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| Pic by Matthew Cunningham |
Fattylympics: This is what we did
Showing posts with label intersection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intersection. Show all posts
This is what the Fattylympics was like
Fattylympics: This is what we did
Reflecting on the Fattylympics Anthem
I've been co-organising an event called the Fattylympics. This is a non-commercial, community-based afternoon of messing around in the park. It's fat activism and, because I'm always interested in mixing it up, it's about other stuff too, namely the 2012 Olympics, which is happening in, and destroying significant chunks of, my neighbourhood in East London.
One of the forms of fat activism that I enjoy very much is about creating a platform from which many different things can emerge in unexpected ways. The Chubsters is an example of this, it's supported workshops, filmshows and even stonemasonry. I like fat activism with which people can engage in their own ways, where people make their own meanings out of things. I think it's great to draw on people's talents and the things that they like to do, and are really good at. It helps build community and encourages people to think about fat stuff creatively in whatever way it intersects with their own lives, and pass it on to others.
The Fattylympics is also in this vein. It's a satirical Olympics, it will take place on a particular day in London, but I also see it as space from which people can make stuff in their own way, to make something bigger and more complex than I could ever have imagined or produced by myself.
Some of this has come about by inviting people to contribute, for example. I knew that Bad Artists Becky and Corinna would make a great job of the Fattylympics mascots, and they did by coming up with the sublime Egg'n'Spoon. Other people have volunteered things, including performances and events. One person was the musician Verity Susman, of the wonderful band Electrelane, who also has solo projects in her own name and formerly as Vera November. Verity volunteered to write the Fattylympics Anthem and this she did, using words that I wrote. I really love her music in general, so it was a great experience to make something with her.
When I imagined the Anthem I thought about something that people could sing regardless of whether or not they were actually able to come to the Fattylympics. I wanted something hopeful and warm that people could hum when they needed a bit of strength. Although the Fattylympics is a big joke in many respects, I also wanted something heartfelt on the day. The Anthem is also released under a Creative Commons licence so people are actively encouraged to share and remix it. I'm hoping that people might video themselves singing it, perhaps with a group, or that they'll remix it, and that this can add to the project's archive.
We'll be singing the Anthem on the day at the Opening Ceremony. There will be a group of us singing it as a choir, though everyone is invited to join in.
Why not have a sing?
The Fattylympics Anthem
One of the forms of fat activism that I enjoy very much is about creating a platform from which many different things can emerge in unexpected ways. The Chubsters is an example of this, it's supported workshops, filmshows and even stonemasonry. I like fat activism with which people can engage in their own ways, where people make their own meanings out of things. I think it's great to draw on people's talents and the things that they like to do, and are really good at. It helps build community and encourages people to think about fat stuff creatively in whatever way it intersects with their own lives, and pass it on to others.
The Fattylympics is also in this vein. It's a satirical Olympics, it will take place on a particular day in London, but I also see it as space from which people can make stuff in their own way, to make something bigger and more complex than I could ever have imagined or produced by myself.
Some of this has come about by inviting people to contribute, for example. I knew that Bad Artists Becky and Corinna would make a great job of the Fattylympics mascots, and they did by coming up with the sublime Egg'n'Spoon. Other people have volunteered things, including performances and events. One person was the musician Verity Susman, of the wonderful band Electrelane, who also has solo projects in her own name and formerly as Vera November. Verity volunteered to write the Fattylympics Anthem and this she did, using words that I wrote. I really love her music in general, so it was a great experience to make something with her.
When I imagined the Anthem I thought about something that people could sing regardless of whether or not they were actually able to come to the Fattylympics. I wanted something hopeful and warm that people could hum when they needed a bit of strength. Although the Fattylympics is a big joke in many respects, I also wanted something heartfelt on the day. The Anthem is also released under a Creative Commons licence so people are actively encouraged to share and remix it. I'm hoping that people might video themselves singing it, perhaps with a group, or that they'll remix it, and that this can add to the project's archive.
We'll be singing the Anthem on the day at the Opening Ceremony. There will be a group of us singing it as a choir, though everyone is invited to join in.
Why not have a sing?
The Fattylympics Anthem
Thinking about 'a response to white fat activism from People of Color in the fat justice movement'
A group of people of colour (POC) in the US affiliated with NOLOSE released a statement this week demanding that white people in fat activism take responsibility to make the movement more inclusive and diverse. Their comments are made in the light of problems with the activist response in the US to the Georgia billboard anti-obesity campaign. It includes the following section, but please go and read the whole thing.
a response to white fat activism from People of Color in the fat justice movement
Flying by the seat of your pants, when it comes to addressing the real concerns and questions around diversity and inclusion of POC in fat activist spaces or campaigns, will no longer be good enough.
I support wholeheartedly the baseline value of not being a racist arse, and of working fat activism through inclusively, critically, reflexively, consciously and ethically. I appreciate that this statement has been produced constructively and with hope that this can happen.
In addition, I have two small reservations about the statement. There appears to be a universalising of identity by people who are diverse in some ways but not others, for example in terms of nationality, it is common for people in the US to speak for the whole world, and this is problematic. Perhaps a stronger statement would include alliances with people in other places. I also think that it would be helpful to bear in mind that the 'fat justice movement' is multiple and often ambiguous, rather than a fixed entity; there are many movements, and broad demands will need to be contextualised each time. For example, bringing a critical and anti-racist consciousness to the activism that involves a conversation with a friend in one time and place is going to be different to that which entails mobilising communities for a specific goal in another.
The NOLOSE statement isn't the first time that fat and queer people of colour have offered critiques of the movement, Tara Shuai's A Different Kind of Fat Rant: People of Color and the Fat Acceptance Movement from 2008 named areas of fat activism where there is endemic racism. I hope that in speaking up, NOLOSE and Shuai will encourage people to adopt more critical and conscious approaches to fat activism. I fear that it might be a long time until many fat activists, especially white people, are able to do that. I am afraid that people of colour will be forced to continue to do the hard work of consciousness raising, which is clearly unacceptable.
Meanwhile, I am grateful for Shuai's rant, and the NOLOSE statement, I think they are brave things to do in a context where critical viewpoints within the movement are not always welcome or forthcoming. I don't know why so many fat activists seem resistant or unable to engage critically and reflexively with what they do, but I see this happening a lot. Why is anti-racist practice and critical reflexivity treated like an afterthought, if at all? Do people leave their brains and consciences behind when they do fat activism? It seems that way. How could it be different? Perhaps through disseminating work that demonstrates there are many different ways of doing fat activism, including methods that foreground self-reflexivity and anti-racism? Through engaging with critical awareness more generally? Let's talk about this.
a response to white fat activism from People of Color in the fat justice movement
Flying by the seat of your pants, when it comes to addressing the real concerns and questions around diversity and inclusion of POC in fat activist spaces or campaigns, will no longer be good enough.
- POC in the fat justice movement deserve thoughtful and clear discussions around not just the intention of diversity and inclusion in the work you wish to do, but also the actual impact of the work within communities of color.
- POC in the fat justice movement demand and deserve that white fat activists build authentic collaborations with communities of color and work as allies.
- POC in the fat justice movement demand and deserve allies showing up to the table of our campaigns and work, rather than constantly being told they have made a place for us at theirs.
- POC in the fat justice movement clarify that our allies will practice doing the work of learning about the histories and impacts of colonization and oppression on POC, seek other allies to learn from and with, be open to dialogue, taking feedback, and allowing people's firsthand experiences of racism to be the final and authoritative voice on the subject of impact to communities of color.
- POC in the fat justice movement offer that through the work of authentic inclusivity, singular vision will become shared vision. Coalition will happen. Bridges will be mended and built.
I support wholeheartedly the baseline value of not being a racist arse, and of working fat activism through inclusively, critically, reflexively, consciously and ethically. I appreciate that this statement has been produced constructively and with hope that this can happen.
In addition, I have two small reservations about the statement. There appears to be a universalising of identity by people who are diverse in some ways but not others, for example in terms of nationality, it is common for people in the US to speak for the whole world, and this is problematic. Perhaps a stronger statement would include alliances with people in other places. I also think that it would be helpful to bear in mind that the 'fat justice movement' is multiple and often ambiguous, rather than a fixed entity; there are many movements, and broad demands will need to be contextualised each time. For example, bringing a critical and anti-racist consciousness to the activism that involves a conversation with a friend in one time and place is going to be different to that which entails mobilising communities for a specific goal in another.
The NOLOSE statement isn't the first time that fat and queer people of colour have offered critiques of the movement, Tara Shuai's A Different Kind of Fat Rant: People of Color and the Fat Acceptance Movement from 2008 named areas of fat activism where there is endemic racism. I hope that in speaking up, NOLOSE and Shuai will encourage people to adopt more critical and conscious approaches to fat activism. I fear that it might be a long time until many fat activists, especially white people, are able to do that. I am afraid that people of colour will be forced to continue to do the hard work of consciousness raising, which is clearly unacceptable.
Meanwhile, I am grateful for Shuai's rant, and the NOLOSE statement, I think they are brave things to do in a context where critical viewpoints within the movement are not always welcome or forthcoming. I don't know why so many fat activists seem resistant or unable to engage critically and reflexively with what they do, but I see this happening a lot. Why is anti-racist practice and critical reflexivity treated like an afterthought, if at all? Do people leave their brains and consciences behind when they do fat activism? It seems that way. How could it be different? Perhaps through disseminating work that demonstrates there are many different ways of doing fat activism, including methods that foreground self-reflexivity and anti-racism? Through engaging with critical awareness more generally? Let's talk about this.
Talking about fat and sexual harassment
Twice in the past few weeks I've been grabbed in the street by strangers. The first stranger grabbed my arm and whispered "Ohh, big girl" at me as though he was sharing a sexy secret. The second, last night crept up behind me and as he walked past brushed his dick against my hand, grabbed my waist and said "Hello gorgeous" quietly in my ear and walked away. Apart from these incidents it's been a while since I've noticed anyone harassing me when I'm out and about, I felt that I could walk down the street like anyone else.
In both cases I pulled myself away and told the strangers to fuck off. Nobody is allowed to touch me without my consent, it's a relief that I know this deeply. But I've also found myself following a disturbing line of thought: how have I attracted this attention? Is it my clothes? Something about how I walk? Why is it happening now? What have I done? It's depressing how easily I fall into the belief that I must be responsible for someone's unwanted intrusion.
I am a catch. There are good reasons why someone's head might turn to look at me. This knowledge has been hard fought for over decades, and continues to be a battleground of sorts, and maybe always will be. I am also an ordinary-looking dyke in my mid-40s. Neither my beauty nor my everydayness makes me safe. I find it grotesque when men grab me in the street when I am going about my business and not hooking them for attention, there's a disturbing mismatch between how I am and how they misread me. It feels as though they have picked me out and are trying to put me in my place by forcing me to see myself on their ugly terms. It reminds me of the ways in which my sexuality was treated as a joke in the past because I am fat and, although this is different, I find it humiliating. A fat dyke being sexually harassed, it almost feels like a joke in itself, who would anyone bother with me? How can it even be real? I must be secretly flattered and titilated that men still want me, that anyone is remotely interested.
Other people have written about the visibility and invisibility of fat people in public spaces, and it's no secret that street harassment is a daily reality. I think an understanding that harassment can be sexual tends to be missing. There are things to be said about the sexual harassment of fat people and, in my case and others, the interplay of gender, homophobia, racism, ableism and other types of oppressive behaviour on that harassment.
I would like more fat people to break the silence around this stuff, if they feel able to, and for people to develop stronger ways of addressing it. Whilst they don't ruin my day, these brief impositions upon me nevertheless raise many difficult feelings about fat, sexuality, being out on the streets, and claiming my space in the world.
In both cases I pulled myself away and told the strangers to fuck off. Nobody is allowed to touch me without my consent, it's a relief that I know this deeply. But I've also found myself following a disturbing line of thought: how have I attracted this attention? Is it my clothes? Something about how I walk? Why is it happening now? What have I done? It's depressing how easily I fall into the belief that I must be responsible for someone's unwanted intrusion.
I am a catch. There are good reasons why someone's head might turn to look at me. This knowledge has been hard fought for over decades, and continues to be a battleground of sorts, and maybe always will be. I am also an ordinary-looking dyke in my mid-40s. Neither my beauty nor my everydayness makes me safe. I find it grotesque when men grab me in the street when I am going about my business and not hooking them for attention, there's a disturbing mismatch between how I am and how they misread me. It feels as though they have picked me out and are trying to put me in my place by forcing me to see myself on their ugly terms. It reminds me of the ways in which my sexuality was treated as a joke in the past because I am fat and, although this is different, I find it humiliating. A fat dyke being sexually harassed, it almost feels like a joke in itself, who would anyone bother with me? How can it even be real? I must be secretly flattered and titilated that men still want me, that anyone is remotely interested.
Other people have written about the visibility and invisibility of fat people in public spaces, and it's no secret that street harassment is a daily reality. I think an understanding that harassment can be sexual tends to be missing. There are things to be said about the sexual harassment of fat people and, in my case and others, the interplay of gender, homophobia, racism, ableism and other types of oppressive behaviour on that harassment.
I would like more fat people to break the silence around this stuff, if they feel able to, and for people to develop stronger ways of addressing it. Whilst they don't ruin my day, these brief impositions upon me nevertheless raise many difficult feelings about fat, sexuality, being out on the streets, and claiming my space in the world.
Queer Hapas, fat activism and weight loss surgery
I've been reading Jackie Loneberry Wang's excellent zine Memoirs of a Queer Hapa #2, which takes a look at the author's queer-biracial identity. Hapa refers to people who are "mixed-race and of Asian descent". I especially like the author's Concluding Thoughts from an essay entitled The Emergence of Queer Hapa Identity in the United States, where she applies Queer Theory in a super-accessible way. Basically she talks about identities that transgress boundaries and expose the limitations of those boundaries. She says that Queer Hapa people confound others who ally themselves "to the notion of identity as fixed, immutable, and formed around a logic of separation and differentiation" (p14). Wang goes on to say that even though Queer Hapa is an uncontainable identity, naming and inhabiting it enables people to organise strategically and politically in ways that are anti-assimilationist and complex.
Wang's zine has helped me not only think about Queer Hapa identity, but also about another group of people, who may also include Queer Hapas. I think the ways in which Wang writes about identity is helpful in thinking about what tends to be the thorny relationship between fat activism and weight loss surgery.
Apparently, as someone smart told me recently, the situation is changing and people who have had weight loss surgery are no longer drummed out of fat activist community. But my experience is that weight loss surgery continues to represent considerable anxiety in terms of how to address it in fat activism, and that bullying, shaming and shunning are still everyday tactics. Even where people have moved on from using these strategies to police the boundaries of fat activism and critique weight loss surgery, their previous use continues to hurt and has not been resolved.
I am not an advocate for weight loss surgery, I would never choose it for myself, and I discourage people from choosing it where I can. I think it is more likely to deplete than enhance health, I mourn the deaths of people who have died as a consequence of surgery, and its marketing rhetoric is invariably fatphobic, full of lies, and profoundly problematic. But neither am I an advocate for boundary policing or bullying. I am looking for helpful and human ways of thinking about this stuff that goes beyond a condescending 'love the sinner hate the sin' tolerance within the movement for people who have had surgery or are contemplating it. I would prefer a world where weight loss industries did not exist, but I do not live in that world, and am unlikely to as long as capitalism exists. Instead I am part of communities of people where some have chosen this, including a number of excellent fat activists who I love and respect.
Anyway, so Wang's work has helped me think about this and my tentative thoughts are about fat activists who have had weight loss surgery also inhabiting a space that transgresses and exposes the limitations of certain boundaries and classifications. For example, that to be a fat activist always involves resisting weight loss, or that there are sides to be chosen where you are either for or against weight loss. Fat activists who have had weight loss surgery, especially unrepentant people for whom it was a positive long-term choice, inhabit a space that shows there are other ways of being, that fat activism doesn't have to be an either/or proposition, and that it can be really diverse. I'm mindful of the postcolonial concept of hybridity, you can be a mixture of things, even things that are supposed to be incompatible, and you don't have to make a choice between one state of being or another, you can be all of them.
Going back to Wang and thinking about the possibilities for organising around fluid and complex identities, I feel excited for the potential opportunities for fat activists and weight loss surgery in challenging dogmatism and pioneering new forms of fat activist embodiment. It gives me hope that people who are currently shamefully denigrated within the movement might no longer have to skulk around in the shadows like a dirty little secret, waiting in vain for an invitation to come and sit at the table, it could be that they've already got their own thing going on and that everybody else should take note.
Jackie's response: Zines, queer hapas, fat activism
Wang, Jackie Loneberry (2009) Memoirs of a Queer Hapa #2
Wang's zine has helped me not only think about Queer Hapa identity, but also about another group of people, who may also include Queer Hapas. I think the ways in which Wang writes about identity is helpful in thinking about what tends to be the thorny relationship between fat activism and weight loss surgery.
Apparently, as someone smart told me recently, the situation is changing and people who have had weight loss surgery are no longer drummed out of fat activist community. But my experience is that weight loss surgery continues to represent considerable anxiety in terms of how to address it in fat activism, and that bullying, shaming and shunning are still everyday tactics. Even where people have moved on from using these strategies to police the boundaries of fat activism and critique weight loss surgery, their previous use continues to hurt and has not been resolved.
I am not an advocate for weight loss surgery, I would never choose it for myself, and I discourage people from choosing it where I can. I think it is more likely to deplete than enhance health, I mourn the deaths of people who have died as a consequence of surgery, and its marketing rhetoric is invariably fatphobic, full of lies, and profoundly problematic. But neither am I an advocate for boundary policing or bullying. I am looking for helpful and human ways of thinking about this stuff that goes beyond a condescending 'love the sinner hate the sin' tolerance within the movement for people who have had surgery or are contemplating it. I would prefer a world where weight loss industries did not exist, but I do not live in that world, and am unlikely to as long as capitalism exists. Instead I am part of communities of people where some have chosen this, including a number of excellent fat activists who I love and respect.
Anyway, so Wang's work has helped me think about this and my tentative thoughts are about fat activists who have had weight loss surgery also inhabiting a space that transgresses and exposes the limitations of certain boundaries and classifications. For example, that to be a fat activist always involves resisting weight loss, or that there are sides to be chosen where you are either for or against weight loss. Fat activists who have had weight loss surgery, especially unrepentant people for whom it was a positive long-term choice, inhabit a space that shows there are other ways of being, that fat activism doesn't have to be an either/or proposition, and that it can be really diverse. I'm mindful of the postcolonial concept of hybridity, you can be a mixture of things, even things that are supposed to be incompatible, and you don't have to make a choice between one state of being or another, you can be all of them.
Going back to Wang and thinking about the possibilities for organising around fluid and complex identities, I feel excited for the potential opportunities for fat activists and weight loss surgery in challenging dogmatism and pioneering new forms of fat activist embodiment. It gives me hope that people who are currently shamefully denigrated within the movement might no longer have to skulk around in the shadows like a dirty little secret, waiting in vain for an invitation to come and sit at the table, it could be that they've already got their own thing going on and that everybody else should take note.
Jackie's response: Zines, queer hapas, fat activism
Wang, Jackie Loneberry (2009) Memoirs of a Queer Hapa #2
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