This is a workshop I gave at the Finding Our Roots Conference this summer at DePaul University in Chicago. The theme for the conference was "solidarity", so I prepared a discussion on the intersection between the oppression fat folks face and people with disabilities face as well. Here it is:
My name is Gus Allis. My pronouns are she/her. I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and I have for the past 12 years. I’m a fat femme queer. I’m going to be talking about how fatphobia and ableism interact in a couple of different settings. While I obviously know what I’m talking about from personal experience regarding fatphobia, I am able bodied. That means that sometimes I am going to be speaking about experiences I have never had. This is a difficult thing for me to do, but I think it’s an important connection to study and I’m going to do my best. If I say something busted and ableist, I want to be called on it. I want that kind of environment for this workshop, one of open exchange and communication.
Furthermore, this is your official trigger warning for talk about ableism, fatphobia, cancer, eating disorders, and a couple of references to police brutality.
I. fatphobia and ableism in the non-radical world
I want to talk about fatphobia and ableism in the non-radical world first, because it’s so simple and easy to debunk. A lot of times, our society sees a dichotomy between the “good fatties” and the “bad fatties”. The good fatties, more often than not, look like me. I’m fat, but I’m not “death fat”, to borrow a phrase from the fat pride movement. I can do things that normative culture values. I can work. I can run, ride my bike, and am actually an athlete. I’m a swimmer and I swim multiple hours every day. All of these things make people Michelle Obama, and others find me more acceptable than my death fat comrades.
A lot of fatties, myself included, are guilty of throwing people with disabilities, fat or otherwise, under the bus while they’re defending themselves against fat hate. It’s not an uncommon thing to hear someone say something fatphobic, either online or in real life, and for ten fatties to immediately respond with something akin to, “I am plenty healthy! I’m a vegetarian and I walk 10 miles a day! I can climb 6 flights of stairs and I ride my bike everywhere! Just because I’m fat doesn’t mean I can’t do things!” I know this response by heart, because, in the past, it’s one I’ve used.
Obviously, this is fucked up and steeped in ableism. We as anarchists know that cornerstone of ableism is an unwavering, undying devotion to capitalism. Fat folks and people with disabilities are seen as lazy and worthless in a capitalist society. They aren’t able to produce capital, so they are valued less than people who can.
II. Anarchism and fathphobia and ableism
It’s easy for us, as radicals, to dismiss these claims out of hand. We don’t give a shit about production of capital, our wholes lives are dedicated against that very value. So clearly, anarchists would be less fatphobic and ableist, right?
Not exactly.
I became an anarchist in May of 2009, after a particularly volatile Bash Back conference on this very campus. I became bulimic in May of 2009, three days after Bash Back ended. That’s right. I somehow survived a childhood in Orange County California, four years of middle school, high school dances, 10 years of competitive swimming, a fatphobic mother, and a couple of abusive relationships all without developing an eating disorder. I spend a weekend with the first real anarchists I’ve ever met, and three days later I start puking.
We are just as concerned with ability as everyone else. It’s not production that we stress, it’s destruction. We care deeply about peoples’ abilities in the streets, during actions and protests. We want people who can run, who can throw bricks, who can win a chase against a cop. And, especially in the queer anarchist community, we want people we can fuck. A lot of times, people that look like me, people with disabilities, and lots of other folks, don’t fit that criteria of what a good anarchist can do.
Can we just talk about black blocs for a second, too? I think this is the perfect example of how the anarchist movement just pretends that different bodies just don’t exist. What is the purpose of masking up, wearing all black, wearing the same god damn black hoodie we swear we stole and didn’t buy at American apparel? It’s to create anonymity, right? The theory being that with all of ourselves covered in the same uniform, obviously we will be indistinguisbale from each other and it will be harder to tell which one of us threw a brick once we’re engulfed back into the crowd.
How exactly is that supposed to work for people with diverse bodies and abilities? My body is not indistinguishable from people 100 pounds less than me. People who use chairs and walkers, if they even feel welcomed to an action in the first place, are not indistinguishable. No amount of black clothing is going to change that. The only thing that will change that is if there are hundreds of fatties, hundreds of people in chairs and with walkers and with different bodies all in black.
We need to make sure that our movement doesn’t fall into the same body hierarchies that capitalism produces. The key to this, I feel, is respect for bodily autonomy, respect for a range of peoples abilities, and not assigning radical points based solely on physical abilities and attractiveness.
II. the “Health at Every Size” movement and ableism
The HAES movement is one of the most respected and popular movements in the fat pride community. This is unfortunate, because it’s deeply ableist.
What does “health” even mean in a world so destroyed that it rebels against humans by mutating our cells and organisms? How can we ever really be “healthy” when everything we eat, drink, wear, sit on, stand near, literally everything is toxic? My aunt, for example, got kidney cancer and died because she worked every day of her life in a library under really intense power lines. She wouldn’t even let a microwave into her house, but she dutifully went to work every day. Thanks, capitalism.
Furthermore, healthy/not healthy is a false binary to subscribe to. HAES’s main tenant is that fatties don’t have to lose weight to be healthy, that health and fat are not mutually exclusive. That’s great, I think that’s really great. Any movement that insists that fatties don’t have to do anything is pretty ok in my book. Except for one little thing: holding up the state of being “healthy” as the ultimate indicator of success and a meaningful life is pretty busted. It sounds so simple when I say it like that, doesn’t it?
Plenty of people will never be “healthy”. Plenty of people, fat or otherwise, have lifelong chronic illnesses and disabilities that no amount of exercise, slogans and “good choices” will ever change. Instead of holding peoples’ bodies, lives, and experiences as undesirable consequences, shouldn’t we be celebrating our friends and comrades?
The HAES manifesto has a lot of really good things to say about loving and accepting your body as it is. But I want to look at the parts that are deeply contradictory, that preach acceptance of only a certain kind of bodies: able bodies. Here are the rules for participation in HAES, taken directly from the HAES manifesto, and my analysis of them.
1. Accept your size. Love and appreciate the body you have. Self-acceptance empowers you to move and make positive changes.
I have no issues with this. This is wonderful and clearly, where the strength of HAES lies.
2. Trust yourself. We all have internal systems designed to keep us healthy--- and at a healthy weight. Support your body in naturally finding its appropriate weight by honoring its signals of hunger, fullness, and appetite.
Ok. Obviously this is super classist as well, but if I took a classism tangent every time it appeared, I’d have to change the focus of this workshop.
So first of all, do we all have internal systems designed to keep us healthy? Do people with immune disorders just fail, then? What about folks with fibromyalgia? And people with Crohn’s disease or Celiac disease? They should just honor their bodies’ natural weight, right? For many people, this is not a viable solution. Some bodies cannot be allowed to do what they naturally do, because some bodies naturally make themselves sick and in pain. This is not a sign of failing. This does not make these bodies inferior or less radical than other bodies. These are just bodies being bodies.
3. Adopt healthy lifestyle habits. Develop and nurture connections with others and look for purpose and meaning in your life. Fulfilling your social, emotional, and spiritual needs restores food to its rightful place as a source of nourishment and pleasure.
Again, here would be a wonderful place to go off on an intense classism tangent but we must resist that urge. Two of the subpoints for this rule concern food and only food, so I’m going to skip them for the sake of brevity. If you’d like to read those subpoints, or this manifesto in general, it’s online and I can give you the URL. Here’s the relevant to this workshop subpoint to this rule:
- find the joy in moving your body and becoming more physically vital in your everyday life.
Find the joy in moving your body. No, no, that’s not ableist at all. That’s not completely erasing to people who physically cannot move parts or the entirety of their bodies. That’s not like a slap in the face for people whose every physical movement causes them pain. That’s not laughable to the folks who endure taunts and abuse when they do move their bodies, when they joyfully walk or dance or travel.
What does it mean to become more physically vital in your everyday life? I honestly don’t even know. It sounds to me like a vague sentiment of ability celebration, which is fine as long as it’s clearly stated that this must be specific to individual bodies and desires.
4. Embrace size diversity. Humans come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Open to the beauty found across the spectrum and support others in recognizing their unique attractiveness.
This is pure truth. We should do this. This just feels so hypocritical to me, though, because bodies aren’t only about sizes and shapes, they’re about what we can and cannot do with them. We need to embrace ability diversity, too, and HAES doesn’t do that, in my opinion.
Why can’t it be HAES where the H stands for happiness? Why can’t it be contentment at every size, or self-love at every size? Why does it have to be HEALTH, a social value that seems more arbitrary in a toxic world? Very simply stated, I think that making health the highly valued goal at the end of the self-acceptance journey for fatties is just plain ableist.
IV. Strategies for fighting fatphobia without resorting to ableism
1. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone!
If someone is concerntrolling you, if they’re flooding you with fake worry about your body and health, you don’t have to allay their fears. You really don’t. You can tell the to back the fuck off, tell them to mind their own business, and make it perfectly clear that you are the only person allowed to bring up your body and its abilities in casual conversation. Resist the urge to be a “good fattie”.
2. You don’t have to aspire to be healthy.
Health is a value that can be important to you. Or it can be not important to you. Like monogamy, sobriety, or any other social value, health is an issue of personal bodily autonomy. If your own strength or ability to run 6 miles or the tone in your muscles is important to you, then by all means, go forth and do what you want to your body. If those things are not important to you, then they don’t have to be. Your body is not required to be anything, any shape, any ability level.
3. Don’t make fat and disabled as signifiers for bad people.
When we as anarchists demonize our enemies, primarily cops and businesspeople, we often portray them as fat. In her book Fate Shame, Amy Farrell traces the roots of fat bodies as signifying bad people to the suffragist movement, where both sides of the issue portrayed their opposition as fat. When we laugh at fat cops, make donut jokes, or taunt them for being pigs, we’re making a very clear association: fatness and disabilities are something to mock, to attack in our enemies, and to make us feel superior. This is something we do and it needs to stop.
4. Don’t make fatness and abilities im/moral.
People are fat for thousands of reasons, and they’re all valid reasons. People have disabilities for just as many reasons, and they’re also all valid. I don’t think morality should even be a part of the discussion. Social value is messed up and hierarchical.
5. Insist on the bodily autonomy of all people to be respected.
We are anarchists. We demand respect for the autonomy and bodies of queers, of people with the ability to bear children, of gender variant folks, people of color, sex workers, drug users, poly folks, vegans, kinksters, and so many others. We must extend that respect for fatties and people with disabilities. Fat bodies and disabled bodies are not the exception to this rule. You do not have the right to make comments on what people eat or don’t eat, physically do or don’t do.
Does anyone else have any ideas? I’d love to hear y’alls input on how you have or will combat fatphobia and ableism.
In conclusion:
Fatness and ability are intricately connected in a wide variety of settings. From the real world, in our jobs, schools, families, and social circles, to the radical world, in our activist groups, our direct action, our causes, and even in the fat pride movement, fatphobia and ableism often travel hand-in-hand. To fight one is to fight them both, and considering we are a movement that claims to be all about combating oppression, this fight is not optional. We have to challenge the concept that our worth as individuals is somehow based on our range of abilities, whether those abilities concern the production of capital, revolution, or hotness. We have to defeat any sort of body hierarchies and claim that no body is better, more worthy, more desirable or more admirable than another. And finally, we have to insist on personal bodily autonomy for everyone. Our bodies are our own, to love and respect and do with as we like. If we have personal goals that effect our bodies, that should be respected. But our goals and values cannot be applied to everyone else non-consensually. Personally, I love the way my body feels after physical activity. But I respect that not everyone does, not everyone values that feeling, not every body can do the things my body can do. I am not a better person for treating my body in a way I specifically want my body treated. And that’s really what I want you all to take from this workshop: every body is different and should be celebrated, not placed on a hierarchy or binary based on appearance and range of abilities.
