Bringing bisexual voices together
Fat people with visible scars of disfigurements
Fat people who survived abuse/violence & have mental/internal scars
Fat women/femmes who don’t wear, or can’t access make up
Fat women/femmes who are bald or balding
Fat women/femmes who aren’t hourglass or pear shaped
Fat people who are older
Fat people who can’t afford or can’t access the latest fashions
Fat people who are super-fat/super-sized
Fat people who are genderqueer or nonbinary
Fat people of colour who live outside of North America
Fat people who are disabled
Fat people with multiple oppressions
Fat liberation is for you too. You will probably never see yourself reflected in anything, mainstream or alternative. You will probably feel let down by body positivity and fat positivity. But you count. You matter.
Fatness, Race, Class and Gender.
Content note: Swearing. And when I start swearing, you know shit’s bad.
So which one comes first? Are you black or fat first? Are you LGBT+ or fat first? These are questions that need to piss off and die immediately. I cannot seperate myself into palatable components for your digestion. I could draw a Venn diagram of how they all overlap, but sadly the people who ask these sort of things don’t want to learn - they want you prove yourself. Spoiler alert: you will never be worthy to them.
If you discuss fatphobia, but never mention how race affects how you are treated, then what the everlasting fuck are you doing? Fat liberation is blindingly white, cisgender and heterosexual. These are the voices who get heard, whose articles appear in popular media. These are the people who can afford to attend Fat/Body positivity conferences and know they will receive a warm welcome. They will never be the only one of their ethnicity in a group of fat folks.
If you discuss fatphobia, but never mention how fat LGBT+ people (with a few Bear-shaped exceptions) are subject to punishing drives of fat hate; how poverty affects fat LGBT+ people of colour differently than their white counterparts, then take the first exit out of here, you useless cumstain.
I am thoroughly sick of the white, able-bodied cisfemale gaze being the only thing I see in fat liberation. I am tired of their voices as the only ones amplified. And I could happily live the rest of my life without reading another piece on fatphobia that only concentrates of American white women who are at the smaller end of the fatness scale.
I want to read about experiences of disabled fats, LGBT+ fats who are black or brown, fat folks who are elderly and/or poor. Because we are the ones who face multiple oppressions, who can’t afford to shop the latest fat celebrity lines (I’m looking at you, Beth Ditto) to look incredible. We are the ones who get written out of conversations time and again, even though we have been speaking out for decades.
So all you gusset-tickling, wankers can just shut your mouths for one shit-stained minute. The rest of us would like a chance to be heard.
See me walking down the street
Big hips, fleshy arms
See me smile, all toothy and bright
See my skin
See my fat
The little girl inside me laughs and claps
I skip over cracks
See my stride, watch my flow
See me strutting through this town
See me walking. See my fat
A white boy catches the little girl’s eye
He’s nothing but a teen, but still he knows how
To spit, to scowl, point and laugh
See me falter
See my fat
I ain’t your mammy, shut your mouth
I ain’t your dancer, your exotic queen
I’m just a shadow when the lights burn bright
See her shrinking
See my fat
If my little girl disappears who will take her space
The space she takes just walking down the street?
How can any fat person ever make it out in one piece
When hard eyes make every step a feat?
This fat black soul is wounded as I speak
See my fat
And just let me be.
I sat next to a white teenager on a train today; it was my reserved seat, so I didn’t feel anything about it. But then a few minutes before the train was due to depart, the teenager’s dad boarded the train.
“You can always move once the train leaves the station,” he said to the boy, a worried look evident on his face. I felt irked, but said nothing as the boy’s dad kept looking nervously at us. The boy stated he was fine where he was. After a short while he left. I tried to let the uncomfortable feeling go: why was sitting beside me such a bad thing? Just as these thoughts entered my mind, the dad returned once more.
“There are some seats at the other end of the carriage. You can move there.”
“I’m okay, dad,” the boy replied.
I wished I’d said something. I wished I had stood, told the dad: “Look if you don’t want your kid sitting next to a fat, black person, just say so!” But I grit my teeth, waited until the dad left again, and moved to another unreserved seat. I could hear the voices telling me I’m too sensitive; that I need to grow a thicker skin. But the look on the dad’s face, his tone of voice and the character he revealed through the words he used, stayed with me for longer than I would have liked. Fatness isn’t contagious, just as blackness isn’t either. But the white gaze despises both of those things. The white gaze says the worst possible thing that could happen is to be black and/or fat. Unfortunately that gaze has been internalised by people of colour too, and on ocassion I feel included in that thought process.
But other times I don’t. Other times I feel positive about being a black, fat and nonbinary person. I even wrote a zine about it in happier times. You can buy it here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/222492767/body-imagefatness-and-blackness?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=body%20image,%20fatness%20and%20blackness&ref=sr_gallery_1
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My heart is still beating.
It’s a political event;
This desire to be here,
To keep breathing.
I want to live.
.
I want to be happy when my eyes
Welcome sleeping.
I want to rest in peace,
Long night hours I’m keeping.
My only torment: a sweaty pillow.
I’ve been unknowingly drooling.
I want to live.
.
Rush me to a hospital bed.
Blood transfusion, see it dripping.
The burn of a scalpel, my only proof,
I’m still capable of feeling.
Strap me down, see me raw
From incessantly screaming:
I want to live!
.
If the shadows in the corners
Rise up around me, all consuming.
If this body, fat and brown
Brings nothing but pain unrelenting,
Then let this pain be my only proof
My heart’s indeed still beating.
Fear and dread will make my brain
Crackle with terrible feeling.
I want to be alive,
Even when my life is only fleeting.
****
Being present and visible is something that I often struggle with. There have been countless incidents in my life when I’ve been told, “Are you sure you’re in the right place?” This doesn’t happen when I’m lost, but almost every time I go to a queer space, or a white-dominated space (which is often the same thing). After a while I start wondering if there is another place I could be. I keep searching, hoping to be in a more accepting environment, but it hasn’t happened yet. I suppose the thing that has changed is me wanting to stick around when I feel so unwelcome. Biphobia, racism, fatphobia, class-hatred are some of the things that I am bombarded with on a daily basis. It gets tiring. It only adds to me feeling like crap. I don’t know if things will improve, but I don’t just want to exist. I want to be happy to be here: happy to be alive.