General

So, I've been shocked on and off since I started coming here at how few people, especially skinny people, on FF are interested in size acceptance and fat liberation. This manifests in a whole lot of ways, two of them being the way we talk about health and the words we use.

The fantastic blog Feedee World pointed readers towards an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit that is about the former:
feedeeworld.wordpress.com/
and it also pointed towards The Appetites Project, which begins with a piece on feederism:
feedeeworld.wordpress.com/
that is followed by a second piece interviewing our own MollyRen:
feedeeworld.wordpress.com/
and that also led me to a wonderful piece on the word 'fat' in the FAQ for Kate Harding's blog Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere:
feedeeworld.wordpress.com/

I hope some people who still think that being fat is necessarily unhealthy watch Penn & Teller. I hope some of you who don't like the word 'fat' read Kate's FAQ. And I hope we can have more conversations about these topics.

And for all of you with whom I've spoken about these things, or who care about them but we haven't met yet--thanks. No matter how much the fat lib folks hate us, we HAVE to care about their issues.

/rant over

Hmm, I've always thought, the world needs to learn to accept fat before we can ever hope for it to accept feederism.

I think he's speaking with some sarcasm and basically saying that the general public view us as perverse monsters nonetheless, even if we know we're not even remotely comparable to bestiality. Which, sadly, is probably true.

Thanks for the thanks, Sethman and Moonchild. I think it's important for us, as Moonchild says, to be thinking and talking about these issues as a community. Some of us do, but many don't. I wonder how we start the conversation--any ideas?

I'm so pleased that people, and esp people I don't know or don't know well, want to keep up this conversation. I posted a question in the Improvements forum to see if people want to open a new forum--for those of you who feel one way or another about it, please do post your suggestion there.

For now, though, we can keep talking here. What do you all think about anti-discrimination legislation? (It has been passed in a few places in the US.)

Wow, that's some hard core libertarianism!

I disagree that legislation has only done harm. Women, African-Americans, people in wheelchairs, and many others got turned down for work routinely until there was anti-discrimination legislation. And while I know people say that all the time about affirmative action--which isn't the same as anti-discrimination legislation--I never saw it do anything but help an equally qualified candidate, as it was meant to.

I agree, however, that legislation is only a small piece of a huge, big, unwieldy puzzle. It definitely doesn't get at the roots, and it can only work in very blatant cases. As abeamt says, it's very difficult to prove anything.

But what *would* get rid of discrimination against fat people? or help shift it somewhat?

1. On legislation

(OK, it's important here for me to point out first that I lived and worked in the US all my life, until 5 years ago.)

This has never been true. What affirmative action did--and it was the ONLY legislation on diversity issues that had an active component--was to say the following:
If you have two equally qualified candidates,
and if Candidate A is from a group that is covered by Affirmative Action legislation,
and if Candidate B is not,
then Candidate A should get the job.

The point of the legislation was to combat unconscious tendencies to hire people who seem more familiar to you than the ones who aren't. No programs ever chose unqualified or less qualified people.

2. On Confidence

As for Sethman and others' points about confidence, I'm totally with you. But how do you encourage confidence in a society and culture that hates you? This is a perennial question--does change first come from within or from the context? (Or, as Alabama 3 quoted Mao as saying, 'from the barrel of a gun'?)

How do we all get confident if we grow up in families and schools and medical systems that tell us we're ugly and lazy?

Great. Both Paul Campos' The Obesity Myth and Glen Gaesser's Big, Fat Lies are well worth reading. I don't remember who else they cite. You might also like to have a look at Jon Robison's page on Health At Every Size, or HAES: www.jonrobison.net/size.html, and Linda Bacon's book, Health at Every Size.

For pure fun and a lot of much-needed sass, there's Marilyn Wann's
Fat!So?It is its own little manifesto!

There's lots more. But that's a pretty hefty start...enjoy it!

Amanda, aka That Reese's Girl, just posted the original Fat Liberation Manifesto from 1973 in honour of the passing of Judy Freespirit, one of it's authors. Go read it, all--it's not to be missed:

feedeeworld.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/fat-liberation-manifesto/

Thanks, Amanda.

Interesting how this was overlooked, I can appreciate all the interest and support in fat acceptance, but you have to admit its ironic to see it on a feederism site when the majority of the fat acceptance movement is so opposed to feederism and feel we are damaging any chances of obtaining fat acceptance.

Not trying to stir trouble, it just seems everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room and want to focus on purely the fat acceptance rather then how feederism fits into the world of fat acceptance.

I imagine if both communities ever put aside thier differences they would be able to advance a far stronger case for fat acceptance together rather then too seperate assaults...

Just my 2 cents.