tobeabatman

[tobeabatman]

This is outside of what I normally post but I feel like this needs to be said:

If you guys see someone with brown patches on their neck area, that’s probably not a hickey nor do you have to comment on a stranger’s video talking about the supposed hickeys.

There are a lot of different types of skin’s hyperpigmentations that show up as discolored patches around neck area.

For example my mom has melasma on her neck that’s very obvious sometimes during summer time, and she has expressed many times how it’s annoying that people think it’s a hickey.

Personally I have acanthosis nigricans (which, btw, isn’t something you only get if you have diabetes, even though all medical professionals assume I have diabetes because of it and my weight (I have been to blood tests related to blood sugar and diabetes)) which is a type of hyperpigmentation that usually shows up around neck area (and also looks like dirt), and while my hyperpigmentation is not one that looks like a hickey, I am more aware of hyperpigmentation in general because of it.

I wish more people realized that discolored patches of skin are usually hyperpigmentation, not hickeys or dirt. for years my mom thought I just had a dirty neck and at some point she tried to wipe my hyperpigmentation off with force. She didn’t even believe me when I told her there was something called acanthosis nigricans that looked exactly like what I had💀 But that’s besides the point

This post has been brought to you by a random Pinterest video where many commentors were noticing brown patches on a guy’s neck and immediately assumed they were hickeys and then commented about it expressing shock.

[tobeabatman]

Hey, just a reminder: if you’re being fatphobic but using the word ”overweight” instead of ”obese” or ”fat”, you’re still being just as fatphobic. Just because you use language that *you think is better doesn’t erase the message or underlying meaning of what you’re saying.

*Many fat people prefer terms like fat or even chubby or plus-sized. I’ve noticed that usually thin people or people who lost weight and became thin are the ones to use the term overweight.

It reminds me of people who in arguments say that they understand they’re possibly being biased but say the thing anyway. Aka they’re like: ”I know I’m not a fat person, I know that have privilige over fat people as a thin person BUT…” I’ve had someone say this to me and it’s just… bro your bias still exists even if you’re more polite about it.

Hope this helps

[tobeabatman]

Plus size clothing modeled by… thin people?

Look, I won’t say that clothing brands hate fat people… but y’know that’s exactly what I’m implying here.

(The even & odd model is the biggest model I could find. I didn’t find any fat models modeling non-plus-size clothing).

No hate to any of these models, I’m absolutely just criticizing the brands behind them. What do you mean you’re making clothing specifically for bigger people and then you can’t even have proper fat models? Ahshshhshshfjjfkfkfk

[tobeabatman]

Finding art of fat people is so hard that even though I’ve promised myself that the moment I see a local artist with a print of a fat person I’ll buy the piece, I still haven’t managed to find a single artist locally (and I struggle to find artists who do so even internationally) who makes art of fat people.

Like I will purposfully go around in a market looking out for art of fat people, and I see no art of anyone who isn’t thin. I’ve also tried looking up art of fat bodies from local artists on the internet, and I still haven’t found anything.

And while I don’t personally blame any specific artist for doing this, it gets a bit more annoying when a small business that’s centered around feminist or leftist art, still has no art of fat people.

(Love you artists but kindly do better guys!)

[tobeabatman]

This is so true!

There’s definitely this sort of feeling of superiority a lot of thin people feel towards fat people, mostly subconsciously, because we’re larger than them (some fat people also feel this same towards other fat people who are larger than them). There’s also definitely this idea that fat people are failed thin people and that thin people are constantly fighting against becoming fat and winning, unlike fat people. I’ve posted a post kind of about this before where I said the following:

People who have always been thin, talk about weight-loss as if they are on an equal footing with fat people when it comes to becoming fat or losing weight.

They act like they’re constantly battling against fatness. They talk about things that can make someone fat and how to avoid them, as if fatness would catch them the second they slept badly or ate high calorie and fat foods for a week.

They act as if they’ve been fat themselves, and that they know exactly how fat people became fat, and how we could become thin ”again”. Even though they have no experience on living in fat bodies, they act as if they know us better; know our ”reasons” for being fat better than us.

Anyway. Much love and Toodles <3

Here’s a quick reminder to all the thin people out there: stop talking about fatness and fat people as if fat people didn’t exist and we weren’t literally right here.

Mostly I see this done whenever thin people talk about ”the obesity epidemic” or ”childhood obesity”. You are a bunch of thin people, a bunch of thin news anchors, a bunch of thin researchers, a bunch of thin commenters online…. Where are fat people’s opinions? Where are fat activists’ opinions? Is it proper journalism to only acknowledge the thin people and their words and their research?

Thin journalists and public figures and news anchors and what have you, milk money out of people by fear-mongering with fat bodies. Famous media doesn’t even want to talk about research that contradicts current ideas of fatness, or fat activists’ words, because readers’ (or watchers’/listeners’) hatred and fear gives them more money (and also less criticism). It pushes this one-sided narrative of fat people’s bodies onto us that thin people control almost completely.

Was the man who on public television said that fat people should try the diet of concentration camp victims, a fat person himself? F*ck no. But we give voice to people like him instead of giving voice to actual fat people (…reminds me of something called oppression).

Whenever you talk about fat people or fatness or weight, remind yourself that we fat people are literally right here. Your audience will never consist purely of thin people.

[tobeabatman]

From what I know (and I’m no expert (but neither are probably you)) all research and studies on fat people and bodies is based on bias.

We didn’t start studying fatness and fat bodies without any assumptions or biases. We started studying fat bodies because French biologists decided that fatness was a racial sign, and everything snowballed from there.

Yes, nowadays research on fat bodies is usually not focused on race. But we are still making the same assumption of fat being bad the old French eugenics and every researcher who came after them, has made.

When did we ever observe fatness without a lense of bias? Literally never. Fatness as a medical concern started because of racism and fat people nowadays are quite obviously treated worse than thin people, so there is automatically a lense of bias in all research of fat bodies and people. There is no neutral research on fatness.

And sure, not necessarily all biased research is false (and some might say all research is biased, although in this case we are talking of much more bias than what most studies have). But when we live in a biased society, any research can be used to justify further bias, and it doesn’t help when almost all of the research is written by biased thin people sponsored by biased thin people published on biased platforms.

There is no true objectivity when it comes to research, but to me it seems like the people who research fatness don’t even try to be unbiased (very unscientific).

Researchers make biased assumptions in their research that they don’t back-up with their own study or other people’s research: they just assume that well-known assumptions must be right. Researchers also use biased language (when has any fat person said that they prefer the term obese, even if it’s technically medical lingo). Researchers also just straight up forget to take into account things like how discrimination of fat people might affect their study results, even if that’s massively relevant to their study.

Sure, I’m just a random person who doesn’t work in the research field. But I’m also a random fat person unlike many of the researchers, and I would like an ounce of respect from studies that might be used to oppress people like me (this happening shouldn’t even be a concern in the first place).

[tobeabatman]

Here’s a quick reminder to all the thin people out there: stop talking about fatness and fat people as if fat people didn’t exist and we weren’t literally right here.

Mostly I see this done whenever thin people talk about ”the obesity epidemic” or ”childhood obesity”. You are a bunch of thin people, a bunch of thin news anchors, a bunch of thin researchers, a bunch of thin commenters online…. Where are fat people’s opinions? Where are fat activists’ opinions? Is it proper journalism to only acknowledge the thin people and their words and their research?

Thin journalists and public figures and news anchors and what have you, milk money out of people by fear-mongering with fat bodies. Famous media doesn’t even want to talk about research that contradicts current ideas of fatness, or fat activists’ words, because readers’ (or watchers’/listeners’) hatred and fear gives them more money (and also less criticism). It pushes this one-sided narrative of fat people’s bodies onto us that thin people control almost completely.

Was the man who on public television said that fat people should try the diet of concentration camp victims, a fat person himself? F*ck no. But we give voice to people like him instead of giving voice to actual fat people (…reminds me of something called oppression).

Whenever you talk about fat people or fatness or weight, remind yourself that we fat people are literally right here. Your audience will never consist purely of thin people.

[tobeabatman]

Freeform fat activist post

Did you know that weight discrimination has increased by 66 % during the last decade and is one of the only forms of discrimination actively condoned by society? (From Adressing weight stigma and fatphobia in public health by Amanda Montgomery, RD, LDN, at publichealth.uic.edu)

And it’s like, it makes me so mad. It makes me so angry to see a bunch of thin people spreading bs without our fat people’s opinions, worsening the social conditions of people like me. It makes me mad that the first time I experienced medical fatphobia was at age 7. It makes me mad that it feels like there’s nothing I can do.

I can’t go to public transport without hearing casual fatphobia, I can’t study without hearing fatphobia, I can’t go online without seeing fatphobia, I can’t even film certain things online because of fatphobia.

I try escapism. I read a bunch of books: No fat characters, casual fatphobic comments.

I watch a bunch of videos on Youtube: Most fat creators are disencouraged from filming by either the algorithm or by viewers. The left-over thin creators casually act like fat people are lesser-than, when something triggers the topic of fat people.

I flinch, I wait, whenever a topic comes up that could possibly elicit fatphobia. The word ”lifestyle choices” makes my heart beat just a bit faster.

At school, I have to sit through an entire 115 minute lesson on how fat people should lose weight. I am the only ”obese” kid in class, there is one overweight person besides me.

I can’t look the teacher in the eye for the whole class. All my future lessons I sit in his class thinking, ”You don’t say it out loud, but I think you think of me differently than my thin classmates”.

I surround myself activism. Disability justice, anti-racism, feminism, -ism -ism. Justice is important to me.

..But I notice there’s no attention to people like me. Even though there’s so many different communities, fat people have a small and incomplete one. Even my leftist friends don’t note our struggles.

I continue my activism, but I’m getting more tired.

Someone lists different communities, says that medical bias is bad against those groups. I notice that mentioning fat people would fit right alongside those other communities. But I remember we’re invisible.

Another person says that confidence is sexy. I think it must be easy to see it that way if you’re not statistically more likely to have lower self-esteem.

Third person is concerned about my mental health for living in a fatphobic society. ”Who am I supposed to get help from?” I ask. Body-positive therapists are easy to find, but most of them don’t understand the pressure of living in a body hated by most.

—

The future I want is where no one is oppressed. That includes fat people. Get rid of your ”what about” thinking, and realize that fat people are human too.

And if you’re fat, then you deserve none of the sh*t this world has manipulated you into thinking you deserve (until you change your body, of course). I know you most likely had super low self-esteem growing up, maybe you got bullied, maybe that bullying continued into your work life.

I wish I could say it gets better, that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. But for that, we need the help of everyone. Are you willing to help?

Thank you for reading.

[tobeabatman]

I hope that people don't forget about gaza once a ceasefire is reached. when the bombs stop falling, they will continue to need food, medicine, doctors, and supplies. the survivors will need aid urgently in the immediate aftermath. there are bodies to be counted, rubble to be cleared, fields to be tilled, buildings to be constructed. even as the people of gaza rebuild their lives, the trauma they've endured from this genocide will stay with them for generations. despite this, they will continue their fight for the liberation of all of palestine, as they always have been, and we must not forget them. the people of gaza will not be free until "israel" no longer exists, until all palestinians can live in their country free from subjugation, with equality and dignity. do not ever let the imperialists that funded and armed this genocide continue to spread lies about the palestinian people. do not ever let anyone forget that they tried to cover up and excuse this genocide at every turn. they will try to do it again. you must stand with the people of palestine forever.

[tobeabatman]

Aroace representation in The Other F Word: A Celebration Of The Fat And Fierce - book

This is the start page of Laina Spencer’s text in the book The Other F Word: A Celebration Of The Fat And Fierce (I absolutely love this book, it has texts from a lot of different writers and artists. There are more serious texts and then there are a little bit less serious texts).

As an ace person, I agree with Laina Spencer (she/they) as she talks about how fat-positive spaces are often s*x and romance focused and how asexual spaces aren’t automatically friendly to fat people (I’d say that the default is that they’re not friendly to fat people, period). I also get the thing they mention last about how there would be fewer creeps if their fatness was undesirable: I sometimes think that it’s glad I’m considered unattractive as a fat person if it keeps most creepy men away (of course this doesn’t outweight the negative social aspects of being fat).

Though Spencer does say that there’s more books with fat characters than ace characters or something along the lines. I mainly read online books and my idea of published books goes just about as far as the YA novel section in my local Finnish library does, and my view of the matter is a bit different.

I see a lot of ace characters online (Spencer does mention that a-spec characters seem to be especially thriving in indie books, and I agree), and the only good representation for fat characters I’ve seen has been in like 3 online comics. I haven’t read a published YA novel (and probably not really even an online novel even though I’ve consumed hundreds of them) with a well-represented young fat character yet— Maybe that’s because the catalogue at my local library is too small, or maybe that’s because I don’t read much YA anymore (and my memory of YA is based on what I read years ago). Anyway, what I know for sure is that the novels I read online include more ace characters than fat characters, and the physical books that I’ve read don’t really include fat characters either.

I’m saying this because I also want to add what I’ve observed on this matter as another fat ace person, I’m not mad that their view on the matter is different. And besides, publishing and online novels are two different distinct things.

Anyway, I have read some lovely other pieces from this book as well, but I wanted to highlight their work as I’m always happy to see other fat people who are ace too, and who understand the struggles of the asexual community not being inclusive of fat people, meanwhile fat activist (+body positivity) communities often center around the idea that all of us fat people are s*xual and need to empower ourselves s*xually (talking about stuff like how all fat bodies are hot, etc.).

I really recommend this book! :))

[tobeabatman]

This isn’t a strawman argument. Learn what strawman arguments are before you accuse someone of making them. A strawman argument would be one where someone argues e.g ”I love audio books” and someone else responds with ”So you hate reading books, then”. A strawman argument would require me to respond to someone else’s argument and manipulate it in a way that would be a misrepresentation of that person’s argument. I’m not doing that here.

(If by strawman you mean that you don’t like my comparison of trans people to fat people, then be my guest and refute my comparison if you have a better argument than just ”this is a strawman” when it’s not. Just mind you that I’m not cis. Anyway, I don’t blame you for confusing stuff with strawman arguments since a lot of people misuse the term. Just take this as educative: I like talking about logical fallacies.)

I won’t give a name-drop for the comic I was talking about just because I don’t want people to go and sh*t on the author, nor do I want any fans to sh*t on me. It’s not that I avoid saying names just because I don’t have any names to give. This comic specifically is published on Tapas and made by a pretty popular author. You might stumble upon it if you use Tapas.

To be fair, this type of r*pist stereotype (representing fat people as creeps) is way more common in queer er*tica (including comics and novels). But variations of the fatphobic creep stereotype are very pervasive in the mainstream, so of course it’s prevelant in all queer spaces and fiction as well (I remember another comic have also depicted old fat men as creepy, it just hasn’t been this extreme in any comics (excluding p*rn) that I’ve seen before( . E.g this Reddit post just makes me sad: https://www.reddit.com/r/PlusSize/comments/1f5eqm7/i_feel_like_a_creep/ .

None of this is exclusive to queer fiction. I’m just a fat queer person in queer spaces who’s tired of other minorities acting hypocritically biased towards us fat people, just because we’re not yet recognized as a minority. I also like to believe that other minorities have more empathy for change.

The fattie creep stereotype, aka authors be ashamed.

Tw: Mentions of r*pe + p*dophilia, short description of a fictional child getting k*dnapped by a p*dophile. Pretty extreme fatphobic comments.

At this point if you’re going to depict your p*dophile, s*x offender character as a fat person, you know what you’re doing. It’s not a coincidence that most of the time creepy men are depicted as fat in western novels and comics, when the author in question includes no other fat people in their stories.

And it baffles me because I strictly read queer romance. Like you authors can recognize queerphobia, but decide to turn a blind eye to another form of oppression (fatphobia)? Any of your readers would be disgusted if your creepy character was depicted as a trans woman, but suddenly it’s fine when the minority in question is fat people? (Do note that I’m not implying a creepy trans woman character is any more acceptable. It would be as gross.) Even though both fat men and trans women face a similar stereotypes that condemns both to be creepy p*dophilic r*pists?

I was reading a western comic earlier. In this comic a young child was k*dnapped by a fat creepy man. Here’s some comments from the comment section:

”Me, getting my guns and knives ready so I can k*ll that fat pig.”

”Get your fat*ss away from my baby.”

”Wtf this disgusting pig how dare you -”

”Just d*e p*dophile fatty.”

”F*cking fattie get away from my [character’s name].”

If you’re an author who makes a comic/novel that creates a safe environment for these horrible comments to arise, you should be ashamed of yourself. This was the only fat character in that person’s comic, and they oh just so happened to be fat? F*cking h*ll.

I know this is a rough topic, and I really hope that one day the sh*t we face as fat people gets better. It’s hard to keep hope knowing that fatphobia has gotten worse over the recent years, compared to other types of oppressions that have gotten better over the recent years. What we fat activists should focus on right now is empowering other fat people and finally getting recognized as a minority in the eyes of other marginalized groups. It’s not easy, but we can do it!

[tobeabatman]

The fattie creep stereotype, aka authors be ashamed.

Tw: Mentions of r*pe + p*dophilia, short description of a fictional child getting k*dnapped by a p*dophile. Pretty extreme fatphobic comments.

At this point if you’re going to depict your p*dophile, s*x offender character as a fat person, you know what you’re doing. It’s not a coincidence that most of the time creepy men are depicted as fat in western novels and comics, when the author in question includes no other fat people in their stories.

And it baffles me because I strictly read queer romance. Like you authors can recognize queerphobia, but decide to turn a blind eye to another form of oppression (fatphobia)? Any of your readers would be disgusted if your creepy character was depicted as a trans woman, but suddenly it’s fine when the minority in question is fat people? (Do note that I’m not implying a creepy trans woman character is any more acceptable. It would be as gross.) Even though both fat men and trans women face a similar stereotypes that condemns both to be creepy p*dophilic r*pists?

I was reading a western comic earlier. In this comic a young child was k*dnapped by a fat creepy man. Here’s some comments from the comment section:

”Me, getting my guns and knives ready so I can k*ll that fat pig.”

”Get your fat*ss away from my baby.”

”Wtf this disgusting pig how dare you -”

”Just d*e p*dophile fatty.”

”F*cking fattie get away from my [character’s name].”

If you’re an author who makes a comic/novel that creates a safe environment for these horrible comments to arise, you should be ashamed of yourself. This was the only fat character in that person’s comic, and they oh just so happened to be fat? F*cking h*ll.

I know this is a rough topic, and I really hope that one day the sh*t we face as fat people gets better. It’s hard to keep hope knowing that fatphobia has gotten worse over the recent years, compared to other types of oppressions that have gotten better over the recent years. What we fat activists should focus on right now is empowering other fat people and finally getting recognized as a minority in the eyes of other marginalized groups. It’s not easy, but we can do it!

[tobeabatman]

fatphobic propaganda

There’s this one video that was getting around at some point where a confident-looking female TikToker showed pictures of dead fat people, making the audience think that those dead fat people had all died recently due to fatness.

This video is very concerning because it’s a classic example of propaganda. The TikToker didn’t state that those people had died specifically due to fatness, nor did she state that those people had all died recently, back to back. She had made her audience assume that based on the format of the video.

As I checked out two of the fat people in the video (whose names were shown), I found out that the other one’s reason of death was never even publicized (she could have died from anything for all we can know) and the other person’s death happened 1-2 years after hers.

Now, these were just two people from the video, but the fact that the Tiktoker felt confident enough to show these two people’s names despite their deaths being at least a year apart (and despite the other person’s reason of death being unknown), tells me that it’s likely that the deaths of the rest of the people in the video weren’t close to each other either, and were probably also caused by other reasons than just being fat.

I could make a similar video featuring blonde influencers, and manipulate people into thinking that blonde influencers have a higher chance of dying than anyone else. Even if dead blonde influencers made up 1% of all blonde influencers, I could influence people to think that them dying is much more common than it actually is, by taking a small sample and by not showing influencers with any other hair color.

It’s very important to recognize this kind of brain f*ckery, not only because this is about fat people and tools of oppression that have been used throughout history to influence the masses, but also because stuff like this is very common when it comes to science, and especially line graphs.

It’s also very important to fact-check these sorts of videos when you see them. If the person can’t even show the names of the people they’re showing, you shouldn’t trust them regardless of whether they seem confident and charismatic. In fact, you shouldn’t trust anyone who is comfortable with showing images of dead people just to make a point, whether their point might be valid or not.

I’m talking about this because I saw one fat activist who was distressed due to this video, even though the person in the video was just spewing propaganda-like bs. I don’t know how many other people saw this video and felt distress over it, but I hope that this can make you all feel a bit more relieved.

Toodles!

[tobeabatman]

I’d just like to remind you that yes, it’s okay to question and reject obviously biased and badly conducted research on fat bodies.

You’re not a science denier for not liking research when its purpose is not to help you, but to make you seem inferior.

If we go 100 years back, all research on POC and women was conducted through a lense of bias. Research on fat people was similarly biased back then, but hasn’t changed for the better since.

And as you wouldn’t blame women claiming sexist research as biased and faulty, you shouldn’t blame fat people for pointing out fatphobia in research and claiming such research as biased and faulty.

Toodles!

[tobeabatman]

If you have any ideas of possible messages for fat-positive pins and stickers, I’d be very grateful if you wanted to share them!

Of course I have a long list of my own ideas as well, but I’d just like to know if you have any message you guys think would be important to get into a sticker/pin form so you can share them with the world.

If I ever start selling pins/stickers, they would have (pretty cheap) international shipping.

[tobeabatman]

It’s so wild to me that all research on fat people’s eating habits is like ”yeah, fat people eat more often and that’s what made them fat.”

This, alongside of all research on fat bodies, doesn’t take into consideration the fact that fat people face more bullying, are statistically more likely to have low self-esteem, more likely to be stressed, etc. We are predisposed to binge eating, compulsive eating and stress eating!

It’s not as simple as ”eating made someone fat”. Medical professionals, researchers, media, etc., forget that there’s never just one thing that attributes to our body’s features. No one’s getting fat just from eating, there are a ton of genetics and environmental factors (such as stress) involved!

Also ask any fat person you know and they’ll tell you that they’ve either been on a diet, are on a diet, or strongly thought about getting on a diet. This whole society is on a diet right now and no one’s eating as much as needed! Fat people might eat more than thin people, but do any of us eat enough? I’ve yet to see a research address this.

Also even if we fat people ate more than the ”normal amount”, then that warrants us to look into the biological differences between fat and thin bodies, and redefine what a ”normal amount” even is. We can’t starve fat people because society thinks it’s best if all of us are thin.

There’s like no research centered around biological differences between fat and thin bodies, that are actually working to make this world a better place for fat people.

Toodles!

[tobeabatman]

I heard that Finland’s getting our own fat activist/fat liberation organization called Läskisti, and I’m excited!

They don’t have a website or anything yet and just have an Instagram account with no content yet, so I’m crossing my fingers that the organization will become active (and stay active) at some point.