This is Thin Privilege

pip-says-hi:

thisisthinprivilege:

virtualcarrot:

fatphobiabusters:

alanaisalive:

wellllthatdidntwork:

thisisthinprivilege:

Would you still believe that a thin person who is disabled/physically disadvantaged from birth or a traumatic injury or has chronic pain is still more privileged than a fat person who has no disabilities or chronic pain?

Where do we draw the line between how much privilege somebody has or doesn’t have, and isn’t it unfair to assume all thin/thin-passing people are much more privileged than fat people simply by their size and not what you can or cannot physically see?

Mod response:

Go look up the concept of intersectionality, and come back either when you’re not playing gotcha, or when you can have a coherent and informed conversation. Because right now you’re full of shit one way or the other.

-MG

It sucks to be a thin disabled person because the world is not set up to accommodate disability well. But at least when I go get treatment for my disability, I can get healthcare without having to lose weight (or otherwise change lifestyle) first.

I may lack able-bodied privilege, but the intersection of disability and fat is much worse.

I’m fat and disabled. I have to pay twice as much for a wheelchair or crutches because cheaper ones are only designed for thin people. (Are thin people even aware that there is a max weight limit on all these things?)  And the ones I can get are in the lovely color options of grey or beige. 

I can’t find splints or braces for my dislocating joints because they don’t make them in my size in spite of the common narrative that being fat causes joint problems. If that’s true, surely there’s a huge waiting market for plus size splints and braces, yet I can’t find them.

If I use a wheelchair or mobility scooter or disabled seating people assume I’m just a lazy fatty and not really disabled. Or that being fat is my only disability (as if that’s a thing). I always have to measure how much abuse and side-eye I’m willing to endure before I use a mobility aid. 

I could go on. Being disabled sucks for all disabled people. Being fat doesn’t somehow make it easier. And tbh, I get more abuse for being fat than I do for being disabled. Like, airlines have to accommodate my disability by law, but they can still abuse me and kick me off a flight for being fat.

I just don’t get why people are so set on this sense of trying to be the ultimate check mate. Why would you want to put these groups against each other? What purpose does it serve? We can care about more than one thing at a time, we can care about ableism, fatphobia and the intersection of these things. People are complicated and these type of questions are so often from a disingenous place.

We need to stop seeing dogwhistles everywhere. This could just as well have been a genuine question from an ignorant person looking for information FROM A POLITICAL BLOG (and thus a good place to ask for info from). This isn’t a rando bothering a personal blog with dumbass questions.

That being said, at this point we need to acknowledge that thin people also experience medical issues. Thin privilege absolutely exists, up to a point. Thin people failing to find adequate care because they’re underweight and thus deemed healthy, that’s a problem.

Socially, while women are usually advantaged when it comes to thinness, thin men are likely to struggle with body image issues when compared to their chubby counter parts (I mean chubby; at a higher scale the social dynamic shifts around). Virility equals mass. See the way we talk about “dad bods".

(now, this may be an issue with the definition of “fatness”, which ranges from overweight to obesity, and those in no way have the same impact)

I say this not to negate or erase social fatphobia. I am merely begging for nuance. Truthfully, this would be a good time to remember that, especially in the medical field, most people falling outside of the statistical “norm” will get underwhelming care (diverse degrees of underwhelming care depending on their weight, but this is. not. a. competition.)

As for the intersectionality OP is talking about: what they mean is that fat people have a deck of cards stacked against them. Or, say, imagine a D&D dice roll. Well, fat people will have additional social fragilities to defend against every single time, when compared to medium weight people or thin ones. And a fat person may be lucky enough to succeed in all of their dice rolls, and the other two may fail theirs; it doesn’t change that originally, they had the bigger DnD handicap pertaining to their weight.

Otherwise, here’s the wiki about intersectionality. It’s a start to dive deeper.

This blog has NEVER been a good place for people to get answers to questions like that. It wasn’t ever designed to be. @artetolife founded this blog as a safe space for fat people to talk about what it’s like to be fat, not to answer the questions of the clueless. There are places that exist for that purpose. This is not one. If you don’t like it, then move the fuck along.

I’m going to quote from our FAQ here:

This comes up quite a bit, so I’m going to stop and explain something.

People send stuff in as suggestions, as concerns, as questions, as whatever, and some people are being sincere, but a lot of people who write in with the same thing and the same types of phrasing are being trolls, and go on to get nasty if we respond as if we’re sincere. We’ve been doing this for a while, and we know perfectly well what trolls sound like, and we don’t need any more nastiness in our inbox, because we already get a shitload. So when it sounds like a troll, we respond as if it is. And since most trolls reply to that with the hurt, “But I was just asking/commenting/whatever, why are you sooooo meeeeeeaaaaaan to meeeee?” we respond to that badly, too. And yeah, some of the people who respond that way are not trolls, but, again, we don’t have any way to know, and we don’t want to deal with the shit from trolls, we often just block them at that point, or continue to treat them as trolls. Because what’s the difference, practically speaking, between somebody intentionally trolling, and somebody who means it, but sounds exactly like a troll over several exchanges? They may feel differently, but they have the same effect on us either way.

Now, this blog isn’t busy like it was when I wrote that originally. But I’m still fucking sick of dealing with this shit. I’m not going to stop being sick of dealing with it. And it continues to be not my job to do so on this blog, so I’m going to continue to not do so here.

Sometimes I do choose to educate someone I think is being sincere, both here and elsewhere. But it doesn’t matter whether this question is “sincere” or not, because the question itself is fucked up. There are lots of resources out there that are better suited to explaining to that person why it’s fucked up than I am, and they should go find one of those.

I think the simplest, non-aggressive answer I could give the OP is this:

Stop thinking about privilege in terms of “more” and “less”.

A person who is thin and disabled does not have more, or less, privilege-in-general than a fat able-bodied person, because privilege-in-general does not exist. What they have, instead, is a different privilege, and different challenges and disadvantages.

It’s not a contest. Don’t try to compare every societal advantage side by side, hoping to prove which one’s better, because real life doesn’t work like that. The existence of fat people and the fat positivity movement and fat activism takes nothing away from thin disabled people. We are not enemies.

Well said!

virtualcarrot:

fatphobiabusters:

alanaisalive:

wellllthatdidntwork:

thisisthinprivilege:

Would you still believe that a thin person who is disabled/physically disadvantaged from birth or a traumatic injury or has chronic pain is still more privileged than a fat person who has no disabilities or chronic pain?

Where do we draw the line between how much privilege somebody has or doesn’t have, and isn’t it unfair to assume all thin/thin-passing people are much more privileged than fat people simply by their size and not what you can or cannot physically see?

Mod response:

Go look up the concept of intersectionality, and come back either when you’re not playing gotcha, or when you can have a coherent and informed conversation. Because right now you’re full of shit one way or the other.

-MG

It sucks to be a thin disabled person because the world is not set up to accommodate disability well. But at least when I go get treatment for my disability, I can get healthcare without having to lose weight (or otherwise change lifestyle) first.

I may lack able-bodied privilege, but the intersection of disability and fat is much worse.

I’m fat and disabled. I have to pay twice as much for a wheelchair or crutches because cheaper ones are only designed for thin people. (Are thin people even aware that there is a max weight limit on all these things?)  And the ones I can get are in the lovely color options of grey or beige. 

I can’t find splints or braces for my dislocating joints because they don’t make them in my size in spite of the common narrative that being fat causes joint problems. If that’s true, surely there’s a huge waiting market for plus size splints and braces, yet I can’t find them.

If I use a wheelchair or mobility scooter or disabled seating people assume I’m just a lazy fatty and not really disabled. Or that being fat is my only disability (as if that’s a thing). I always have to measure how much abuse and side-eye I’m willing to endure before I use a mobility aid. 

I could go on. Being disabled sucks for all disabled people. Being fat doesn’t somehow make it easier. And tbh, I get more abuse for being fat than I do for being disabled. Like, airlines have to accommodate my disability by law, but they can still abuse me and kick me off a flight for being fat.

I just don’t get why people are so set on this sense of trying to be the ultimate check mate. Why would you want to put these groups against each other? What purpose does it serve? We can care about more than one thing at a time, we can care about ableism, fatphobia and the intersection of these things. People are complicated and these type of questions are so often from a disingenous place.

We need to stop seeing dogwhistles everywhere. This could just as well have been a genuine question from an ignorant person looking for information FROM A POLITICAL BLOG (and thus a good place to ask for info from). This isn’t a rando bothering a personal blog with dumbass questions.

That being said, at this point we need to acknowledge that thin people also experience medical issues. Thin privilege absolutely exists, up to a point. Thin people failing to find adequate care because they’re underweight and thus deemed healthy, that’s a problem.

Socially, while women are usually advantaged when it comes to thinness, thin men are likely to struggle with body image issues when compared to their chubby counter parts (I mean chubby; at a higher scale the social dynamic shifts around). Virility equals mass. See the way we talk about “dad bods".

(now, this may be an issue with the definition of “fatness”, which ranges from overweight to obesity, and those in no way have the same impact)

I say this not to negate or erase social fatphobia. I am merely begging for nuance. Truthfully, this would be a good time to remember that, especially in the medical field, most people falling outside of the statistical “norm” will get underwhelming care (diverse degrees of underwhelming care depending on their weight, but this is. not. a. competition.)

As for the intersectionality OP is talking about: what they mean is that fat people have a deck of cards stacked against them. Or, say, imagine a D&D dice roll. Well, fat people will have additional social fragilities to defend against every single time, when compared to medium weight people or thin ones. And a fat person may be lucky enough to succeed in all of their dice rolls, and the other two may fail theirs; it doesn’t change that originally, they had the bigger DnD handicap pertaining to their weight.

Otherwise, here’s the wiki about intersectionality. It’s a start to dive deeper.

This blog has NEVER been a good place for people to get answers to questions like that. It wasn’t ever designed to be. @artetolife founded this blog as a safe space for fat people to talk about what it’s like to be fat, not to answer the questions of the clueless. There are places that exist for that purpose. This is not one. If you don’t like it, then move the fuck along.

I’m going to quote from our FAQ here:

This comes up quite a bit, so I’m going to stop and explain something.

People send stuff in as suggestions, as concerns, as questions, as whatever, and some people are being sincere, but a lot of people who write in with the same thing and the same types of phrasing are being trolls, and go on to get nasty if we respond as if we’re sincere. We’ve been doing this for a while, and we know perfectly well what trolls sound like, and we don’t need any more nastiness in our inbox, because we already get a shitload. So when it sounds like a troll, we respond as if it is. And since most trolls reply to that with the hurt, “But I was just asking/commenting/whatever, why are you sooooo meeeeeeaaaaaan to meeeee?” we respond to that badly, too. And yeah, some of the people who respond that way are not trolls, but, again, we don’t have any way to know, and we don’t want to deal with the shit from trolls, we often just block them at that point, or continue to treat them as trolls. Because what’s the difference, practically speaking, between somebody intentionally trolling, and somebody who means it, but sounds exactly like a troll over several exchanges? They may feel differently, but they have the same effect on us either way.

Now, this blog isn’t busy like it was when I wrote that originally. But I’m still fucking sick of dealing with this shit. I’m not going to stop being sick of dealing with it. And it continues to be not my job to do so on this blog, so I’m going to continue to not do so here.

Sometimes I do choose to educate someone I think is being sincere, both here and elsewhere. But it doesn’t matter whether this question is “sincere” or not, because the question itself is fucked up. There are lots of resources out there that are better suited to explaining to that person why it’s fucked up than I am, and they should go find one of those.

spacemancharisma:

the body positivity movement needs to start moving hard into including disabled bodies and this is what I mean by that. yes, it was a good step forward to change the rhetoric from “your body is a good body if it meets these arbitrary aesthetic standards” to “your body is a good body because it completes these tasks for you” (ie: walking, eating, laughing, hugging, etc.) but that rhetoric is still not fully body positive, because it excludes bodies that do not do these things. the same as saying how we need to “focus on healthy bodies not skinny bodies” sounds good at first, but it completely misses the point that unhealthy bodies deserve to be appreciated too. disabled bodies are still beautiful and still fundamentally good, not because “your body is kind to you so you should be kind to your body”- because not everyone’s body is kind to them. but all bodies are still good bodies because they are what houses your soul. your body is what allows you to exist and live your life in whatever way you live it, and for that reason, it is a good and beautiful body. your body is what your loved ones see when they look at you and the love they feel for it as an extension of you makes it a good and beautiful body. your body doesn’t have to look a certain way or behave a certain way to be good. it is good just for being here.

(via bloomingtears)

tranzangelic:

xvnot15:

mysharona1987:

This is why fat shaming can have tragic consequences.

My policy for the past couple of years is to go into the Doctor and state my symptoms. Then tell the Doctor. “STOP”  “I want your diagnosis and treatnment options for someone weighing 135 pounds.”  When they try to argue and immediately START with weight, I firmly reiterate they are to diagnose me as if I were 135 pounds. Eventually most grudgingly will think about it and answer me. I’ll allow them then to “triumphantly” go on to dismiss their previous diagnosis and pin everything on my weight. 

Then I point out I have been the same weight for 15 years and these symptoms are sudden and new. My weight is no factor in that. Give me the tests and treatment you first mentioned.

This is how they discovered a large fibroid that needed to be removed. From stories I’ve heard from others, if I hadn’t approached it this way it might have taken me years of pain and discomfort before they might have finally discovered the fibroid and treated it.

Just remember;

DEMAND A DIAGNOSIS FOR THE SAME SYMPTOMS FOR A PERFECT BMI FOR YOUR HEIGHT FIRST!!!

[photo id: a reddit post on r/all from user @/yukibean. the title reads, “I lost 75 pounds so doctors would stop blaming everything on my weight.” the post body reads, “i am 5'6, i was 210 lbs before and am 135 now. it took me a year to lose it all, but what finally pushed me to lose the weight was because every single thing i went to a doctor for, it got blamed on my weight. severe cramps? weight. feeling sleepy during the day? weight. numbness in my fingers, headaches, memory problems, balance problems? weight. i recently went back to my doctors, who of course applauded the weight loss and wrongly assumed all my problems were gone. when i said they hadn’t, they immediately ordered an mri, sleep study and lapro, which they hadn’t done before the weight loss. the mri found chiari malformation, the sleep study/ physical found out i have an oversized uvula as well as narcolepsy, and the lapro found so much endo i lost both of my ovaries and a portion of my colon and lower intestines. if it had been taken seriously a year ago, i might not have lost them. so yea, fuck doctors. (obviously not all of them)”. end id]

(via prismatic-bell)

timemachineyeah:

We don’t talk enough about the systemic health effects of casual fatphobia and how much they fucking skew the data to the point where we literally cannot know how much outcomes are actually related to fatness and how much they are related to society not being designed for fat people, like literal design.

My best friend cannot find a bra.

She’s fat. We won’t get into the ~why~ here because it honestly wouldn’t matter whether it was “all her fault” or whether it was a result of outside forces like genes and such, she still deserves a goddamn fucking bra that fits.

And she cannot find a bra.

She’s short and fat, and Fat Bras are usually full cup, but because she’s short the full cups are usually too tall, or the armbands around them are too tall, to the point where what’ll fit around her chest and over her boobs will also dig up into her arms or have such high coverage that she literally cannot wear a shirt with a neckline high enough. Any bra that goes out enough goes too high.

This affects her ability to find clothing, impacting her ability to go outside sometimes, because she has this tiny selection of bras and she constantly has to wash them and when they’re gone she has no idea when she’ll next be able to find another unicorn bra. They appear in a flash usually in startups that die soon after, and COVID has killed most the small businesses remaining where she had even a hint of a chance of finding a fitting bra.

So she wears bras that don’t fit. Or she doesn’t leave the house. One gives her back pain. The other is, obviously, not very active. She likes to be active.

If she brings it up, people suggest breast reduction surgery.

But the thing is, with a good bra, she does not get back pain.

But if it’s that hard to find a good bra, they say, wouldn’t a reduction just be easier?

Wouldn’t it be easier for you to chop off part of your flesh, they say, then for us to cut fabric and underwire to more sizes? As if that is normal. As if that isn’t horrifying.

It’s not just bras. It’s chairs. It’s benches. It’s goddamn shoes. It’s seatbelts. It’s exercise equipment - I just got an exercise bike for Christmas. I had to shop around to find an affordable one that was also rated to take my level of fat. If I were 100 pounds heavier, which some people are? I don’t think any equipment would have existed in a price range that any working person could expect to afford. I don’t think most people even look at the weight ratings on chairs and couches and furniture. Once you start? They are lower than you think. There are absolutely 100% people you love in your life - whether really tall men or just average kinda overweight fat people - who should not be using the things they are using. Who are not getting support from their mattress, their footwear, their office chair. It might be you! You might be thinking “but I am average size!”, but the amount of furniture out there that’s only weighted to about 200lbs? Or 175??? It’s SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU REALIZE. Get into the Proper Fat? The 350lb, 400lb, 500lb fat? There’s virtually nothing.

Seatbelts are not tested for fat bodies and seatbelt extenders aren’t regulated.

We know about the problems with too small a blood pressure cuff. With too low a medicine dose. With no MRI a really fat body can fit in for a thousand miles.

We know, from multiple studies on multiple oppressed communities, that social bias by itself, with zero other compounding factors, can give people worse health outcomes.

Now add up

+ one of the social biases with the least pushback even from the educated liberal set with

+ having a world that is literally not made for you. Where you cannot get clothes, furniture, or transportation in a way that will actually accommodate you,

+ where society is constantly blaming you for this. And even if you somehow (and if you know how, please tell me) manage to retain some sense of self worth and optimism and determination despite all that

+ that’s not gonna magically give you access to the daily supplies a person needs in their home and out in public that’ll make living safe and healthy life literally physically possible.

If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health start a bra company. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health mandate changes to seatbelt requirements. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health have a variety of chairs in your waiting room with at least some being properly Fat Rated. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health, make it easier for fat people to be active by making exercise equipment that fits them, swimwear that’ll actually stay on them, athletic shoes that can bear them. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health ask they be included in more medical trials. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health, promote fat visibility and fat people loving their bodies - because hating yourself has literally never been good for anyone’s health.

If you’re using “concern for health” as a shield to allow you to judge and criticize strangers, you don’t give a fuck about anyone’s health. You’re just an asshole who prefers a veneer of respectability when you bully people. You’re hateful and we can see right through you.

But fatphobia isn’t just bullying. It isn’t just judgment from strangers. It isn’t just medical neglect and medical bias. Even if we could wave a wand and make all that go away, my best friend still wouldn’t have a bra that fits, people still wouldn’t have a chair that supports them, a seatbelt that protects them. It’s literally engineered in. And it slowly kills people day by day by day.

(via prismatic-bell)

heavyweightheart:

“… the norm in our society is to accept the following falsehoods as true: a) obesity has a causative role in the onset and progression of numerous chronic conditions; b) fat is an energy storage unit rather than the actual highly sensitive metabolic manager that it is; and c) diets (restricting food intake or food groups) and exercise are necessary to “treat” the presence of an above-average sized fat organ to realize presumed improvements in morbidity and mortality outcomes.

The Homeodynamic Recovery Method accepts the following evidence-based confirmations as true: a) obesity has no proven causative role in the onset of any chronic condition (1,2) and its appearance may be a protective response to the onset of numerous chronic conditions generated from currently unknown causes (3,4,5,6); b) the fat organ is the largest hormone-producing organ in the body and it produces hormones that gate critical body functions as diverse as bone and blood formation and reproductive and metabolic functions (7); and c) diet and exercise regimes are hyped beyond all proportion regarding their actual scientific value for health and longevity in human beings (8,9,10,11) let alone being viable treatments for reducing the size of a critical hormone-producing organ in the body.”

- Gwyneth Olwyn, Recover from Eating Disorders

(via bloomingtears)

pinkfemprincess:

in 2021 i want to see fat butches and femmes succeed. i don’t mean ‘flat tummy’ and ‘hourglass’ fat. i mean double chins, rolls, big arms, and round tummies fat. not society’s allowed image of fat. i mean f a t. 

thin people can rb but do not derail or you will have a bad time!

#extend this to fat male femmes too please I beg #we’re dyin out here

Can’t speak for OP, but as far as TITP is concerned, FAT FEMMES MEANS ALL FEMMES; FAT BUTCHES MEANS ALL BUTCH PEOPLE. Claim it if you want it!

pinkfemprincess:

in 2021 i want to see fat butches and femmes succeed. i don’t mean ‘flat tummy’ and ‘hourglass’ fat. i mean double chins, rolls, big arms, and round tummies fat. not society’s allowed image of fat. i mean f a t. 

thin people can rb but do not derail or you will have a bad time!

(via prismatic-bell)

itsc:

if youre fat and queer i hope youre having a really good day

(via thinksnake)

hottopictop:

fatphobia is so deeply embedded in peoples psyche that they live in perpetual fear of being/becoming fat. people shape their whole lives around their fatphobia b/c they’d rather be dead than fat. our entire culture and institutions, yes even the medical field work to propagate that fear, branding fatness as a death sentence.‬

(via frustratedasatruar)