This post is really helpful in looking at body acceptance (and also acceptance on all ranges of mind and mood typicality – my most salient disability falls here.) I’ve been telling people about it since I read it yesterday.

“Some people argue that it’s better to focus on small steps, like getting society to accept fat people, before introducing people to the idea that there are different kinds of fat people with different kinds of needs.”

This is crap. This is total crap. Activist history is riddled with these promises. And it never, never, never gets to the second step. That’s not change, that’s not solidarity, that’s just narcissistic activism so that the fatties at the top can have the same privileges as the skinnies at the top. If there was one thing I could tell new activists, one message I could press on their minds, it would be /Do not accept part in or give support to any movement that tells you to wait your turn./

“Sizeism may not be as entrenched in the disability community as ableism is in the size acceptance movement, but it’s there.”

How have you been measuring this?
Quixotess´s last blog ..Scholastic Achievement

I am actually hoping to go to law school with a focus in disability studies and civil rights to work in some sort of FA capacity. Disability studies (in a legal context) provides an established framework to talk about fat stuff (they are both about body diversity). I don’t necessarily think this is the best approach for “total liberation” but I would like to get my fat stiff fingers into this part of the law.

I’ve identified as fat for a long time but my disability is relatively new. Since it involves needing a lot of rest and having mobility issues I often assume that people are thinking “oh, she’s not disabled, she’s just fat which is why she can’t keep up” (My own IO – internalized oppression – says the same thing.) Even though I am totally fine with not being able to keep up “just” because I’m fat. I feel like I have too much to say about this to be coherent.

I was “morbidly obese” but then found out I was celiac; changed my diet and lost 20% of my weight. Now I’m just “overweight.” And since 90% of my friends are fat I feel guilty for losing weight.

Wheelchair designers model their stuff around the “average person” (i.e, 180#, 5’8″, male). The equipment available for fatter wheelchair users is flimsy and uncomfortable.

This Disability Studies Quarterly article Resistance Training: Re-reading Fat Embodiment at a Women’s Gym is by Margaret Shalma, from an undergraduate disability studies class. In addition to raising some of the same questions we’ve been kicking around here, she provides a play-by-play examination of how she undid some of the disablist and sexist programming in her own head. Also, a bunch of references for those who like libraries.

Disability studies is the academic home of disability rights theorizing across all academic fields: DS thinkers work in literature, philosophy, medicine, media studies, and so forth. DSQ is available free, on line.
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When it comes to disability, I have epilepsy. Granted, it’s a severe form that has so far laughed at all attempts to control it. I have seizures several times a day. But when I’m not having a seizure, I’m able-bodied.

Right now, one way in which my fat and disability intersect is exercise. Overheating is a major seizure trigger for me. Last time I was on the treadmill, I overheated despite all my best efforts (huge fan, air conditioning, wet towel on the neck) and had a seizure. On a moving treadmill. It’s a miracle that all I got was a few bruises. I used to love swimming with my family until I had a seizure in the water and nobody was looking my way. Fortunately my sister noticed before I started inhaling water, but it was still damn scary.

So, I don’t exercise regularly. It’s hard to find something I can do and there’s always a niggling fear of having a seizure while I do exercise. I feel bad admitting this. After all, I can get up and move around. Do I really count as disabled? Do I really count as fat? People tell me that I do, but I feel guilty accepting it. It’s that whole “but other people have it so much worse than you do, you should just get over yourself, your problems don’t really count and YOU ARE JUST LAZY, ELECTROGIRL” complex. Sigh. It’s illogical, but I can’t seem to get rid of that mindset.

All of these comments are illustrating how much intersectionality there is between disability activism and size acceptance, in all sorts of directions. There are a lot of constructs colliding here and it’s really interesting to explore them.

Now I’m on a meds regimen where the side effects include weight loss. My chronic pain condition is being really painful and I don’t feel like eating a whole lot. So a lot of the weight I gained on the previous meds when I was hurting less has come off. This makes me both skinny and really unhealthy. My blood pressure is still high, my blood lipids profile is still ghastly. It’s permanently ghastly and I think I get it from my father’s side of the family; even in years I was vegetarian and drinking my coffee with soy milk the numbers didn’t change significantly. I haven’t done any of the things we’re supposed to do to become skinnier healthier prettier less offensive to the senses of people who actually matter. I get less exercise than I have in the past. I don’t go out of my way to eat approved foods (though I have a hard time remembering to eat at all; on okay days I might eat twice). I don’t weigh myself to see what my ‘progress’ is. I know what my weight is because I’m at the office of a doctor who wants to know my weight at least once a month.

I still get social cookies for it. Even from my GP who should know better. I hate it. I try to tell people who tell me how great I look “I didn’t do anything, I don’t deserve praise for it, this isn’t healthy” but the myth that skinny equals healthy is so ingrained I don’t know how much I’m heard. I worry a lot about what my losing weight communicates to other people; does the apparent ease with which I’ve become (unhealthy and) thin come with a big mess of shame? (I had a lot of the same guilt and anxiety about how little I had to do about my appearance when I started transitioning — the gap between internal and asserted gender identity and perceived gender identity is sometimes very large for trans people, especially trans women.)

Many of the people I love most in the world are fat and I love their fat because it’s part of them. (I’d love their less-fat if they lost weight too because that would be part of them. If they became a fat-hater after losing weight the way so many former smokers become anti-smoking zealots that might be a problem.) My wife is a fat woman and she’s gorgeous and sexy and pretty and desirable and she doesn’t think of herself as any of those things. She’s worked really hard for years to lose weight. I worry that she considers herself a failure for not losing it when I did. Relationships aren’t and shouldn’t be therapy but I hope I help her feel attractive and desirable at least sometimes.

Gah. Many many words, sorry. This is in my head a lot.
kaninchenzero´s last blog ..[Disability] How to Be a Good Doctor