read Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings. Read Belly of The Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da’Shaun L. Harrison.

This is the only ask like this I will answer. I’m not interested in playing oppression olympics.

Your fat body is not a placeholder for a "better" you. It IS you. And you deserve love and respect NOW.

fat people deserve to be admired

fat people deserve to be loved

fat people deserve to feel safe

fat people deserve to be protected

romanticise your body

your trans body

your disabled body

your fat body

everything about yourself that you've been told to hate

love yourself in spite of it

the way you exist is amazing

being fat is hard because you don’t just run into inaccessibility that affects only you. for example, if i’m bigger than a car seat is built for, then i inconvenience those sitting next to me. if i’m bigger than a room is built for, i encroach on others space. it makes the fat person feel like it’s a personal fault, and skinny people are often not kind to fat folks who take up space. i want to make this clear: it is Not the fat persons fault AND i understand the strain and shame it can cause fat people. this world is built to exclude fat people. fitting of my favorite phrase inspired by the social model of disability; it’s not the fat persons fault, it’s the worlds fault.