My long, slow breakup with the fat community.
I’m in a long, slow breakup with the fat community I’ve known on Instagram.
Some of this is just the normal sort of drifting that can happen with any community or interest; there have been other communities I drifted away from in the past. It’s normal and happens for many people; people change, movements change, communities change. But I also have a long list of issues I recognize, and they bother me more and more. My friend Shannon (@fringeish) recently summarized the experience very well: “More and more, I find that what I think is moral, ethical, and right doesn’t seem to mesh with a lot of other fat activists or ‘liberal’ people think is okay, and it’s becoming increasingly isolating.” Let’s jump in and talk about some reasons I and my peers feel this way: ableism, gender, trauma bonding, limitations in online activism, discomfort around sex, and capitalism.
Ableism
A lot of feeling dissatisfied and unwelcome in the fat community is being autistic in neuroconforming spaces. To be fair, this happens for me outside of the fat community; I almost always feel immediately out of place at most in-person events or online when they are mostly neurotypical people, whether it’s a kid’s birthday party or a fat pop-up shop. I don’t think it’s someone else’s job to make spaces accessible for me socially, but I do wish there was more consideration given to folks who are sensory-sensitive in designing events and their spaces, as well as more understanding/patience for folks like me who struggle in social situations.
There are other access issues, too: the last fat event I attended wasn’t mobility aid-friendly, and very few people were masking in a very crowded venue. I’m right there with the folks who are struggling to mask more often; I know I’m letting down people I care about by not masking more often. It’s very hard for me to single myself out by masking in a social setting where most are not. So many folks are left behind when we do this, and that’s a function of ableism at large, regardless of the reasons. I suspect there are other ableism issues at play in the fat community that I’m probably oblivious to due to privilege; suffice it to say that there is always another stone to uncover regarding ableism.
Gender
Part of my rough experiences is the fat community being women-focused. Even though I trend femme in presentation, I’m transgendered and nonbinary. I don’t like the casual inclusion of trans-nonbinary fatties into “women’s” groups or spaces. There are a lot of excellently written articles about why this is yucky; check out “Why ‘Womxn’ is a Harmful Term to Trans and Non-Binary Femmes” by Alexandra Chandra or this post by Chandra and Blair Imani.
When we’re not being included hurtfully, we’re excluded by omission or in TERFy ways; fat trans women are rarely included in broader fat community discourse around all kinds of body liberation. The folks I primarily see talking about the body politic of transfemmes, transfats, and race live those intersections of identity themselves. It’s not that the fat community is totally without these voices, but that the loudest voices are still primarily white women and smaller fats.
Trauma Bonding and Toxic Individualism
Ah, trauma bonding. I feel like so much of the fat community is focused around sharing individual stories of fatphobic trauma, and identifying with each other around those stories. I have done this for most of my life, too; I’m very new to seeing trauma outside of myself after years of somatic experiencing therapy.
I see it everywhere, not just in the fat community. Dr. Devon Price talks about this in a recent Tumblr post. Basically, American individualism is used to keep us from creating unions and general movements to advocate for better treatment. I think this attitude has been successfully pushed into many activist and advocacy communities; I believed for years that if I just got as vulnerable and tender as possible in telling my stories of abuse, I would change minds. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. But posts about harassment and abuse get the most attention, both positive and negative.
It’s not that we shouldn’t share our stories or ask friends to rally around us. We should! I think some of the better acts of the fat community are when it can mobilize on an action: one major one is helping people get social media accounts back when they’ve been wrongly banned. This is important for many fat sex workers and small business owners as social media is their main income, and losing it means losing food or shelter. I’ve also seen some great calls for mutual aid in sharing clothes and money between fat folks. These are, of course, anecdotal, and I don’t know how successful they are on average, but they at least seem to have chances of being successful.
But, the limitations seem obvious looking back at them: when there’s a call for fat people to comment on a business page to demand larger sizes or calls to try and hold national brands to account for poor treatment of fat people, it does not go well. It fizzles quickly, is ignored, or brands delete comments. Our collective power is very limited by being online.
Discomfort Around Sex
I’ve been especially frustrated with how actively the fat community ignores or tries to distance itself from fat sex workers and fat kinksters. I guess that this matches the generally negative view of sex we have in America, stemming from way back to our very white, Puritan roots. If you want a lengthy breakdown, Sabrina Strings’ book Fearing the Black Body extensively explains how fatness became linked with race and immorality in white European culture, which got brought to the good ol’ USA. There’s a throughline there to today and the way the online fat community handles discussions about bodies, sex, and pleasure.
There’s a lot of anxiety in the fat community over fat kinksters and fat fetishization; many people online get very angry at strangers following them because they’re pursued or plagued by romance-skewed phishers or online sexual predators. I feel like it should be obvious, but for clarity: predatory behavior is always wrong.
AND — predatory behavior is often associated with fat kinks. I understand how many associate the two things, but kink isn’t automatically fetishization or objectification. Even if it was, fat people aren’t a monolith: many fat folks find healing around fatphobic trauma through fat kink and fat fetish.
There have been many kinks, including fat pleasure as kink, that I have been profoundly uncomfortable with. I’ve taken the time to speak with people who enjoy them, learned more about the kinks, and made efforts to stay regulated when I encounter it. I could do these things in fat communities and with fat friends who were kind enough to help me through that process with patience — big shout out to @Boar.lord and her support community. As a result, I’ve seen that most of my discomfort is linked to my own internalized fatphobia, ableism, and sex negativity. Confronting that truth has made it easier to approach fat kink (and other kinks) with curiosity and, ultimately, enabled me to have sexual fat experiences that have given me moments of gender euphoria, which is rare.
Political, Capitalist Hellscape
Many larger-platformed folks in the fat community turn to setting up paid workshops and retreats. I like the idea of retreats and workshops. I’ve attended a few, wanted to attend more, and spent money on it. I even organized one a few years ago!
They inherently gatekeep the experiences; many retreats and paid community events work to keep costs down, offering sliding scale pricing, or offering community slots intended to be funded by other ticket purchasers. I’m glad people are making these efforts, and the events are still inaccessible to many. I’ve also had some interactions that left bad tastes in my mouth — people asking me to buy into their communities because they want me in their community as a peer counselor type role. I’ve also felt profoundly taken advantage of by a bigger-name influencer for editing and ghostwriting. I also take issue with a variety of anti-diet dieticians and nutritionists offering specialty knowledge about fat bodies and fat recoveries for a price. We’re all living within a capitalist system — exploiting each other happens by default. I don’t really blame folks for it happening, but it still adds to my disappointment in the fat community at large.
Politically, a lot of the fat community are a wee bit radical — but mostly to achieve in securing their own social, cultural privileges. Less privileged identities and roles that are already ignored or tolerated will be left behind as life gets harder for all humans. As Shannon (@Fringeish) says, “A lot of the small problems are quickly going to become big problems politically as we head towards fascism. People don’t care if you’re fat, if you’re gay, if you’re trans, if you’re neurodivergent; you’re all the same to them. And we can’t even take care of each other. I’m overwhelmed with the lack of foresight and care in our communities. It’s isolating and it’s frustrating and it’s scary.”
Rigidity
If anything is certain in life, it’s that things always change: minds, bodies, movements, and communities. I recognize that most of my disappointment and dissatisfaction with the fat community is due to my own change. What served me very well in 2010 and 2015 now feels limiting now. I wish the community could grow with me; I’ve become more isolated in the fat community specifically because I’ve tried to bring others with me.
I feel like a little lizard; I’ve shed a skin that I’ve been wearing a long, long time. It’s scary, and new, and exciting. When I wiggled out of the old skin, I looked around and found that I was standing in a room full of other lizards, most of them also in these constrictive skins that could come off. I’ve tried to tell people, hey, you are ready to grow! You can shed that skin! But people aren’t ready yet. So they get angry, hurt, or both.
I know I have endless skins to shed and grow anew. I don’t think I’m “further” along than anyone. It’s just change.
I don’t plan on leaving the fat community like there’s an expiration date; there are still plenty of fat people I want to follow on social media, for cute content or because they’re friends. I realize these words may piss off or hurt people, and that part sucks (or, be completely ignored). I wish it wouldn’t. I wish there weren’t so many issues bothering me. I wish I could bring you all to wherever the next chapter goes. I know some of you will, and I’m glad for it.
But why write all this down, if I don’t feel superior and I’m not making some big cutting off? Still hoping that sharing my story might change a few minds, and wanting to be more fully and authentically showing up as myself. I want to be seen.
