#and the fact you tolerate fatphobia - BECAUSE of that normalization. that men like the one who called me fat

[cryscal]

Because op's tags are just as important:

#like if im getting fatshamed. babe......... wake up#is there fat on my body? yes :)#btw this behavior wouldn't be okay even if I WAS overweight!!! that is my point!!!#it is both that people have no idea what weight is supposed to look like#and even if they DID... they do not seem to understand that PEOPLE ARE NOT DOLLS#YOU DO NOT GET TO TELL THEM HOW TO EXIST#if you respond anything akin to ''but raquel there IS an obesity epidemic''#you're blocked and reported.#go fucking DONATE TO A FOOD BANK THEN. volunteer in a food desert. start a free fitness program#GO GET A DEGREE AS A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL AND PRACTICE IN NUTRITION IN UNDERPRIVILEDGED LOCATIONS#FIGURE OUT HOW TO LOWER FOOD COSTS. FIGURE OUT HOW TO NORMALIZE AND STANDARDIZE#ACCESS TO FARM-FRESH FOOD. PROVIDE ACTUAL FREE ACCESS TO OUTSIDE ACTIVITIES#FIGURE OUT HOW TO TEACH PEOPLE HEALTHY CHOICE MAKING WHILE ALSO LOWERING THE COST OF MEALS.#THE AVERAGE GROCERY BILL OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN HAS QUADRUPILED IN THE LAST YEAR.#SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!!!!!!!!!#you don't want to help these people!!!!!#you want to bully them but still feel like a good person!#you want to be justified in your hatred of an entire CLASS of people!!!#you don't give a fuck about how it makes them feel!!!!#you care ONLY about whether or not YOU get to VIRTUE SIGNAL that YOURE so thin and pretty!!!!#it is BECAUSE of people like you#and the fact you tolerate fatphobia - BECAUSE of that normalization. that men like the one who called me fat#feel like they can get away with it.#bc there's a line for you where you WOULD be okay with it. where if i WASNT thin you'd be okay with it.#which means the line can always be pushed in a certain direction. and it's always going to appeal to male aesthetics.#''well you didn't deserve it'' maybe fucking NOBODY does babe. maybe we should just all agree not to comment on ppls bodies!!

Nobody deserves to be summarily judged by the shape of their bodies, any more than the color of their skin or their facial features.

no, but really, we need to talk about the casual objectification that has become the fallback discourse of the internet: if you're pretty and dressed nicely, you're a slut. and if you're even vaguely outside of their body standard, you're fucking disgusting.

too-frequently, people position sex workers as being "the problem". they sneer you're addicted to pornography, you don't know what a real woman looks like. but real women are in pornography. the real bodies on display are not the issue here: the issue is that other people feel extremely confident when commenting on someone's physique.

2000's super-thin is slowly worming its way back into the public ideal. recently i saw someone get told to "go for a run", despite the fact she was on the thinner side of average. not that it would ever be appropriate to say that: but it's kind of like sticker shock when you see it. people think that is fat? holy shit. do they just have no idea about things?

but what are you going to do about it? that's the problem, right. because chances are - you're a normal person. we can say normalize carrying fat on your body, but we are not the billion-dollar diet industry. we are not the billion-dollar fashion industry. we are just, like. people. who are trying to make content on the internet, without being treated shittily.

as someone who has been on both sides of things: you are treated better when you are thin and pretty. this is statistically correct. i am not saying that you cannot be bullied for being thin; i'm saying there are objective institutional biases against certain bodytypes. there are videos of men and women who lost weight all saying: i now know for a fact exactly how much worse you're treated. in the comments, some asshole inevitably says something akin to you deserved to be dehumanized when you were fat.

which means that ... the easiest thing to do is be pretty and thin. it is the path of least resistance, because of course it is, because any time you post a picture of yourself without a thigh gap, someone immediately comments something like you need to try a diet.

the other half is also dehumanizing though, huh, just in a different way. when i put on makeup and nice clothes, i am told i slept my way to the top as a professional. do you know how many women in STEM have told me they purposefully dress to "unimpress" because they already struggle to be taken seriously and if they're ever considered pretty - it for some reason takes away from their authority.

so they make it seem like it's your fault. you, existing in a body - it's your fault! if you didn't want shitty comments, don't have a body. they position us against each other like chess pieces; vying for male attention we don't even need.

and i can be an authority on this unless you think i'm fat and unattractive. when i am pretty and thin, i'm an activist. when i am just a normal person who makes a good point: i am immediately dismissed. nobody fucking believes you if you're not seen as attractive. you literally lose value. you cease to exist.

but the whole time, it feels like - is anyone actually grounded the fuck in reality? the line of "pretty and thin" keeps shifting. nobody seems to understand what "a normal weight" even looks like, because it's not something that exists - you cannot tell a person's health by looking at their body. even if you think you could tell that, even if you're sure a person is dangerously overweight - people are not your dolls. they do not need to be dressed up or displayed properly to soothe your aesthetics. you aren't concerned for them, you're stealing their agency. you don't get to say if they're "allowed" to take pictures and post them on the internet - you don't get to tell them how to exist.

people hide behind "the obesity epidemic" without any actual qualifications. they crow things about "normalizing unhealthiness".

but it's bullshit. i have visible abs. there is a pair of parallel lines on my body, even when i'm relaxed; where my obliques meet my abdominal wall. i am proud of this because it means i'm strong, because i overcame an eating disorder only to be ripped as fuck. it is genetic and physical luck that i even get any definition, i'm pleased as punch.

but it does mean that my abdominal wall sticks out a little bit. the other day i posted a video of myself dancing, and, for a moment, my shirt slipped. you could see a little bit of my stomach. i was cartwheeling to the floor. moments before this, i'd had my foot over my head.

a guy slid into my DMs. a row of vomiting emojis prefaced: you should really lose some weight before you think about dancing.

i stared at it for a long time. there was a time when i would have been triggered by this, where it would have encouraged me to starve myself. i would have ignored the fact i'm flexible, agile, good at jumping: i would have lost the weight for a stranger's passing comment. i would have found myself and my body fucking disgusting.

and for what? to please what? because why? so that he can exist in this world without an unchallenged eyeball? what would my self-hatred even accomplish? usually i write paragraphs. obviously. on this particular occasion, in this body i've been at war with for ages: i just felt exhausted.

it shouldn't be even worth saying. it shouldn't be hard to explain. all of this emotional turmoil when he cannot even comprehend the most basic truth: i am not an object on display for him.

[fatphobiabusters]

Mod Ade can you please share your experiences of being fat and intersex? Any challenges with family, healthcare, academia, peers, work etc...

If you loves are okay with me making long posts, absolutely. I don’t know if you already saw my previous answer, but I touched on the topic a bit here: http://fatphobiabusters.tumblr.com/post/162494359738/question-for-mod-ade-you-said-you-are-intersex It’s more about my experience in general being intersex, so I’ll try and correlate also being fat in this answer.

**TRIGGER WARNINGS- child abuse, fatphobia, fat shaming, trauma, menstruation, self-harm, homophobia, intersex erasure

I’ll start with family since it’s the biggest topic for me. I’ll try and keep this short as possible because I could write an entire novel here, but I’ll focus on the major points. Having my intersex birth covered up and force raised as cisgender female was already hell and has left me with a lot of emotional damage. Being fat on top of it only added to the mess. My father did not want another child, but my mom did (he had children with another woman, so I have a half brother and sister both 15 years older than me who he thought were perfect since they’re both cisgender and skinny). Much less did he want one that was so “imperfect”, the complete opposite of my older siblings. I come from a white, southern, Christian family, so you can fill in the gaps there of the standards that were expected of me if you know anything about the disturbing culture of the deep south. Long story short, I had one parent who told me I was everything, and one parent who made me believe I was nothing. My father would harass and shame me to the point that I was too afraid to eat much or anything in front of him. Sometimes he would threaten to do things to my mother and even physically abuse her if I didn’t do what he wanted. My mother felt sorry for me, but wouldn’t go against him because of it, and would feed me extra portions in secret. Basically, it messed my metabolism all to shit and I could never keep my weight down, no matter how much I was made to exercise, starved, or put on diets. Growing up I was constantly put on crash diet after crash dietbecause my father was never satisfied with my weight (or my appearance in general). I was never good enough for him, even though I look just like him. To this day, even though he says he loves me and misses me over the phone, he still harps on me about my weight/appearance and refuses to accept me as his son. My mom loves and supports me though and if it wasn’t for her I would just completely cut ties with my entire blood family. Most of my immediate family refuses to also accept that I’m intersex, much less a man, and are disgusted about my weight. And they wonder why I never come home to visit anymore. It contributed a lot to my development of DID and later self harm.

Healthcare has been a nightmare. I’ve had a bit better experience since I’ve been in California, but even then it’s still not been the best. At age 9, I had my first puberty, and with it my first period. I don’t remember much (I have a lot of amnesia among my childhood memories from my DID that I'm currently working through in therapy) but I do remember crying and just feeling wrong. As I got older, it got worse and worse. But because I was labeled cisgender female on all my papers and my family constantly reinforced that I was, I was simply told to “suck it up” and that it was “normal”. I never had a regular cycle, it came and went whenever. Sometimes 2 weeks, sometimes 4-5 and every now and then up to 6 or more. Every time it registered 8-10 on those pain scale charts you see at the doctors, but I had to endure and ignore it because I only got reprimanded when I complained. I dealt with this all the way until nearly turning 30, which at that point I was bleeding black and had large clots that were full of decayed tissue more than blood. Last year I was finally able to get everything checked out and it turns out I had an abnormally formed uterus. Because of my second puberty, it was almost working against itself and practically a “dying” organ. I was able to be evaluated and approved for a hysterectomy, and I’ve never felt better. Back to weight though, in NC whenever I was taken to the doctor they always recommended to my mom anything to make me lose weight because I was “too obese” for a child (especially a “girl”), even though I had no problem carrying my weight. As I got older the same story. I’ve been seen about the sciatica on my right side, and my messed up back in general from carrying heavy art portfolios and working warehouse/builder jobs for many years. Every time my weight has been brought up, especially when I popped out my knee cap due to twisting the wrong way because someone parked like an asshole and I couldn’t get in. I’ve found some healthcare in the past year that has been more fat friendly, but every time I have to go somewhere new or for something new I get nervous that they’re just solely going to make it about my weight and not address the actual problem, or give me a proper diagnosis because they’re too hung up on my size. Perfect health record as far as blood pressure, diseases, tests, etc. go, but let’s ignore all that and point out I’m fat and “do something about it.”

Academic wise was no better. Children can be cruel, especially to those seen as abnormal or different than them. Sex Ed was a joke and I didn’t get a proper lesson on it till college, where I leaned that it was okay not to “fit the box” and that gender and sexuality were not black and white. Until then I felt very out of place and not belonging to either gender because neither of them really fit what all I was experiencing. Because I was forced to identify as cisgender female, being fat and “unattractive” got me a lot of unwanted attention. My size kept me out of most physical fights though, as I’ve always been big at a young age. And when I hit my second puberty, started putting on even more muscle mass along with the fat. I was constantly teased and ousted though for being so “weird” looking. My fellow classmates absolutely could not accept the fact that I didn’t look like (according to backward standards) one specific gender or the other. It just got worse as I got older and my body physically started shifting more masculine. I was seen as a freak, showered in my clothes when we had to take group showers for band trips or gym class (which eventually caused such a ruckus they had to separate me entirely), and taunted constantly to see how far they could push a rise out of me. Cisgender boys were curious about, but also downright cruel to me. Cisgender girls were disgusted by and afraid of me. It eventually got to a point where everyone just wanted to know what was in my pants or what was wrong with me. Homophobic remarks started going hand in hand with insults about my weight and appearance. I became more and more numb and reclusive and my mental illness worsened. Still, I maintained good school work at least, spending a lot of time alone. Graduated Valedictorian in middle school, Salutatorian in high school, and completed a Bachelor’s degree at a 4 year liberal arts college.

Among my peers now, I feel that I’m seen most often in a positive light as I’ve changed a lot from my days spent back home and have built an entirely new life out here in California. I still sometimes get confusion upon meeting new people and at times have a negative experience in public with strangers who don’t know me regarding my weight and looks. But overall the experience is good and I am often well received when I come out as intersex or share parts of my expansive history. I believe mostly due to surrounding myself with safe and understanding people, while cutting out a lot of toxicity (as well as unlearning that same toxicity) from my life.

Work has been about the same as academics, except not quite as explicit since I was a young adult when I started working. At college and coming back home I had issues with gender, especially when I had to use the bathroom. I always had to go into the women’s, and it was never a pleasant experience. I was also made fun of a lot for being the youngest (and one of the biggest) on shift. When I went to work for Amazon in TN, it was the first time I consistently went to the men’s bathroom (I had done so out in public places where I knew no one knew me, but not frequently). When I got promoted and transferred out to Cali, I continued the tradition. I would be lying though if said that there weren’t times I was very nervous about going in there alone because I did get some rude remarks at times, but thankfully no one was willing to lose their job over starting a fight because they didn’t like me being in there. As an assistant manager, most of my associates liked me as a supervisor and were favorable in working with me because I was a fair and helpful, but no nonsense leader. I got misgendered often due to my androgynous appearance and the high turnover in the line of work, but I enforced the idea that I was very much a man and would not tolerate any phobic remarks otherwise. I did have some who did not like the idea of having a younger, fat, questionable gendered person running the department and managing them. But at the end of the day, what I said went so they either had to deal with it or go find their bigoted ass another job.

Thank you loves for reading up to this point if you have, and I’ll end on this. If no one else has ever told you or made you feel that way, you are beautiful and so important. You are valid, you are loved, you are somebody, and someone cares very much about you. Never let anyone take your self worth away and deny your existence.

Apologies again for the lengthy post. Thank you for the ask!

-Mod Ade