I’ve found her thinking and practical exercises no end of helpful in preventing myself from sounding and feeling defensive in situations that could be deadly to my social or work life.

I personally think it’s going to take some time for major changes to occur.There’s too much bias, and the anti-fat message is pushed in our faces a lot (Let’s no forget blaming everything from global warming to increasing health costs on T3H FAT). I really think that more people are becoming neutral on the whole thing, but there’s still many people of all sizes that don’t believe in accepting others that are different or even the same as they are. We can always be ambitious though.

-E

The fact that so many people say, “I don’t need to back up my argument! EVERYONE KNOWS fat is unhealthy!” is one of the most maddening things about this fighting stage. But all we can do is keep fighting.

Then when I asked him to share his sources to back up his side of the argument, he refused, saying that if I did the research for myself, I would be more motivated. Sure because everyone is motivated to research things that prove them a) to be wrong and b) to be bad or insufficiently strong people.

I haven’t really talked to anyone about that fight. It was maybe a month and a half ago and it still pisses me off every time I think about it.

-E

And you know, I think it’s important for those of us who can “pass,” to say, “Yes, I AM fat,” because that’s part of changing people’s image of fat — and of dismantling the system of privilege that gives you and me more respect than an extremely fat person; less than a thin one.

For starters, a lot of people want “fat” to represent a category of people who are Very Different from Them — people it’s much easier to dehumanize. So saying, “Hey, I’m not that different from you, but the government classifies me as obese, and doctors claim I’m at risk for a zillion diseases, and the fashion industry thinks I’m too fat to wear clothes,” helps shift the paradigm; “fat” is something much closer to home than a lot of people would like to believe. A thin person is one step away from people like us, who are one step away from mid-size fat people, who are one step away from supersize (even though I despise that word) fat people… And three steps between thin and supersize really isn’t very far at all, is it?

Secondly, when someone says, “You’re not fat,” what they’re doing is offering me an opportunity to classify myself as “normal” — so neither one of us has to think anymore about The Other; the real fat people. Fuck that. I AM a real fat person, and I want to think about this shit. I don’t want to say, “Well, I can fit into airplane seats and don’t have too much trouble buying clothes, so I’m not like THEM, and it’s not my problem.” I am like them, and it’s everybody’s problem that even avowed progressives have no problem discriminating against a group of people because they don’t fucking like the way we look.

I’m not going to help anyone make a comforting mental division between someone like me and a much fatter person, because that fatter person and I are a lot more alike than we’re different — less because we’re both fat than because we’re both HUMAN. Which is the point of all this.

And I’m sure not going to say, “Why, yes, I’m lucky enough to dodge most of the discrimination directed against fat people, so I should just shut my mouth and be thankful.”

So, Hexy, I hereby give you permission to call yourself fat and spread the word.

I mean, I’m all about fuck dieting, I’m healthy and I love my body… but the reaction makes me hesitate about trying to reclaim that word.

*shrug* Now I’m just babbling on someone else’s blog…

WHY HARVARD WANTS YOU TO BE UNHEALTHILY THIN.
Thinner
by Paul Campos
Only at TNR Online | Post date 09.11.07

A big problem with elite institutions is that, for years on end, people in such places can abuse their positions by saying things that aren’t true, before anyone whose opinion counts notices.
A particularly clear example of this is provided by the Harvard School of Public Health, which for many years has been pushing a phony claim with great success. The story is simple: That it’s well-established scientific fact that being “overweight”–that is, having a body mass index figure of between 25 and 30–is, in the words of Harvard professors Walter Willett and Meir Stampfer, “a major contributor to morbidity and mortality.” This claim has been put forward over and over again by various members of the School of Public Health’s faculty, with little or no qualification. According to this line of argument, there’s simply no real scientific dispute about the “fact” that average-height women who weigh between 146 and a 174 pounds, and average-height men who weigh between 175 and 209 pounds, are putting their lives and health at risk. Furthermore, according to Willett, such people should try to reduce their weights toward the low end of the government-approved “normal” BMI range of 18.5 to 24.9 (the low end of the range is 108 and 129 pounds for women and men respectively).
It’s difficult to exaggerate the extent to which the actual scientific evidence fails to support any of this…

More here

But I do feel like people are fighting a lot more than laughing these days, and that’s progress.