General

I am excited by the arrival of this new forum, as I've been appalled by the amount of fat hatred that shows up in a place that's all about fat loving. If you know what I mean - the descriptions of fat as disgusting, fat people as lazy slobs, fat people are all about to die, etc., seem to show up shockingly often in stories and discussions.

FA is the acronym for both Fat Acceptance and Fat Admirer, which is a bit confusing, so maybe I'll use size acceptance instead. How the two relate is complex and I'm sure it'll be discussed here. It seems to me that anyone who is an FA should be on board with SA, as a world where fat people aren't despised would be a world with more confident, sexy fat women and men in the dating pool! Imagine a world without self-hating fatties, or people who are pressured into losing weight by their families/friends/co-workers/whatever. Sounds good, right? (Unless you're one of those who are turned on by the taboo-ness of fat, rather than the sensuality, I guess.)
As for the SA movement, I don't think feederism should play that big a role in it, to be honest. Feederism is a sexual thing. People in the size acceptance community have, I think, lashed out a bit at feederism, but that may be in reaction to the fact that mainstream media coverage tends to bring up feederism in discussions of fat acceptance all the time, as if there was no difference between not wanting to lose weight and wanting to deliberately gain weight. A lot of size acceptance people want to make peace with their bodies and stop dieting, but the mainstream view does tend to think this means gaining weightt continuously and forever. So SA people push back against that and deny feederism a place in the movement.

You're right, there's definitely some of that in the stories, and that's fine. But there have been things in the forums that reveal that people really think those sorts of things are universally true, i.e. all fat people are lazy, smelly, whatever.

Actually, Ruby, I think people frequently post things that are disrespectful to fat people. There's definitely a lot less of that than there used to be, and I wouldn't *quite* characterise it as harshly as Ffancy did.

But you know there are lots of people who believe that people are fat only because we eat like pigs--that's one that comes up a lot, for example. Or it would be easy to lose if we wanted to. Or we don't care about our health. I definitely feel like there are undercurrents of fat--not sure of the word--phobia? hatred? oppression?--here and there on the site. Nothing I would remove as a moderator, but definitely things that need discussion.

Eh, I think everyone is overeacting, the only lingering fat negativity present here (aside from what the Trolls drag in) is just residual opinions and attitudes which most people grow up with in todays society. I don't think anyone honestly comes here nurturing such views, but Its hard for people to completely change there way of thinking over night.

Fortunately though, being apart of this great community helps dispel these stereotyped ideas and create more open minded individuals in regards to fat acceptance.

Speaking from experience here also, FF has deffinetly given me a new found respect and appreciation for all larger people which i'm sad to say I wasn't brought up with.