chewing the fat
As is their prerogative, some bloggers aren’t willing to play by the guidelines established for the Notes feed – they are adults and that is their decision and their right. However guidelines are established for a reason and as a result, some blogs have recently been removed from the feed. I believe that the blogs in question are featured on the Fat Liberation feed which is accessible here and you can sub to that feed to keep up with their posts if you feel so inclined.
I don’t randomly remove blogs from the Notes feed but the feed is something I take seriously, as do all the people who have emailed me in regards to the now removed blogs. I don’t agree with everything posted on all the Notes feed blogs. I don’t expect to. But sometimes a line gets crossed and a decision has to be made. A decision that I always take under advisement from other feed bloggers to ensure I’m not having a personal knee jerk reaction.
As I keep saying, Notes is not representative of the entire Fatosphere or the entire Fat Acceptance movement. It is but one small part of both those communities. Individuals are welcome to start their own feeds, just as Big Liberty did with the Fat Liberation feed, which operates along different guidelines to that of Notes. Different strokes for different folks.
I would like to point out the we did state that our new blog would no longer be on the feed.
This was before you decided we had so egregiously flouted the rules, you felt we need immediately removal.
I warned you that the interview was not appropriate. You asked me to link to Podbean, which I did. How did I violate the guidelines? You knew in advance, I took steps to appease you. You kick me off anyway. What the hell?
Peace,
Shannon
Rules are rules, and I have guidelines for my feed as well — diet talk and fatphobic talk are cause for removal. I have a much smaller threshold for FA talk (so less FA talk is okay). However, I don’t rely on my feed for lots of FA talk — I rely on Bri’s feeds. And I applaud her for sticking by the guidelines she’s laid out to provide those of us who rely on the feeds a diet-talk-free, fatphobic-free, pro-weight-loss-free zone.
I think there is a lot of room for other feeds that aren’t as strict, and I also encourage others to develop them. The best place to start is creating a folder on Google Reader, and then filtering the feed through FeedBurner (though that’s not required).
Rules are rules, but what rule did I violate? That’s what I want to know.
Peace,
Shannon
I’ve got to say, it seems a shame to be kicking people off the feed when it already doesn’t change much during the course of a day. It also seems like there are three FA feeds, which very closely overlap. A little breadth wouldn’t really hurt anyone.
I mean, it seems as though you’re trying excessively hard to create a “safe space” for FA. That is really kind of treating us like children. We aren’t PTSD sufferers. There’s no “triggering” issue here. It seems to me that if a person’s overall goal is fat acceptance, they really shouldn’t be booted off just because they’re trying to work through the health issues.
It’s your feed, and you can of course do what you want. I’m just saying that you’re not really making it more valuable by being a purist.
Big Liberty: Thankyou for your support. I think there is plenty of room for both feeds and they both serve a purpose in their own way.
Trabb’s Boy: I am working to make Notes a Fat Acceptance feed. Fat people hear the rhetoric about needing to lose weight because of their health everywhere all the time. We don’t need to hear that on Notes as well. If people want to blog about how fat has adverse affects on health then they are welcome to blog about it, just not on this FA feed. And some fatties ARE PTSD sufferers actually. And yeah, there are triggering issues. And no one has ever been ‘booted off’ the feed because of one incident. Thankyou though for expressing your opinion in a polite and respectful way, it is appreciated.
I also do not want to see blogs encouraging weight loss & talking favorably about dieting on the fat feed, because, as you say, people can discuss dieting & weight loss & talk about how they are doing it ‘for their health’ over the rest of the damn world. I want to be able to read writings which are fat-positive & which promote acceptance & celebration of our natural bodies. After more than 30 years around the movement & doing a fair amount of research & having a close relationship with others who are part of the research & who know the real science, I also seriously doubt that weight loss is ever a good or ‘healthy’ way to address ‘health issues’ & dieting itself is known to exacerbate & often create many health issues. There is always a way to address health issues without dieting (& I have told more than one doctor that, if I have a health problem, I want it treated the same way that the same problem would be treated in a thin person, for whom the first advice would NOT be to diet), & if the fatosphere is going to be a place where weight loss is promoted, then there is no reason for it to exist at all.
I do wish everyone well & send positive vibes for each person’s journey. We all are individuals & we all have different needs, feelings, & beliefs, & we all learn life lessons in different rates & in different ways. However, since at least 98% promotes weight loss as the be-all, end-all, there is no need for the fatosphere to do so. Those who want to diet can & will find much more support than those of us who do not.
Bri–thanks for your commitment to the feeds, both for keeping them up and running and for filtering them for content. It’s much appreciated!
Jackie
Thank you. I was shocked to click on the feed and find blog posts that said, “I’m going on a diet to lose weight for my health.” What? It’s about fat-acceptance, not fat-tolerance or fat-until-I’m-not-fat-anymore. The Internet is full of blogs by people who “just want to lose a few pounds.” Those people or blogs are not evil; but they don’t belong on this feed. I wouldn’t follow this feed if those kinds of blogs were in it.
I certainly don’t speak for all or most FA activists, but I’m a PTSD sufferer, some of which was tied into, or somehow incorporated in, negative feelings about my weight.
Reading diet talk and weight loss screeds is not only intensely boring, but can also be triggering for me.
I’m sure I’m not the only one. There is a lot of fat hate and real abuse of fat people out there.
Making a new feed really is pretty simple, and it can include these gray-area blogs…it wouldn’t come with instant traffic (except for those who read the blogs on the feed), but traffic can come with time.
Trabb’s Boy–please speak for yourself and not for me and others.
I am a recovering bulemic and I do have PTSD, which just like BigLiberty has been closely tied to my experience of my weight/body. Diet talk is absolutely triggering for me.
Bri, I really appreciate your commitment to drawing clear lines. There are plenty of other places for people to say whatever they want. I appreciate having a feed I can trust not to be triggering or anti-FA.
Ugh. A new round of people feeling they are being edgy and innovative by talking about weight loss. Yeah, dieters are so put upon in our society. What meanies Fat Activists are by oppressing the dieters! Lets all rebel and do exactly as we’re told! Fight the system! The completely powerless and marginalized “system” in the name of the overwhelming status quo.
I swear, its the back-patting over this that drives me nuts. Every time someone decides to agree with practically everyone in the world, they act like they are Martin Luther nailing a note onto the Cathedral. You aren’t martyrs. You’re the majority. You don’t agree with fat acceptance? Fine. LOTS of support out there for you. Just spare me the self-righteous nonsense about how this is “your” fat acceptance. No its not. Fat acceptance is what it is. Respect it enough to just disagree with it. Don’t pretend you can redefine it just because you’ve decided to side with the majority that doesn’t think we have a right to our opinions. And that’s precisely what you do when you think you can fashion a “your” fat acceptance. Fat acceptance has a right to exist and to have its own spaces for expression. Everything in the world doesn’t need to be promoting weight loss.
Oh amen BStu.
This is how colleges and the like are formed, when people wish to develop ideas and dig deeper against an overwhelming dominant order.
They are doing it to explore and deepen understanding of things that are barely if at all explored. Not to deny others ‘free speech’, especially when that speech is overwhelmingly represented every where else.
If free speech was so important, the ’sphere would not exist in the first place.
We speak about diets all the time, in an appraising way, not in an appeasing way, if that causes your brain to run out of oxygen, I wonder what are you doing on the fatosphere in the first place?
I could bust into a economics lecture at my local uni shouting, economics is bunk you’re all liars, but really what’s the point? It’s inappropriate, free speech still requires you to know how what is and isn’t apt.
The triggering issue is not just about the principle of ’safe spaces’-the basis of the reason why I left the feeds myself. Although, no claim to martyrdom here or feelings of being a tower of truth.
It’s about the fact that the whole matter we are dealing with has been totally shaped by those we have diverted from. We have gone a different route, whilst operating wholly within that frame, like someone who was born into a religious faith that they either never had, or no longer had.
So leaving it and then cleaving to it, makes no sense and causes you to go in the circles that you went through to leave in the first place.
If you wish to do that, you were possibly just disatisfied with aspects, not done with it.
I do try to be tolerant to differing views, including those who still wish to diet, I understand that feeling, as I said, I went through that to get here.
I just can’t bear to keep going round and round in circles knowing exactly where it goes. Where you have been.
I absolutely apologize for making assumptions about the readers her. I clearly misunderstood the intensity of feeling.
There seems to be a real exaggeration in this thread about what Shannon has been doing in his blog, but I agree that his email was vicious and sexist and pretty much cause for ostracism all around.
Oy, I think I’ll stick to Cute Overload and Zooborns for a while. Cheerio, all.
Tell me, where have I *promoted* dieting? Please, enlighten me.
I have been *appraising* dieting, as wriggles said (though I know it wasn’t in reference to me specifically). I have not promoted dieting at all.
And if you know where, do us all a favor and quote me.
Peace,
Shannon
Shannon: Will you seriously be satisfied with whatever Bri tells you? I mean this honestly, not being snarky.
Or maybe this: “Appraising” dieting may not be welcoem on the Notes feed. It seems you think that appraisal should be allowed here which o.k. fine, but currently Notes is not set up that way, from what my understanding is at least after all this.
I am having a really hard time understanding your continued questions of Bri after the posts you created, telling her, the “fatosphere, and Shapely Prose fans to “f$%@ off” with a syphillic penis image too. I think that’s who you told to f off, not sure a lot of “fs” were posted and a host of people were cited.
Questions are fair, sure, but I don’t find the logic in continuing to ask them, considering the context of the above posts I mentioned above.
I mean this sincerely: perhaps creating your own feed with other blogs that want to appraise dieting would be a good idea for you at this point.
Really, do they all honestly think they are the first person to ever “stand up” to fat acceptance? Every time we have to endure these wanna-be martyrs they all act this same way. Like they had a revelation they just had to share. No wonder they can’t seem to get the fact that we’ve heard this all before. People have been attacking fat acceptance for decades. How can one seriously think they are the first to pip up with “Yeah, but what about the fact that you’re all so FAT!” and think they are really bringing something new to the discussion? They all prove very practices are playing victim of course, but its a joke.
Seriously, fat acceptance is not oppressing dieting. If you think that, your perception of the world is so severely impaired that I worry for you. Your certaintude of your rightness has warped your mind into seeing things which do not exist. The plan reality is that fat acceptance is severely marginalized. You have a right to disagree with fat acceptance, but acting like martyrs at its hand is just a perversion of truth and I’m fed up with it.
Any perspective has a right to its own space. A right to a space where its ideas can incubate and its activists to converge. It is especially vital for a movement still so powerless in the face of enormous opposition. The notion these wanna-be martyrs have is that fat acceptance doesn’t deserve such a space. That they are righteous in making our house a battleground for their opposing views. And that we are overbearing for resisting their calls for us to be in a constant state of justification.
It is sick. It is sad. And at this point, it is positively boring because its happened again and again and again. Fat acceptance is not respected by these people. That’s what it all comes down to. Not some joker semantics. Its about respect. And their lack of respect for us. They seem to have these fantasies that we’re all so insulated from their point of view. They are being heroes by bringing the fight to us! As if the fight wasn’t brought to us every day. By newspapers, TV, magazines, and yes even the part of ourselves that still repeats the mantras of fat bigotry. They seem to think we have isolated ourselves from that. With what? An RSS feed? Are you that insane? We deal with fat stigmatization almost every moment of our lives. We deal with friends, co-workers, family who have no respect for our beliefs. We are told we are wrong day in and day out. You aren’t being unique by telling us you are wrong. You are being positively ordinary. We need to claim a space to express ourselves and to learn about ourselves. We need to try to form the bonds of community that are so scarce in our day to day lives. We need a bulwark against hatred and stigmatization where we can try to forge a different path in pursuit of our health and happiness. We need a place to say NO. Shame on anyone with such little respect for us to say we don’t deserve that because they don’t like us saying no.
Brian, it is good to see your comments here, to see someone else who is as completely & passionate fat positive as I am & as dedicated to real fat acceptance, not the ‘kinda, sorta, oh look at the cute clothes, but maybe I should lose a few pounds’ kind of fat acceptance I see so much of on the Net. I have no idea where those who come to argue with us & tell us that we are wrong get the idea that we are used to being agreed with, praised, & pacified, when in reality we are discriminated against, ridiculed, argued with, marginalized in every possible way in the world in which we live, constantly told that we are wrong & delusional & also lazy & gluttonous, that fat is bad & unhealthy &, that, moreover it is CHOICE, a choice we make by being so lazy that we will not exercise & lacking the self-control to stop constantly stuffing our faces. At least 98% of the world agrees with these people who insist that they are just trying to be helpful, to present ‘the other side of the story’, & to share their ‘revolutionary’ ideas with us. The biggest ‘revolution’ in body acceptance occurred 40 years ago with the formation of the Fat Underground & I mourn its passing. A real revolution would be if the world at large could ever accept that people naturally come in ALL sizes & shapes, that that is just fine, & that we are all worthy of respect, access, of living our lives fully as we wish to live them in the bodies we inhabit, & stopped using the amount of adipose tissue one’s body carries as an excuse for hatred/abuse/rejection & for the denial of basic human rights. I think that a lot of people tend to forget that fat liberation isn’t just about the right to find cute clothes that fit us or to eat an ice cream cone or get a date; it is about real basic human rights, civil rights, & about the right of every human being to dignity & self-determination. Please do not ever forget that we live in a world which claims the right to try to control lives & bodies, to tell us how to eat, how to move, how to care for & especially how to feed our children. Every time someone takes it upon himself or herself to assert the wonders of dieting & how much good it will do his/her (your) health, the grasp of the Nanny State grows a bit stronger.
I do not intend to give in or give up or compromise on what I mean by fat acceptance. I may be over 60 & may have been fighting for over 30 years, but I believe completely in the rightness of this cause & the need for us to be visible & vocal. I hope that a lot of others feel the same way.
BStu and Patsy Nevins, Bravo to both of you. Very, very well said.
Patsy said: “A real revolution would be if the world at large could ever accept that people naturally come in ALL sizes & shapes, that that is just fine, & that we are all worthy of respect, access, of living our lives fully as we wish to live them in the bodies we inhabit, & stopped using the amount of adipose tissue one’s body carries as an excuse for hatred/abuse/rejection & for the denial of basic human rights.”
I agree with the above 100 percent. I will defend that viewpoint to the end. However, I don’t like weighing 350 lbs. Until such a revolution comes, I can’t fit in many public spaces. I don’t like taking medication for blood pressure, cholesterol and pre-diabetes when I’m not even 40 yet. If losing some weight will help, that’s what I’m going to attempt to do, despite the widely-cited odds against me. Does that mean I’m a hypocrite and can’t/shouldn’t advocate for the revolution described above? I don’t think so. I just (normally) separate my FA reading/writing from my weight loss research and don’t make an issue of it, but it’s kind of lonely out here – diet blogs/groups suck and FA blogs/groups don’t want people who think like me. I’m not defending Shannon by any means, just trying to point out some of the nuance between supposedly opposing POVs.
If someone wants to make common cause with fat acceptance on the parts they agree with, the onus is on THEM to adapt to fat acceptance spaces, not on fat acceptance to adapt to welcome viewpoints functionally opposed to fat acceptance. I’m sorry, but I find no reason to be a sympathetic to a complaint that “its lonely” when so much of our culture is set-up to coddle and support the attitude that it is intolerable to be fat. If you aren’t satisfied with the spaces the exist in opposition to fat acceptance, that’s just not the problem of fat acceptance. It is not the responsibility of fat acceptance to mute itself to such a whim.
Because the hard truth is that trying to be not-fat is a failed approach to the problems you describe. Fat acceptance would be doing countless people in your position a grave disservice if it buried its role as being a lone voice of an alternative just to comfort those who don’t care for that alternative. Most people want to lose weight. That’s nothing new. That’s why groups like the Fat Underground formed in the first place. To give voice and support to a different path. That there are people who won’t want to take that path, for any number of reasons, is a reality that will always exist. Its a reason for fat acceptance to recommit to providing the tools and support to seek more productive answers for the well-being of fat people, not a reason for FA to blunt itself so as to better represent the hostility towards fat in our society.
Yeah, But….
Try attrice