A new friend, who generally has good, thoughtful politics and is actively engaged in social justice work, just delivered a lengthy monologue about how disgusting it is to be fat or, if you're not fat, "have to look at fat people."

It's not surprising, but it's still a bummer.

I am forever fascinated by the ways in which folks want to assign partisanship to anti-fatness. When fat people say it's everywhere, we're not lying. https://medium.com/@thefatshadow/maralard-ss-and-the-lefts-fat-problem-4dc57c498252

Okay, update!

For the purposes of this thread, I'm gonna call the new friend Mary, and the friend who introduced us will be called Ann.

Like Mary, Ann is super invested in social justice work, and generally has good, thoughtful politics. Yesterday, Ann called me to defend Mary.

(Note: all of this is being posted with permission--we've talked it out and we're good, and Ann is on board with using our conversation as a more public example.)

The crux of Ann's argument is one I hear from straight size people (people who don't wear plus sizes) a lot when they're faced with anti-fatness.

The next tweet is gonna be a poll, because I'm curious as to how this one lands with you all, and I'd love a perception check.

The crux of Ann's defense was this: "You have to understand that she's hurting. She's working through her own body stuff. It isn't about you."

So, a quick poll--how do arguments like that land with you, dreamboats?

[Please don't respond in comments! Trying to get a clean read.]

Of course, there's no right or wrong answer to a question like this. Nothing *has to* bother you.

But conversations like this are shaped by dynamics of power & privilege. They can challenge those dynamics or they can uphold them. This one upholds them.

Here's why "it's not about you" isn't a helpful response to fat folks talking about anti-fatness:

1. It talks over fat people about our own experiences, and implicitly denies their validity. The idea here is that a fat person who challenges anti-fatness is just self-centered.

2. Many, many, many people who hurt other people have been hurt themselves. In interpersonal relationships, we call it the cycle of abuse. But broadly speaking, *having been hurt ourselves* doesn't justify or excuse *hurting other people.*

3. Ann's reaction here is rooted in fragility. In her words, she felt immediately compelled to defend a new thin person without checking in with the fat person she's known for years. It did not cross her mind that Mary & I might have experienced that conversation differently.

4. It's inaccurate! Mary wasn't asking for support in working through her bad body image or old trauma. She was talking at length about how disgusted she was at having to look at fat bodies.

But, because of Ann's allegiance to thinness, that was inconceivable to her.

5. It centers thinness at the direct expense of a fat person's experience. The expectation here is that a thin person's bias (often coupled with internal pain) should reliably take precedence over a fat person's dignity.

6. It misappropriates key social justice concepts. Ann kept talking about Mary's "internalized" anti-fatness.

If I can leave you with one thing, my darlings, it is that *people with privilege do not experience internalized oppression.* That's just *being oppressive.*

I know that this gets tricky around body image stuff. Because yes, regardless of size, all of us are made to feel terrible about our bodies. That's rooted in a lot of stuff, including anti-Blackness, ableism, ageism, capitalism and misogyny.

But *feeling internally badly about your body as a thin person* is fundamentally different from being *externally* excluded from health care, employment, interpersonal relationships, visibility, housing, etc, just because of *someone else's judgment of your body.*

The term internalized oppression was *specifically coined* to describe the ways in which people who are on the down side of power enact horizontal hostility, strive to gain privilege, and distance ourselves from our own communities.

It is *defined* by being marginalized.

Of course people who don't wear plus sizes feel badly about their bodies. It happens every day.

But describing that as internalized anti-fatness, especially when faced with accountability from a fat person, stakes a claim to that fat person's oppression in order to silence them.

Not-fat people reading this thread:

I know that it'll be tempting to distance yourself from Mary and Ann both (through shock, anger, disgust, etc).

I'd ask you to resist that impulse. >>

Many fat people have had interactions like these--and many of those have been with thin people who might well express dismay at hearing this broken down from a fat person's perspective, but wouldn't necessarily spot it happening on their own. >>

This is so prevalent that I often hear from fat readers that if they cut out all the anti-fat people in their lives, they wouldn't have anyone left.

Those aren't malicious people. They aren't necessarily villains. But they do end up hurting fat people. Frequently. >>

So, instead of trying to find "bad" thin people and distance yourself from them, sit with what you're learning.

Find where anti-fatness lies within you, your friends, your family. Try to locate it in your life. It's there. And you can't uproot it if you can't find it.