Refusing to look for the cause
Dec. 13th, 2014 09:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sasha_featherAttempting to post more. Thinking about weight / size politics under the cut.
I recently gained weight rather rapidly when I switched RA (Rheumatoid Arthritis) meds. I switched back and hopefully this weight gain will halt: it's not so much the weight itself as the having to buy a whole new wardrobe and give away some of my old beloved clothes. Clothes fit me more awkwardly and I have to figure out what sizes work for me and don't, and it's a whole new shopping adventure. It's much harder to thrift clothes when I'm a size 18 than when I was a 14. It's easier to wear dresses, which are sometimes more flexible in the waist, and means I present a bit more femme.
Well anyways, my friend, who can identify herself if they want, related a story to me. She said she thought that if you gained weight due to cortisone (or meds in general) then it didn't count. A different person corrected her thinking on this, saying, well, one still has to buy new clothes and experience weight stigma-- how does it not count exactly?
At which point my friend conceded she was wrong, and rethought, and I thought about this too.
I revisited in my mind a session from the SDS conference (Society for Disability Studies) on Fat Studies and Disability Studies, at which April Herndon said something to the effect of: "I don't look for the cause of fatness, in the same way I don't look for the cause of queerness."
thingswithwings says something similar: looking for the cause of queerness is the worst kind of question, because it is both boring and oppressive.
In talking about this on Twitter, I got significant pushback, and so I want to say that I do believe in nuance and you are free to think what you want; furthermore, scientific questions about the causes of fatness and queerness might even be occasionally interesting; but I want to fully explore this idea for a moment because it is radical and important. Try, for a moment, to accept that fatness is normal, that the cause does not matter, and looking for the cause of fatness is both boring and oppressive.
We are obsessed with finding a different, natural cause for fatness because right now the cause, in the dominant cultural narrative, is moral turpitude (as if there is something wrong with fatness).
To tie this to queerness: People are insistent upon a "born this way" narrative of queerness so that the cause is not moral turpitude (as if there is something wrong with queerness).
..
I recently gained weight rather rapidly when I switched RA (Rheumatoid Arthritis) meds. I switched back and hopefully this weight gain will halt: it's not so much the weight itself as the having to buy a whole new wardrobe and give away some of my old beloved clothes. Clothes fit me more awkwardly and I have to figure out what sizes work for me and don't, and it's a whole new shopping adventure. It's much harder to thrift clothes when I'm a size 18 than when I was a 14. It's easier to wear dresses, which are sometimes more flexible in the waist, and means I present a bit more femme.
Well anyways, my friend, who can identify herself if they want, related a story to me. She said she thought that if you gained weight due to cortisone (or meds in general) then it didn't count. A different person corrected her thinking on this, saying, well, one still has to buy new clothes and experience weight stigma-- how does it not count exactly?
At which point my friend conceded she was wrong, and rethought, and I thought about this too.
I revisited in my mind a session from the SDS conference (Society for Disability Studies) on Fat Studies and Disability Studies, at which April Herndon said something to the effect of: "I don't look for the cause of fatness, in the same way I don't look for the cause of queerness."
thingswithwings says something similar: looking for the cause of queerness is the worst kind of question, because it is both boring and oppressive.In talking about this on Twitter, I got significant pushback, and so I want to say that I do believe in nuance and you are free to think what you want; furthermore, scientific questions about the causes of fatness and queerness might even be occasionally interesting; but I want to fully explore this idea for a moment because it is radical and important. Try, for a moment, to accept that fatness is normal, that the cause does not matter, and looking for the cause of fatness is both boring and oppressive.
We are obsessed with finding a different, natural cause for fatness because right now the cause, in the dominant cultural narrative, is moral turpitude (as if there is something wrong with fatness).
To tie this to queerness: People are insistent upon a "born this way" narrative of queerness so that the cause is not moral turpitude (as if there is something wrong with queerness).
..
no subject
Date: 2014-12-14 03:14 am (UTC)I encountered another example of this policing inside the group among a community of power wheelchair users. People who'd been paralyzed by trauma, or born so that a powerchair was their preferred mobility, built a steep wall. Inside were the really disabled, unlike those people on the outside—folks with "squishier" impairments such as fibro. Forget about folks with non-apparent disabilities: they were deemed outsiders too. And if someone loses a foot to diabetes? We come full circle to fatness: "it's all their fault so they're not really disabled."
It's a pattern, and it's all about moral turpitude.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-14 04:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-14 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-14 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-14 06:44 am (UTC)(Also, I think "searching for the cause" is such an incisive formulation, and such a good illustration of the fact that people who look for a "cause" for queerness or fatness are really just trying to figure out a way to make queer or fat people culpable for being the way they are. I mean, try to imagine that line of questioning being used on something physical that's seen as morally neutral, like the ability to roll your tongue into a burrito: "Do you think this is because you have no self-control?" It wouldn't even make sense. None of this line of questioning makes sense without the framework of societal bs.)
no subject
Date: 2014-12-14 09:32 pm (UTC)Holy shit. Like, I am pretty up on fat acceptance and HAES and changing my mental outlook on it and unpacking a lot of internalized stuff is a work in progress...but I've never seen it put quite like that. That is *really helpful*, thank you.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-18 11:12 am (UTC)The only time when I think it might be okay to look at cause re: weight would involve change, since a rapid and/or dramatic change can prove to be a symptom of something drastic. Happens all the time with medication, asyouknowBob. Now that I think of it, I ditched one rx because it was about to make me buy another wardrobe -- without working well enough to justify that.
Still, it's very annoying to have to shop for new clothes, and costly in money and energy. I've owned two sets of sizes of clothing for about twenty years now, at least for the most durable and hardest-to fit items like jeans.