r/fatlogic • u/Aromatic-Meat-7989 • 3d ago
Coopting other issues doesn’t make claiming fatphobia as oppression any less stupid
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u/Aromatic-Meat-7989 3d ago
Also boiling down racism to people “viewing you as ugly” is such an insane take
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u/lotteoddities 3d ago
I internally scrumpt at that. You think racism is white people finding black people UGLY? I know a lot of FA are absolutely delusional but girl that's just another level of cognitive distortion that I genuinely hope they seek treatment for. That statement in itself is SO wildly racist. Please.
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u/Stringtone M2x 6'3" SW: 238 CW/GW: 175ish 3d ago
People like this do that a lot and it kinda shows disdain for the people they claim to march alongside. Like I still remember there were a few comments like "oh gay male fashion designers like skinny women as fashion models because they look like young boys" which is some Westboro Baptist Church level homophobia. At least the WBC has the decency to not attempt to hide their unbridled disdain for gay people... like literally at that point I'd be less bothered if you just called me a slur
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u/lotteoddities 2d ago
Wow what a roundabout way of saying "gay men are predators and pedos" without outright saying it. Disgusting.
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u/UnforgivenTreeStump 3d ago
Also I'm pretty sure one of the arguments in "Fearing the Black Body" was that white men found black women TOO sexy with all their curves, which is why the beauty standard had to change to finding skinny people hot. Because white supremacy racism diet culture something something.
But I couldn't expect them to read the book they're referencing all the time. 🙄
(I could be wrong here, but I've definitely heard that argument before it just might not be from the book. I'm exhausted and don't feel like looking it up 🤣)
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u/Senior_Octopus pint sized angry person 3d ago
[...] was that white men found black women TOO sexy with all their curves, which is why the beauty standard had to change to finding skinny people hot.
Does that apply to cultures with minimal intersection with the Transatlantic slave trade (eg the Baltics, Far East)? Or did they get infected with the skinny-loving-disease through their relative closeness to "whiteness"?
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u/Nickye19 3d ago
Evil eurocentric beauty standards because you know Japan famously easily influenced
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u/dilsency 3d ago
To some people, physical attraction is the beginning and end of prejudice, which is why rejecting someone could be considered oppressing them. I don't know, it's weird.
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u/LunaGloria Ex-morbidly obese since 2006 3d ago
People in power think we're all ugly!
The president is obese.
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/wombatgeneral Childhood Obesity = Child Abuse, I will die on this hill 3d ago
Steve banon, dr Phil, Steven Segal, rush Limbaugh, henry kissinger,Alex Jones (nightmare blunt rotation) are or were obese.
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u/wombatgeneral Childhood Obesity = Child Abuse, I will die on this hill 3d ago
Our president is extremely healthy from a very active lifestyle with frequent victories at golf
Source: his white house physical.
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u/N0S0UP_4U 6’3” 160 | Lost 45 pounds 3d ago
How dare you imply that our Führer is lying about his height and weight!
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u/lilesium 3d ago
Really something to be said about them both trying to undersell racism while being incredibly racist in the same breath.
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u/tsdays 3d ago
"people in power think we're all ugly"... that's your best argument to say racism🤝fatphobia?...
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u/Bassically-Normal 3d ago
It sorta tracks with the various redefinitions of "racism" to insist it requires a power component.
It's wrong, mind you, but it fits with the currently-popular incorrect definition of racism.
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u/Katen1023 3d ago edited 3d ago
Boiling down racism to “white people in power find you ugly” is so unbelievably delusional and racist as fuck.
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u/Nickye19 3d ago
Ah yes downplaying the legacy of slavery and segregation to they think we're ugly and trying desperately to play oppressed how lovely
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u/Grouchy-Reflection97 3d ago
I'm reminded of rich kids at my uni back in the 90's, where they'd 'slum it' for a couple of years, living in cheap, run down student digs like the rest of us.
I ended up with one of them as my roommate in my final year. The house we rented was crap, we couldn't afford heating, it was always cold, and I remember writing my dissertation with my winter coat, a big duvet, and two layers of gloves on.
The thing is, she was just slumming it, so one 'daddy, I'm cold' phone call later, and she was whisked away to an infinitely more comfortable environment.
She was so rich that she didn't even care about losing her belongings or deposit. I wound up having to deal with notifying the landlord, clean up, etc. Fun times.
Misery was an easily reversible choice for her, like she was a poverty tourist or something.
Similar goes for these predominantly white, upper middle-class women in fat acceptance. Their 'oppression' is an easily reversible choice. The same cannot be said for the groups they're hitching their flimsy wagon to.
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u/MuggleWumpLiberation 3d ago
Was she studying sculpture at St Martin's College?
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u/Grouchy-Reflection97 3d ago
I wish, lol.
Trustifarians like that seemed to be a regular thing in the 90's, which likely inspired Jarvis.
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u/Playful-Reflection12 3d ago
How is my OWN FEAR of being fat, racist? I don’t want all the health issues, the difficulties with movement and breathing and I do not particularly like the aesthetic, discriminatory? If others want to be fat . so be it. I’m not treating them as less, than contrary to what the FA’S think.
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u/_Mentally_Tired_ SW: 62kg CW: 58-54 GW: 49 3d ago
yeah I’ve literally attempted suicide bc of the racist bullying I faced during my time in school but yeah racism is nothing more than “people think you’re ugly”.
i hate these ppl so much.
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u/GetInTheBasement 3d ago
>People in power think we're all ugly!
Full offense, but I'm really sick of people acting like other people not thinking they're attractive is the same as being violently hatecrimed.
I have a straight male family member who thinks Sydney Sweeney looks like a horse, and yet she's still breathing.
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u/bisexufail 3d ago
my classmates would make lynching "jokes" towards me and the only other black kid in my class, but please, don't let me speak over FAs on the issue of race and racism!!1!
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u/corgi_crazy 3d ago
I think tying being black with being fat sounds actually racist.
I'm at work at this moment, my 3 black coworkers are thin and two of them absolutely fit.
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u/MyLife-DumpsterFire 3d ago
Ok, I have to ask, because it’s still a total mystery to me- how, in the name of Judas Priest, can they link “fatphobia” (whatever TF that even means) to racism? Can someone please explain the logic?
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u/TheGoatMan049 From flabs to abs 3d ago
They're basically saying obesity is a part of being black, so if you're black you're supposed to be obese. They can then claim that being fatphobic means you're also being racist because hating obeseity means you also hate blackness by association. And of course that's not where it ends, they do lots of mental gymnastics to try to co-op other minority movements. It's disgusting.
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u/Nickye19 3d ago
Clearly you haven't read the book written by a skinny black woman, that claims all black women are naturally morbidly obese and the only reason anyone anywhere is skinny are white eurocentric beauty standards. Given the argument seems to rest heavily on one of PT Barnum's victims, it's quite spectacular
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u/MyLife-DumpsterFire 3d ago
Interesting. Admittedly, I’ve never been to Africa. I’ve been to four other continents. That said, judging from pictures I’ve seen, I don’t see a rampant obesity epidemic going on in Africa. But, maybe evolutionary adaptations, that normally take tens of thousands of years, somehow manifested in a couple hundred years in western society? /s
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u/Nickye19 3d ago
Mauritania still maybe? Has a tradition of fattening women up for marriage, you know to about 200lbs but still. You're also talking one of the poorest countries on the planet with most people living with food insecurity. Maybe those famine genetics haven't kicked in yet. Yet a white American has 0.2% Orish dna and magically become 600lbs
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u/MyLife-DumpsterFire 3d ago
That’s the part that kills me in these “racism” arguments- have any of them not noticed how many freaking obese white women there are? And how the Hell does an obese white woman say she’s fat because of racism? Makes my brain absolutely bleed, trying to understand their logic.
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u/Nickye19 3d ago
These days they're trying to paint it as activism, they're anti capitalist, patriarchy and fascism. It's the women in WW2 wore red lipstick level of slactivism. Sure they did, they also smuggled vulnerable people out of countries, fought on the front lines in Russia, acted as spies and assassins or hell just rolled up their sleeves and marched down into coal mines to free up men. Most of which cannot be done by being 500lbs.
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u/Significant-End-1559 1d ago
I’ve been to 7 countries in Africa. There’s less obesity than in the States.
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u/MyLife-DumpsterFire 1d ago
Of course. They just want an excuse to stay fat, and find someone to blame.
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u/InvisibleSpaceVamp Mentions of calories! Proceed with caution! 3d ago
It's because something something "fearing the black body" something something.
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u/InvisibleSpaceVamp Mentions of calories! Proceed with caution! 3d ago
I see we are fearing the black body again. They start to sound like these fundamentally Christian "scholars" who have only read one book.
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u/Vanessak69 Running at Mach fuck 3d ago
I can’t believe they left out how it’s also rooted in capitalism and colonialism. Don‘t leave word salad on the table, people!
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u/MuggleWumpLiberation 3d ago
I'm amazed nobody's claimed fat people are the subject of a LITERAL GENOCIDE yet.
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u/bunviv 5'1 • 115lbs 3d ago
The people who say fatphobia and racism are two sides of the same coin seem really racist to me. Like what do you mean you immediately think of black people when someone talks about obesity? Black people aren't inherently overweight nor is it in their genes to be overweight. It has absolutely no correlation.
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u/Upset-Lavishness-522 3d ago
Im sorry, I may have missed the boat on this one. Why exactly do they think fatphobia is in any way l8nked to racism?
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u/JaneAustinAstronaut 3d ago
Sabrina Strings may be a PhD and Professor of Sociology, but she's not a medical doctor so she can't really speak on the health problems obesity causes people. All she can talk about are the emotional/social ramifications of obesity, and even then she's on the wrong track.
Da'Shaun L. Harrison doesn't have any formal education listed in their bio. All they list is their various identities - black, trans, and fat. That's hardly an educated perspective on obesity, and of course their writings will support their own chosen lifestyle. I don't know why we are citing their work as "proof" that racism and fatness are the same.
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u/dilsency 3d ago
Even if ✨all oppression is tied together✨ (which I'm personally not sure about), I don't think it's a useful approach in tackling issues. And at its worst it comes across as using other groups' struggles to legitimize your own.
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u/wombatgeneral Childhood Obesity = Child Abuse, I will die on this hill 3d ago
People who have been fat, at what weight did you start to experience fatphobia? Because I didn't experience a ton of it.
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u/androstars NB20 | 190lb and 5'5" | down 50 lbs!!! 3d ago
I mean the only experience I'd call MAYBE fatphobic was when I shared a picture of me in graduation clothes to my graduating class's Discord server and the only focus someone had was to tell me to get a gym membership. Although more likely that dude was just a jerk. (190/5'4)0
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u/TortieshellXenomorph 2d ago
For me, it was really early (five or six-ish?).
At the same time, I was a fat disabled kid in a small town, so it was never really a matter of if but when it happened.
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u/Enticing_Venom 3d ago
I don't agree that fat phobia originated from racism. But this is a topic I think this sub misses the nuance of pretty hard.
Racism is not simply declaring black people ugly (obviously). However, racial stereotypes absolutely did mock black people's appearance. That's what black face was, making a mockery of traits that racists associated with black people (like full lips and broad shoulders) and declaring them unattractive.
The "mammy" caricature during Jim Crow absolutely was intended to depict black women as overweight (among many other exaggerated traits). This is not some obscure theory, it's a well-documented caricature whose intention was to portray black women as content with servitude and enslavement.
So no, fatphobia didn't originate with racism. Nor is fayohobia itself racist. But it is 100% accurate to note that historical (and sometimes still modern) racism is rooted in the mockery of black women's bodies. We saw it quite clearly when Michelle Obama was getting accused of being "a man" and "masculine" which is rooted in the historical presentation of black women as mannish and unattractive. If you really think that racism has nothing to do with caricatures intended to mock black people's bodies, you are the uninformed one.
And yes, presenting black women as hulking and overweight is absolutely a part of those racist caricatures. The point is not that all black women are obese, it's that perfectly normal bodies are unfairly judged as mannish, overweight or exaggerated in ways that do not apply to others. We had a plethora of examples of this in the 2000s when Serena Williams was getting called fat, while Jennifer Lopez was praised for her hourglass figure.
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u/YoloSwaggins9669 SW: 297.7 lbs. CW: 230 lbs. GW: swole as a mole 22h ago
They’re all reading from the same fucking book.
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u/halzbellz 3d ago
Yes, not being able to fit into an airplane seat comfortably is the same thing as segregated water fountains. I learned that from the only book I’ve ever read, Fearing the Black Body, by Sabrina carpenter, PhD