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).
..
