Bi and Fat- Oversexualization and Desexualization equals objectification

Last week was Bi-Visibility week and Weight Stigma Awareness week. It seems like the perfect time to post my talk from last year's Fat Activism Conference on the intersection of fat and queer issues- specifically fat and bi issues. This is a rather lengthy post. My time for the conference was about 12 minutes and I took up every minute of it for this important issues.

My topic today is rather specific. I want to address the oversexualization of bisexual and fat women combined with the desexualization of fat women and how this creates a perfect storm for objectification and how that objectification affects fat bisexual women. I’ve chosen to specifically speak about this issue because, as a fat bisexual woman myself, I feel like I can speak to my own experiences.

First of all I want to throw out a trigger warning for those who need it because I’m talking to be talking a little bit about rape culture and statistics as it pertains to the objectification of women and bisexual women in particular.

I want to talk about this trend that I see where there is this mash up of oversexualization and desexualization. Oversexualization can apply to a lot of people but right now I’m going to talk about the topic as it pertains to bisexual women. As a bisexual woman I get to hear a lot of the stereotypes and then some. Bisexuals are sluts, they cheat, they’re dirty, they carry STD’s, they’ll sleep with anyone, they’re always up for a threesome. While there’s a hearty dose of slut shaming in biphobia I want to focus particularly on the stereotypes that bisexuals have a lot of sex and that that sex is somehow what defines them.

If you’ll notice, most stereotypes about bisexuals involve sex. While monosexuals have alternative names for their sexuality (gay, lesbian, straight) bisexuals are stuck with “sex” in the title. This may be both caused by and contribute to the problematic ways bi people are viewed.

Bisexuals are rarely seen as people and often seen as oversexed and always willing. It is, perhaps, for this reason that bisexual women face rape more often than monosexual women. In fact, they’re about three times more likely to experience it. According to the CDC, 61% of bisexual women have been raped, stalked, or assaulted by an intimate partner compared to 41% of lesbian women and 35% of straight women. The segment of these women facing rape is even scarier. 13% of lesbians, 17% of straight women, and a whopping 46% of bisexual women have experienced rape.

So imagine what that means for bisexual women. Imagine how terrifying that is. Women in general have to constantly be on their guard even in the midst of friends. Remember that most rapes are perpetrated by someone known to the victim. So 46%, almost half, that’s a big number, that’s a scary number. It means never being sure if you’re safe.

It’s pretty obvious that oversexualization leads to objectification. Objectification is the point at which a living being becomes an object, a commodity.In media we often see women literally turned into objects. One recent example is a coca cola bottle with a human-eque shape and a fat belly used to talk about the “obesity epidemic”. This is a clear example of the objectification of fat people, but let’s get back to women in general for a moment.  A study by Princeton psychologists showed that some men (specifically  men that they identified as sexist) had less brain activity in the medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps identify humanity, when shown photos of scantily clad women, indicating that they were not seen as human, but rather as objects. This means that men who show other signs of sexism, that is, a prejudice against women, are more likely to see women like they’re less than human. And  it’s so much easier to commit violence against someone that you barely see as human.

Objectification is possibly the only logical outcome to oversexualiztion.

To oversexualize simply means to make a person’s core being into a sexual one. To define them by their sexuality and their use for sex while denying them their own agency or being in control of their own sexual being. I deal with this fairly often as I run an art project called The Fat Naked Art Project. Fat naked bodies which are meant neither to be sexualized nor objectified, but this is often the case. Inappropriate comments have needed to be moderated time and time again. My fat models, very specifically the women, are seen as nothing more than sexual objects, specifically fat objects. Their entire identity and being often reduced to the type of belly they have or the size of their thighs.

So then, I’ll beg the question, why are fat women so oversexualized? One reason may be that fat women often have larger breasts, which are downright fetishized in our culture. But another reason may be that fat women are othered, made to feel different, to exist in a separate societal box. This makes them into a forbidden fruit dangling just out of reach. Fat women have their own set of sexual stereotypes as well. They’re always easy, they’re desperate, they’ll sleep with anyone who pays attention to them. These stereotypes that over sexualize fat women also lead to  many people seeing them as objects which leads us back to rape culture.

Several months ago I wrote a post on my blog about fat girls and rape culture which was inspired by a cafepress T-shirt which read “fat girls can’t say no and when they do it means yes”. Fat girls and women who are sexually assaulted are often told a myriad of horrible things to try and delegitimize their experiences. “You should be grateful” is the one I hear most often. Yes, grateful, because who would want to touch a fat chick?

And here we come to the desexualization of fat women. Isn’t it interesting that we can be both hypersexualized and desexualized at the same time? Our sexuality is often denied to us. In the movie, The Lorax, the fat aunt of the main character is being rather mean and the lorax himself threatens to hit her. Our main character steps in, asking, “you wouldn’t hit a woman would you?” to which the lorax replies  “that’s a woman?!”. It’s all for good laughs, right? Fat women are rarely allowed to be sexual beings in the media and when they are it’s as a twist, a surprise, or a joke.

I’m a huge doctor who fan. Even with all of it’s problems I can’t stop watching it. But I couldn’t help but notice that Donna, the one character who is, although not fat, a little thicker, the only companion who is never ever shown as a sexual being. In fact, her lack of sexuality is joked about in “The Doctor’s Daughter” episode where she offers to use her “womanly wiles” to get past some guards. The butt of the joke yet again. When Rebel Wilson becomes sexual in Bridesmaids it is a garish display that involves, you guessed it, food. Her sexuality is meant to be laughed at in that way that she’s not really sexual at all.

Both oversexualization and desexualization share a common aspect in the removal of our agency. While men, straight women, and lesbians often take control of and ownership of their sexualities, both oversexualization and desexualization involve having those decisions taken away. Women are oversexualized through the assumptions and assertions that they want any sex with any person, and do not need to consent to that. These women are given a default of “yes”. Women are desexualized when the agency over sex is taken away from them and given to someone else. Sex is not something fat women are seen as having a choice in, but something the generous will gift upon them and they can only respond by being grateful.

It’s interesting to note that fat people are often hypervisible while being completely invisible at the same time. By Hypervisible I mean that fat is on everyone’s lips, we’re in the news, all over the media, even on the radio and ads and billboards, but we’re talked about as dehumanized objects. The classic headless fatty is a good example. We’re invisible in the sense that we’re rarely seen as human and, indeed, our humanity flies under the radar.

In a very similar way bisexual women are hypervisible, in that women are almost expected to be bisexual, to experiment, to have a more fluid sexuality, but we’re sexualized to the point of dehumanization. Actual bisexual issues including biphobia and discrimination are overlooked, made invisible. While bisexual women are oversexualized and not desexualized it’s a problem in and of itself that bisexual women are seen as being constant sexual beings and sexual objects.

Living as a fat bisexual woman means being oversexualized and desexualized in various ways. Specifically I believe that the combination of oversexualization and desexualization inherently lead to objectification because it dehumanizes it’s target.

What does this dehumanization and objectification mean for every day fat bisexual women though? What it means is constant stigmatization, discrimination, oppression, and violence. We’re objects that aren’t important enough to treat with respect or equality. It can very often mean violence (from verbal to physical) from partners who have something to prove, it can mean being othered, , it can mean rape culture is a daily reality for you, it can mean being bullied and abused and it can mean a constant state of anxiety in a culture that refuses to recognize your basic humanity.

Being fat is it’s own challenge, but being fat and queer is it’s own experience. While being queer isn’t usually outwardly visible and being fat is, they can carry different consequences that, when combined, can become overwhelming. As a bisexual you can become automatically closeted because people assume your sexuality based on your current relationship. As a fat woman your sexuality can be automatically invalidated. And as a fat bisexual woman you can be fetishized and dehumanized.

I believe the solution to these issues is the destigmatization of both fat bodies and queer identities. Though the oppression of both of these groups is deeply ingrained in our society, it’s not a lost cause. As queer rights and fat rights pick up steam via social media, literature, protests, and demonstrations, we also pick up more supporters. While I fear that internalized fatphobia and biphobia may be a large hurdle, I have seen this overcome in so many people through my activism and the activism of others that it gives me great hope. I’m so inspired by many other activists and I see the progress we’ve made even since I found fat acceptance in 2010. While it almost seems like the “war on obesity” efforts have doubled, fat acceptance is spreading quickly.

Perhaps the key to destigmatization is not only getting others to accept us, but to get people to accept themselves. In a society where we often deal with internalized bigotry, self acceptance is a core part of our activism and goals. When you convince one person to change their bigotry and lack of acceptance for others, you make a small but meaningful impact towards the change we need to see.

The Problem With Sexualization of Fat Bodies

Occasionally in fat feminist spaces we talk about the sexualization of women's bodies, specifically fat women. We talk about oversexualization and fetishization mostly and, inevitably, someone always chimes in, "but, I like being oversexualized/fetishized/objectified". I want to start out by saying I understand, but that doesn't mean that this line of thinking isn't problematic and I'll talk about why. 

First, I'm going to discuss why it is I understand and some of my own history with problematic thinking. I pretty much grew up fat. I started out pretty skinny, but when some chronic health problems kicked in when I was 7 years old, I gained about 100lbs in the course of about three years. Boys asked me out as a way to make fun of me. This, in fact, became a fear that still carries on today. I lost all of my friends and became a target for my entire grade. So when the skinny girls started talking about unwanted attention, I thought, "I'd give anything for that attention!", completely ignoring the "unwanted" part. I thought that any attention would be welcome and couldn't fathom it being non consensual or unwanted. Aren't those girls flattered? 

**Trigger warning** 

I also used to think about being raped. Not as in rape fantasies because I knew it would be horrible and traumatizing, but in the way that I blamed myself for not being raped yet. I thought maybe I was too fat and ugly for anyone to want to rape me and if someone did it would somehow validate my worth. I was a young teenager so I didn't understand all of the implications of this, but it was a pretty frequent thought nonetheless. So, when I say that I understand wanting to be objectified, I really do. I understand self loathing when you aren't objectified. I understand how good it feels to be wanted for your fat rather than rejected for it. That doesn't make it benign however. 

Firstly, none of these things- fetishization, objectification, oversexualization- exist in a vacuum. They exist inside of a patriarchal society which runs on turning women into only bodies fit for the male gaze and nothing more. It creates and feeds insecurities and then takes those insecurities and sells them right back to us in the form of the ideal beauty standard. It's not just about the individual and how fetishization, for example, makes you feel, it's about how it takes women as a whole and, in this case, fat women, reduces their worth to their bodies. 

I'll note that fat men can be fetishized too, but generally speaking it's less frequent, though no less problematic. Because I'm a woman, I'll be focusing on women in this post, though I'd be happy to interview a fat man who wants to talk about this topic. 

Secondly, I want to go back to rape culture. When I spoke at The Fat Activism Conference back in August 2014, I talked about fat rape culture because it's so unique. Fat people are often told that no one would want to rape them or, if they are raped, that they should be flattered or feel lucky because at least someone wants them. There was a cafepress T-shirt that has since been taken down which read: "Fat Girls Can't Say No (and when they do, it means yes)". Fat women face this special kind of misogynistic rape culture that says their bodies are so tied to their fat and that that fat is so gross and worthless, that being raped when you're a fat woman is a good thing. 

Rape culture is the result of a misogynistic society combined with objectification and the inappropriate sexualizing of bodies. When I say inappropriate I mean sexualizing someone without their consent. I don't mean finding someone attractive or even being sexually attracted to them. What I mean is the idea that women's bodies (or any kind of marginalized body) is inherently sexual and exists for the purpose of the viewer's pleasure. Don't get me wrong, rape culture is way more complicated than that, but that's a simplified, boiled down, version in my opinion. 

So when you're taking fat women and you're reducing them to no more than their fat, no more than their bodies and you're sexualizing those bodies, it's no wonder that you get a specific kind of rape culture. 

Thirdly, I want to point out that when you say that you want to be fetishized or ofjectified, not only are you excusing the behavior of these fetishists and misogynists, but you're condoning that they do these things to non consenting women. Wanting to feel sexy and wanted is fine, but feeding into a culture that hurts women isn't. You're saying that women secretly want to be objectified and inappropriately sexualized which feeds back into rape culture. It's the classic, "I wouldn't mind being catcalled", despite the dehumanization that women who are constantly catcalled often feel. Though you may find it flattering, it can chip away are the self worth of women who experience it chronically. 

It's easy to want the things you don't have. It's easy to look at sexualization as thin privilege. After all, it's just society confirming what you already know, that they're considered more beautiful, more desirable, and more acceptable. The problem is that no woman's worth or value should be tied to how she looks. It's a trap of the patriarchy that we often think if we're not being devalued by men, then we're worthless. I've been caught in this trap myself and was for a long time, even attempting suicide because of it. After all, if I don't have value through the male gaze then what's the point in living? But women, and all fat people, have to learn that worth and appearance are not the same thing. Embracing that idea is revolutionary and, more importantly, necessary in gaining equal rights for fat people.