General

salt wrote:


His insecurities?! What about my dignity? What about the broken hearts of all those women out there who are somebody's dirty secret and won't be seen with them in public? I know stories of women who were ignored or even abused in pubic by guys they knew and were in a relationship with! And all because those guys thought of those women as something they should be ashamed of!
What I said might have sounded harsh but the reality and the results of those guys' "conflict" (which I call "cowardice" ) are waaaaaaay harsher and with more serious implications.
I think it's time for a wake up call for all those closet cases out there and it seems that patting them on the shoulder and making them feel like they're the victim here doesn't and hasn't worked.
At the end of the day, how would they feel if the shoe was on the other foot?!
But that's just my opinion and I am as much entitled to it as they are to theirs.

OniGumo wrote:People who feel conflicted will never approach the object of their desires. And it's reactions like yours that fuel that.

krydrita wrote:


Guilt is not something that people can easily control. I sometimes feel guilty about my preferences, too, and the OP is definitely not alone. But I don't think, in any way, that this is an issue of fat shaming. I think it's more that the OP didn't word his post completely to your liking, and others read into his post things that were never there in the first place from their own (completely understandable) insecurities and/or anger.

But just as society's unhealthy obsession with skinniness is negatively impacting the psyches of foodees, feedees, and gainers, it is also working the same way on FAs, and even more so on feeders. Growing up, a young FA just beginning to understand and accept their sexuality is faced with a barrage of social pressures dictating that fat is the worst fate possible to befall a human being--a view that I DEFINITELY do not agree with in ANY way!--but that unhealthy societal shaming is still there.

It can affect the FA by making them question their sexuality, and possibly even come to the unhealthy and wrong conclusion that they are somehow a freak for liking something that others shame. Or it can affect any possible partners, who are either skinny and are completely unreceptive to the FAs true preferences, or who are overweight but hate their bodies for not looking like some anorexic magazine cover. Again, this is something which is completely wrong, absolutely terrible, and which I, and all sane, healthy FAs, do not agree with in any way! But nevertheless, these pressures are there, working their evil in making people feel like shit and question their own sexuality.

Can I count the number of times people around me have equated either extreme fitness or extreme thinness with the ultimate in sexual attractiveness? Can I count the number of times overweight people have been the butt of jokes and the objects of ridicule, both in real life and in the media? The number of weight loss ads I have seen? Just as all this unhealthy anti-fat attention makes overweight people feel terrible, it does the same for the FAs who are constantly, persistently reminded that they are the minority, are weird, are somehow wrong in their preferences.

I think that it is very similar to what homosexuals have had to endure in previous (and even current) times where heterosexuality was thought of as the only acceptable sexuality. But homosexuality gets a lot more attention, and everyone knows it exists. The feederism movement doesn't even exist in the culture at large, but only in pocket oases online or in real life, where like-minded individuals can get together and discuss, in safety from prejudice, their feelings, thus beginning to detoxify themselves and get rid of all the stream of fat-shaming bullshit which has been pervading their entire culture since birth.

And that's what I think the OP was doing--taking those few cautious, tender, beginning first steps towards reaching out with his secret to a like-minded community in an attempt to start the healing process, and to begin learning the real truth--that there is nothing wrong with the way he feels, with his sexuality, with any of it. And that's when certain parties brutally shut him down, feeling entitled to rip him to shreds just because he was the FA, not the gainer.

I'm not saying that any level of fat shaming is acceptable at all, period. But that's not what this was. I'm not saying that gainers or overweight people don't have to put up with a whole hell of a lot of unhealthy, unfair, unacceptable, absolutely awful treatment at the hands of the media and social oligarchs--they do, and it's completely horrible. But FAs are faced with that same negativity, and have to go through just as much soul-searching to find peace of mind and self-acceptance.

For years and years, I thought that I was asexual because I didn't like any traditional images of male sexiness. And, before I came here and found acceptance, I thought I was some kind of freak. And yes, I still do feel conflicted sometimes. Social brainwashing is a difficult thing to overcome.

But just as this site accepts all sizes of people as being beautiful and perfect, as a community we also need to accept FAs as being the same, and not immediately discount their feelings and opinions just because they're on the other side of the coin. We're all in this together, and everyone deserves to have their voices heard and respected.

Anyway, that's my two cents.