why i can't predict the weather past the storm

Solidarity

meloukhia:

Thinking about intersections between fatness and disability today, because they are there, and there are many ties between ableism and fat hatred. There’s a lot of ableism in the good fatty/bad fatty dichotomy, in the obligation to be healthy put on fat folks who are told it’s okay if they’re fat as long as they are healthy, in the insistence that fat people can be fat if they’re good, if they exercise and eat the right things and check the right boxes. 

And it’s interesting to see the same kind of hateful language used against both fat folks and people with disabilities (and, of course, those who share both identities). The exact same arguments are used to exclude people from public spaces, to tell them they do not belong, to insist that they are not welcome. NPR tells me that ‘one in three adults are obese’ and statistically around 20% of the population is disabled. These are not small numbers of people; fat people, and people with disabilities, are everywhere, and not going away. 

Yet the same rhetoric comes up over and over and over again. ‘Drain on the system.’ ‘Lazy.’ ‘Choosing to be a burden.’ ‘Should just work harder.’ ‘Be more like the model fat/disabled person.’ ‘It’s too expensive to accommodate your needs.’ ‘Businesses would go bankrupt if they had to cater to people like you.’ ‘You must not be that fat/disabled if…’ ‘You’re being unreasonable with your expectations.’ ‘Oh, I wasn’t talking about you, dear, but the other fat/disabled people.’ ‘It’s gross, no one wants to see that.’ ‘You have to accept your limitations.’ ‘You’re setting a bad example.’ 

That’s why the fat and disability communities need to be working in solidarity, because we have a lot in common, and together, we could accomplish a whole heck of a lot. That’s why I proudly hold hands with my fat comrades. And that’s why I want to make sure people living at the intersection, those who are both fat and disabled, are not left out by either community. 

This is a really good point & really interesting—because even when I am reading/writing about mental illness, I’m not thinking of myself as a fat crazy person, and when I’m doing fat activism, I’m not thinking about doing it as a crazy fat person. Part of it is that I’ve come really really far mental health-wise in the last year. I’ve learned to manage my anxiety really effectively and I’ve done such a good job normalizing living with anxiety that a lot of the time it’s invisible even to me. It’s only once or twice a week that something happens that makes me remember “oh, most people’s brains are NOT like this,” whereas I am constantly reminded of my fat on the bus, in the store, etc. Food for thought, for sure.

(Source: se-smith)

About “productivity”.

definatalie:

au-ton-o-my:

tahlalaliaaa:

waiflike:

youarenotyou:

What does it mean to be “productive”?

As someone who has struggled with life-long depression, and other problems that cause a depletion of spoons, one of the ways that I’ve shamed myself most is with this idea of productivity: feeling low when I believe I haven’t been productive enough. And I hear this a lot from other people too, especially people with disabilities.

The notion of productivity is rooted in capitalist (and, it follows, ableist) ideas about an individual’s value. It is important that we be “productive”, not only when we are at work, but at all times. And what does it mean to be productive? When we are hard on ourselves for not being productive enough, what do we mean? We can try to define what productivity means for ourselves on an individual level, but I don’t believe we can separate it from the aforementioned capitalist and ableist ideas. Especially for those of us struggling with disabilities, I think this is one of the biggest, most common, and frequently unchallenged ways of internalizing ableism and perpetuating it on ourselves and others.

Defining what productivity means might be easier if we look at what it isn’t. Sitting online all day, playing games, watching television, watching movies, sleeping, relaxing, doing anything passive – I’ve seen all of these things frequently branded as “unproductive” when people criticize themselves (or others) for how they use their non-working/unstructured time. Things that don’t have a clearly defined goal. Do you have a huge to-do list that doesn’t include taking time out of the day and being kind to yourself? Do you typically not cross off most of the things on that list, and then feel upset over it, like you’ve wasted your day?

Productivity, for you, might mean engaging in active hobbies or running errands. It might mean working non-stop at multiple jobs, constant research, having several projects on the go, organizing and initiating rallies, or conducting one workshop after another. Being “productive” never includes self care. I see many creative people who are hard on themselves for not producing enough, especially if their reason for not doing so involves mental health struggles. As if we are mini assembly lines. Subconsciously comparing ourselves to mass production factories, which we will never be able to imitate because of the limitations of being a single person.

Capitalism has seeped into our lives so deeply that we don’t even realize what we’re doing when we talk about wanting to be more productive or shame ourselves for not being productive enough. We forget to take time to relax and take care of ourselves because we are so concerned with meeting quotas in our heads for productivity. Do your self-care rituals stand in opposition to your ideas of what productivity looks like? Why isn’t it productive to take care of ourselves?

Let’s stop pushing ourselves beyond our limits. Let’s fight back against this notion of productivity, against the idea that our value lies in what we “get done” every day. Let’s start working on loving ourselves as we are and giving ourselves some breathing room.

why have i never reblogged this before?

I needed to read this today. It is so relevant.

something something about how productivity is so interlinked with attraction and something something about how all my productivity these days is through self-care and in my head and working things out and getting healthy and a lot of it isn’t physical and can’t be seen and sometimes this makes me feel silly around others who are doing a lot and getting attention for it something something i don’t have many words for this yet

I beat myself up so much for not being productive. This is something I should read when I start feeling bad.

Why using my energy to do psychological work instead of put away my laundry is a valid decision.

sharpclause:

theinbetweenie:

marilynwann:

sharpclause:

The problem with “I am a healthy fat person who is here to refute your logic” is that you don’t break the paradigm of health supremicists. You redraw that line between the deserving and the undeserving, only this time instead of being between thin and fat, it is between healthy…

In my view, there are two separate things: 1. Using examples to break stereotypes (whether it’s healthy or physically active fat people or sedentary or unhealthy thin people); 2. the paradigm of Health At Every Size, which is based on the idea that people of all sizes can work toward their own best health without having to lose weight. Health At Every Size, in my view, recognizes that people will inevitably face injury and illness, and it offers a non-blaming way for people to navigate embodiment.

I haven’t reblogged this post-chain because I’ve been unsure how to address it, but I think Marilyn Wann has expressed how I feel about HAES. The idea isn’t that everyone can have “perfect” health (in fact, I expect that few, if any, people have zero health concerns), but rather that fatness doesn’t preclude being healthy and that weight loss isn’t necessary to try and take steps to get healthier. This doesn’t mean there won’t be impediments, nor does it mean that everyone capable of being active in the ways that many cultures expect.

I’ve been out of this trying to come up with a follow up post, but my original point was that counteracting the “I shouldn’t have to pay for fat people with my health insurance money” with “but some of us are healthy” is a dangerous tactic to take.

People like this are looking for excuses to separate who they feel are the deserving from the undeserving. Coming back with “but, but, but, I’m healthy, I worked hard, I deserve health care” really does send the message that those of us who don’t work hard, aren’t healthy, or don’t practice HAES are less deserving. Even if that’s not what you meant at all, because people have thirty second soundbite minds, especially people who want to hold on to bigoted views. If you say “health at every size” to them, they don’t usually go look that up, research it, or even hear the “at every size” part. They’re not hearing “based on personal goals and metrics, working within what you’re capable of doing, and understanding that it’s not a moral imperative” they hear “health”. Full stop.

I fully believe in HAES, in weight neutral approaches to personal health care, in joyful movement and eating intuitively. I just don’t think we should be talking about it with people who have determined that SOME people are deserving of health care and SOME people aren’t, because it doesn’t truly challenge their bigotry.

Someone else responded to this thread (there’s hundreds of reblogs, I’m still reading everything) that they didn’t think that we should be saying “it’s OK to be unhealthy” and I have to ask you, why?

Why do rights and dignity only apply to the people who make choices you personally approve of? Either you believe in bodily autonomy, or you don’t. Either people own their bodies and get to make their own private choices, or they don’t. Yes, it really is ableism to start encroaching on autonomy. These exact arguments are used to deny disabled people autonomy and agency every single day. People are still, yes still, forcibly sterilized, forcibly incarcerated, abused and neglected in institutions and nursing homes because they were not trusted to make their own health care and reproductive decisions. If you do not believe that health is a private matter, you help to foster a culture that perpetuates the worst kind of abuses in the name of “concern”. You have no place, no right, to concern yourself with the health of a complete stranger.

Yes, a mandate to be healthy or to try to be healthy is inherently and inescapably ableist. I highly recommend reading every article at FWD, reading through the archives at this ain’t livin’ (especially the health and disability tags), and reading the articles about health written by meowser at Fat Fu. Listen to the voices at the intersection of fat, health, and disability. Think about what has been said the next time someone brings up who is deserving and who is undeserving of health care. Don’t come back to them with how you are personally deserving, instead challenge them about the very roots of their bigotry. Remember that these people are trying to determine who is and who is not deserving of life itself. The American discussion over health care and health insurance is literally a discussion over who deserves to live and die, please think about who gets left out if we only focus on those who are lucky enough to be healthy.

And I do mean lucky. Health is still largely a factor of access, economic factors, environmental factors, and genetics. Narratives about “personal responsibility” are quite popular because they allow individuals with privilege to ignore systemic oppressions that create disease and ill health. Food deserts, unsafe and unwalkable cities, environmental toxins, rural isolation, lack of access to preventative health care, lack of appropriate health care due to provider incompetence and bias, lack of funding for disease research, pharmaceutical companies prioritizing profits over people… That’s not even getting into the enormous effects that racism and classism have on individuals and communities or the stigmatization of mental and physical disabilities that serves to keep disabled people ostracized and impoverished. I’d go so far as to say a mandate for health is not only ableist, it ties into every other oppression. The problem, as always, is systemic. Individual solutions never do anything to erase systemic oppressions.

(I apologize for running a little long on this reply, all of this has been building for many days. I really didn’t expect the response to be so overwhelming. How do SJ people who are “Tumblr famous” even manage it? My hat is off to you, gentlefolk.)

Confidential to the LA Times

meloukhia:

Bite me. 

I was just sitting here wondering if you were going to start this circulating on Tumblr or if I should.

Maybe fatties tend to have high blood pressure because we’re constantly dealing with shit like this. This is especially infuriating in the wake of #thingsfatpeoplearetold; I’ve already Tweeted the link using that hashtag. I just don’t even know what to say, though. I could talk, again, about how diets don’t work and long-term weight loss through diet and exercise is unsustainable for 95% of the population. I could point out that it is possible to be both fat and healthy. I could point to the problems with the assumption that a given fat person has the money and time to follow a doctor’s weight-loss plan, and the energy and physical ability to prepare low-calorie, low-fat and/or low-carbohydrate foods and to exercise. In many ways, a fat tax would be a regressive tax paid disproportionately by poor people and people with disabilities. NOT OKAY.

(Source: se-smith)