Has Call-out Culture On The Left Become An Obstacle?

Has call-out culture on the left become abusive? What about other aspects of leftist activist discourse? Stay in your lane. Emotional labor. Educate yourself. Are we, as activists, creating a culture where we expect people to transform into good people without being able to ask questions or mess up? Where we expect people to have the ability to learn just from reading articles on the internet or lengthy books filled with unfamiliar words?

The first thing I want to point out is that people learn differently. My son needs one on one interaction or videos. He can learn through reading, but the information takes longer to absorb and, as a kid with autism, he sometimes has a lot of trouble with abstract ideas that aren't spelled out in real world situations. I learn best in a classroom setting with a combination of academic and lay speak, reading, and one on one interactions and questions. Some people can read a library in a week and understand it all perfectly. Some people can't really read at all. Some people are auditory learners, some people learn best using their hands and using activities to get a lesson across.

So, why then, do we on the left expect all people to be able to google a topic, pick the right articles without actually knowing about the subject matter (because we all know there are plenty of blogs, news outlets, youtube channels, and more that are going to be arguing the opposite point that we are), read article after article, and then be able to come to the same conclusion we've come to- on their own with no guidance? It would be kinda great if we could do that. It truly would make our jobs as activists easier. We could call people out, tell them they're wrong, not tell them why, and they'd go learn about it and then realize they were indeed wrong. That's not how people work though.

Calling out, on the internet, has become about having someone to take out our pent up anger on. And that's relatable and understandable, because goodness knows, we have some pent up anger and, generally speaking, nowhere to release it except in twitter rants and youtube videos that have 112 hits by mostly trolls.

But what happens when we start dog-piling on someone who is genuinely trying to learn and wanting to understand but, for whatever reason, hitting a blockade in their minds? Neuroscience has told us that the human brain, when it has a strongly held belief and encounters information that goes against it, will actually throw out the new information and the original belief will become stronger. This is not a conscious thing that people are doing. It's how our brains evolved and it's how they navigate the world daily. Which means that it is incredibly difficult to change information that we grew up with, information that's a part of our core beliefs about how the world works.

This seems especially true with fat liberation. Because, while I grew up in the 90's getting "girl power!" messages that, at least challenged the patriarchal ways of the world a little, there was never a single shred of any information that told me being fat was acceptable in any manner.

But, beyond how difficult it is to evolve our ideas and information, when someone feels attacked and defensive, it makes the issue that much worse. And I'm not saying that we have to be 100% nice all of the time because, yes, it's infuriating and triggering and anxiety inducing and we just can't be the patient educator all of the time. It's completely okay for some people to just block someone and move on.

But, that's why it's always been a good thing that we have different people in different degrees of helpfulness and willingness at different times. I've seen, and been in the position of a person who has screwed something up out of ignorance and misunderstanding, and had a dozen people calling me names. As someone who deals with severe anxiety as well as suicidal depression, this tactic might feel good, but it also tends to be ableist and doesn't help anyone learn. Maybe a word or concept was new to that person. Maybe they misunderstood something they'd read. Maybe they really were just being an asshole. You won't know unless someone has that conversation. It doesn't have to be you all of the time, but it does have to be someone. When people are trying to learn and grow, who does it help to make them feel like they're shit human beings no matter how hard they're trying or how far they've come?

On the left, we've started expecting people to be perfect. Which is that much harder when we all have a different definition for perfect.

And, many of us will say, "but you can't demand the emotional labor of marginalized people". To which I'll respond- no.. you can't. But why can't we request it? No one has to answer or use their spoons, or energy, or risk their mental health, in order to educate a person. But when we start refusing to have any one on one interactions, we're taking away the human aspect of social justice issues. Having someone reading about these things on your favorite social justice website can be good, but it's much easier to dismiss that information when you aren't connecting it to real human beings. In a one on one conversation where you can say "this is how you're making me feel and these are the consequences of your words and beliefs" is where people tend to have "aha!" moments.

It's pretty well known by now that having someone in your family who's LGBTQIA+  (which, by the way, I almost guarantee there is. There are a lot of us around, we just may not feel safe telling you) significantly increases the likelihood that you'll support legislation, policies, and beliefs that are pro LGBTQIA+. Because when you can relate your beliefs and actions to someone that you actually care about, suddenly it's not an abstract scary person, it's your son, it's your cousin, it's your parent.

And I completely get that people should be good people regardless. And I'm behind the idea, for example, that women are people because we're people, not because of how we relate to a man. But it's also true that humanizing feminism by relating it to a woman that man cares about is going to get through to people. It's a first step in getting the to the point of seeing us as people deserving of rights regardless of whether or not we're related or sleeping with that man.

I'm going to jump to one more topic. For those of you who don't know, the term "stay in your lane" refers to people in privileged positions staying away from having opinions of marginalized people or situations. For example, if a celebrity was fat and disabled, a fat able bodied person wouldn't be able to criticize them for perusing weight loss. But if that celebrity was superfat, then disabled fat person who was a small fat or a medium fat couldn't criticize them. The issue I see with this is how difficult it is to effectively create change if only a fraction of activists can even say anything.

Sometimes staying in your lane is appropriate... but sometimes I appreciate when a thin ally speaks up about yet another fat role model turning to intentional weight loss. And sure, they have to be careful how far they take it... personally yelling face to face at a fat person who's decided to lose weight? Not cool- definitely stay in your lane. But expressing any opinion at all? Venting their frustrations on their facebook page? We have to give even privileged people some leeway to process their emotions on things.

We're creating an unhealthy dynamic in which people aren't allowed to feel or process any feelings they have. And the infrastructure is imploding because of it.

In theory, a lot of leftist ideas are great and hugely necessary... but the way we implement them practically is becoming problematic itself and it's not helping our causes. There's no room for discourse and learning. It's an all or nothing game where loser gets his head on a pike.

I want to be clear, I am not calling for marginalized people to be "civil". A lot of us are living in desperate and terrifying times. In the US, many marginalized people have to be hypervigilent because risk or death or losing everything is even greater than it's been. Standing your ground and having clear boundaries and expectations for how people get to behave and treat you is necessary and healthy.

What I am saying, is that, for those who are able, when you can, let's do our best to take on some discussions so that we can take the pressure off of those who aren't able right now. Fat activists- let's do that within our own group. Some of our fat siblings are unable to educate right now. So let's do that when we can. And, when we can't, maybe they can pick up where we left off. You don't have to be friends with the people you're educating. You don't have to invite them into your life, because, intentionally or not, they often leave violence. However, we can't expect for them to find the light when we shove them into the dark with a "figure it out and don't come back until you do".  If we do that, all they'll find is more darkness, and we're the ones who suffer for it.

Being Fat During Hurricane Florence

This past weekend, Hurricane Florence swept through my state, creating panic and destruction. I'm a few hours inland, but the path of the hurricane was expected to go right through my city before, last minute, dipping south and going around us. We got some flooding, some power outages, but it was nothing like it was predicted to be- thank goodness!

In the week leading up to the hurricane making landfall, I was a busy busy bee. I'm what I call a practical prepper -not end of the world zombie apocalypse prepper, but i know shit goes bad prepper. So I already had bug-out bags ready, a comprehensive first aid kit, two weeks worth of meds packed, and lots of water. That didn't stop me from running myself sick trying to prepare for loss of power, loss of water, and possible evacuation for myself, my family, and my companion animals.

But the reason I'm such an anxiety ridden prepper who needs to know exactly what could happen in every possible situation? Because I'm fat. Being trapped and unable to be rescued is one of my greatest fears. It's the core of my agoraphobia as well as claustrophobia. Getting stuck. Rescuers being unable to lift me. It's horrifying.

I think back to Hurricane Katrina and stories of fat patients being left to die in hospitals because they were "too much trouble" to move safely. As someone who's also disabled, I'm convinced that I will die in any major cataclysmic event.  So, despite being really well prepared for anything that could happen, I was terrified. I was having daily panic attacks, the anxiety triggered a mast cell disease flare as well as a fibromyalgia flare, both of which added to my panic (how could I be rescued when I was having anaphylactic reactions to everything?!)

This goes beyond the fear of not fitting in a movie theater seat or airplane seat (very real fears!). I'm afraid of dying. Not because fat is an illness or because fat causes medical problems that will kill me.. it's not and it won't. I'm afraid for my life because of the negligence of people in a society who demonize fat to such a degree that our lives are forfeit , unimportant. Worse, I'm afraid that my family's lives are in danger because of fatphobia. Is my son less likely to be rescued because they don't want to bother with a family that includes a fat woman? Will he have to watch them leave me behind?

At this point, eight years into fat activism, I feel like most of the things we think about are obvious (to me at least), but when you're forced to really confront how deep it goes, how far reaching the danger, and how horrific the potential deaths, it's easy for someone with a panic disorder to really freak the fuck out.

During Katrina, there were three specific patients who were killed rather than evacuated, due to weight. One, Janine Burgess, was suffering from end stage cancer and nurses justified giving her  a lethal dosage of morphine because she may otherwise become conscious (she was sedated to the point of unconsciousness) and, without proper medical care, would suffer greatly. Did they evacuate other end stage cancer patients?

Also, there was Rodney Scott, He was chosen to be the last to be evacuated due to his weight, combined with being paralyzed and unable to walk . While he was successfully evacuated, his life was prioritized as the least important of patients needing evacuation.

Lastly was Emmett Everett, a man who begged medical staff , multiple times, to not leave him behind. He knew what was going on. His roommate had already been evacuated. a man who was awake, aware, ready to evacuate, and in good spirits. He even graciously told the doctors to evacuate others ahead of him. In the end, he was deemed too heavy to be moved at 380lbs. Emergency personnel have said they could have evacuated Everett, but were never even told he was there. Nurses told Everett that they'd give him something to help with dizziness he was experiencing. Instead they gave him a deadly dose of morphine and midazolam (a sedative).

Emmett Everett was murdered- straight up murdered- because staff didn't want to deal with him. They didn't even try. And no one was prosecuted for his death or the death of Janine Burgess. The limit for who they deemed unworthy of saving seemed to be "300lbs". I am 305lbs.

Is it any wonder that I worry? I should. Sometimes anxiety is unfounded and creates a mountain out of a mole hill. This is not a mole hill, it is a monstrous mountain that we keep being too afraid to look at or acknowledge.

The obvious answer to this is to actually think of fat people as people. To prepare for evacuating us and having life saving policies in place for us. It's not impossible, it's not even all that difficult. The issue is simply that no one cares enough to put in the small amount of effort it would take.

I made it through Florence without being hurt or stranded at all, but the future is always uncertain. My life will always be uncertain.

ASDAH Conference- Dr. Bacon (and the inner turmoil of ally cookies)

Although the first day of the conference was spent in my room, recovering from an anaphylactic reaction to perfume, I was able to make the second half of Saturday's speakers! I was able to get there just in time to see Dr. Bacon's talk. When I ran into Dr. Bacon as I entered the conference center on Friday, I squeaked and covered my mouth like a kid meeting their favorite Disney character. A good way to start out embarrassing myself! But after Dr. Bacon's talk, I felt even more lucky to just be in the same building!  Here's what Dr. Bacon did right:

We all know that Dr. Bacon wrote the groundbreaking book Health at Every Size, which is now a decade old. For many of us struggling with the scientific reasoning that people used to justify fatphobia, especially in the medical field, this book saved lives, and continues to do so. It gave us ammo to be able to say "no, i'm not automatically unhealthy because of my size, and I deserve proper medical care". It was page after page, chapter after chapter, of studies that we had never heard of. That most people had never heard of! For a science nerd like me, it was a revelation and made me an instant convert to intuitive eating and the HAES model.

BUT

A good bit of Dr. Bacon's talk on Saturday included what was wrong with that book. In Health at Every Size, there was a heavy focus on changing behaviors to change health outcomes, rather than focusing on body size, shape, or composition, which is most common in the medical field. Here's the thing Dr. Bacon realized though- Intuitive eating and behavior based health focus doesn't work for everyone. An example used was that if someone had an abundance of free food from the fast food place they worked, but couldn't take it home and had little or no access to food at home, then listening to hunger and fullness cues would not be the healthiest practice. Loading up on food to keep them going until the next work day is what would be appropriate.

I remember very clearly, after reading HAES, paraphrasing parts of the book by saying that no one would eat twinkies forever. Eventually you get tired of twinkies and your smart body craves a salad. This is what's wrong with the original book. Some people will always love twinkies and hate salads and we have to realize that that's okay. (And hey, fat and thin people can like both or either).Dr. Bacon, on Saturday, said that only about 10% of health outcomes are really effected by "lifestyle" and behavior and that this number is already readily accepted and agreed upon by people in the research field of health.

What's really impacting our health outcomes? So many things! From genetics, to stress in the womb, to how polluted your city's air is, to  what's in the food that you eat (hormones, antibiotics, mercury, etc), to food insecurity, to dieting... gosh I could go on and on! It's amazing how many things, how our experience, effect our bodies temporarily and permanently. It seems like every day we're discovering that something we thought was safe isn't, and something we thought wasn't safe is. College humor said it well in their Plasticine Diet bit when they said "health science notoriously unscientific!".

There was so much more that was talked about, but I'll never get to it all here! So Dr. Bacon talked about all this and acknowledged the problematic parts of the first book, as well as talking about Body Respect, Co-Authored with Lucy Aphramor in 2014. When Dr. Bacon was praised afterwards, many people clapped- including myself- and Dr. Bacon pointed out the disturbing fact that a thin, white, person was gaining so much praise at a conference meant to highlight marginalized fat people. And there was absolute truth to that.

Because then come the cookies...

And here I find myself in a tough spot. Dr. Bacon is right... we talk all the time in activist circles about allies performing for ally cookies. Basically doing the right thing for praise rather than doing the right thing because it's, you know, the right thing. We are so amazed, so enamored, by a thin person who isn't awful to us, that we don't even know how to act other than with abject praise and deafening applause.

I'm very glad that Dr. Bacon recognized and pointed this out. All that praise was unwanted and
undeserved given the huge amount of privilege that allowed Dr. Bacon to get to where they are today. To have three graduate degrees, to have been published, well received, to become a public speaker, to have their word taken as fact with credibility behind it. That takes privilege folx. And Dr. Bacon acknowledged every bit of it. And I feel so grateful that someone would do such an amazing, but basic, thing to help us.

Where are we at that a thin person being kind to us is so overwhelming that we treat them like royalty? We can't necessarily help our feelings. I feel grateful, I feel near tears, I feel overwhelmed with thankfulness. The question, I guess, Is what will I do with those feelings? How will I channel that back into the Fat Liberation movement to make it better tomorrow? Dr Bacon's talk gave me a lot to think about (and boy did I take a lot of notes), but the Dr's willingness to step aside and not take credit gave me even more to think about it. I hope, some day, that Dr. Bacon and I can have an actual one on one talk because I truly value what they have to say... and I'm interested to see where these cookies go.

ASDAH Conference- The Healing Of Not Being Afraid

I just woke up in my own bed for the first time in almost a week and boy am I glad to be home! I spent the weekend across the country, in Portland OR, as the Association of Size Diversity and Health 2018 conference. It was my first conference, not just with ASDAH, but any conference. I was excited, bright eyed, bushy tailed, and too sick to attend most of it.

Unfortunately, I was brokenhearted after having to leave only a few minutes after the first keynote speaker. I had an anaphylactic reaction to something and was in and out of the ER the whole weekend. The good news is that I met a local fattie who wasn't attending the conference, but had volunteered to hang out with me while I was in town. Now I have a Portland bestie!

A whole weekend with swollen throat tissue was not fun. It's like having something stuck in your throat while being choked at the same time. Worse, it made it hard to enjoy the overwhelming amount of vegan food available in Portland! (I did, however, go to Doe Donuts.. which was amazing! A good alternative so that you never have to step foot in Voodoo Doughnuts- known for it's sugary doughnuts and racism).

But, the weekend was not lost, even though it seemed so at first!

I attended the pre-conference talk on fat as a social justice issues, lead by  Nancy Ellis-Ordway PhD MSW, and Rachel Smith MA LPC NCC CACII RYT 500. And no, I don't know what most of those lettters or numbers mean. 

We started out by getting used to saying "fat" out loud. What? I've said "fat" out loud more than I have just about any other word. I use fat daily, I write about fat, I tweet and go on facebook rants about"fat"!  So there I was, in a room full of people, almost all of them fat, saying this word out loud. It was revolutionary.

Sure I use the word "fat" a lot, but it's always within the context of being in a fatphobic culture or even talking directly with a fatphobic person or group of people. Being able to say it, out loud, with other fat people who are there to LOVE the word and your body and their bodies... it was so much different than the defensive and activist way that I usually use the word. I was slightly blushing at saying it out loud, I was buzzing and beaming!

That was all I got to participate in on Friday, of course. After the mast cell reaction, my mood plummeted, exacerbated by the vegan options at lunch actually not existing and being asked if i could just eat lettuce and sliced tomatoes. A terrible thing to ask in a conference full of people who have been told our whole lives to just eat lettuce and sliced tomatoes, especially for those of us with eating disorder histories.

But let's get past that and onto the two talks I was able to attend Saturday! I was able to attend the keynote talk by Dr. Bacon, author of Health at Every Size, and co-author with  Lucy Aphramor  of Body Respect, and who has a new book coming out, hopefully next year. This talk was amazing and I felt lucky to be in the same city as Dr. Bacon, let alone the same room. Though Dr. Bacon had many criticisms of Health at Every Size, that's what made being there so wonderful. Weaving in personal stories with explanations of overlapping privilege, and adding that a thin, white, person being applauded for being decent was problematic, created an overwhelming atmosphere where I wanted to give this person all the activist cookies in the world, while completely agreeing that privileged people treating marginalized folx with respect isn't a cookie-worthy act.

I don't think there's a way to describe the feeling of hearing the best thin ally I've ever encountered, honestly and genuinely not want applauds and thanks for being an ally. And Dr. Bacon is right.. the fact that I want, so badly, to gush and beam over a thin person not hating me, is a very real problem.

The next talk that I was able to attend was by Mäks Roßmöller (pronounced "Max"), a somatic therapist from Germany who has created the #Reframefatreclaimmovement (Reclaim fat Reclaim Movement). I'll be honest, this was my absolute most favorite talk. Their website is in German, but if you speak German or know someone who would benefit, pass it along! At one point in the talk, Mäks explained that fat often exists in the body to protect things that are delicate and precious, such as the eyeballs or inner organs which are surrounded by fat for protection. 

Then they said the most amazing thing that I have ever heard in my history of being involved in Fat Liberation: "What if fat forms on my body because it is precious?". In that moment, with my eyes closed, my hands on my belly, feeling it move and shift as I breathed in and out, I felt gutted in the best possible way. So much of the Fat Liberation community is about undoing harmful stereotypes around fat. About accepting these fat bodies that most of the world hates so much. But this... this was a complete re-framing for me. It wasn't about being defensive, it wasn't about proving people wrong, it wasn't about educating other people on my own humanity.... it was about the elegant and delicate beauty of fat, of being fat. My life is changed because of this talk. If you have a chance to attend one of their workshops please do it! 

The the information was scientific, compassionate, innovative, and mind blowing. They talked about the ways in which the body biologically stores trauma. 

An example which was both simple and likely relate-able to almost all fat people, was simply the act of sucking in your stomach for decades which makes learning to belly-breathe difficult and even painful. For me, it is so painful to take deep breaths, that I'm terrified of yawning. They also talked about fat as this living entity, with a liveliness, in constant movement. They defined Soma (as in somatic therapist) as "the living body in it's wholeness". And this was only a tiny portion of what was talked about. I can't even explain the depth of which this talk touched me.

Whew! And finally, I was able to attend the keynote talk by Substantia Jones about representation of fat through photography. She's such a real and genuine person, easy to get along with and laugh with, and the same was true through her talk, which features the photography of people like Patricia Schwartz, Laura Aguilar, Catherine Oakson, Lauri Toby Eddison, and, of course, Substantia herself. As the photographer for The Fat Naked Art Project, this talk was deeply interesting and it was so amazing to see the work of so many photographers who came before me. I can only hope to make a fraction of the impact that these people made.

The conference also included a couple of performances such as "What I learned From Fat People On An Airplane" by Kimberly Dark. If you've seen any parts of this online then you know what an amazing story teller Kimberly is... but it's nothing compared to seeing her in person!

Overall, the conference was a struggle. I missed most of it, was uncomfortable and sick the whole time, at times felt hopeless about how I can even keep living with these illnesses, and, at the same time, an amazing, uplifting, reinvigorating experience that I will never forget. I crave more and I feel like the activist burn-out I've been experiencing for a while is gone. I'm ready. I'm willing. And I'm ready to jump back in to this amazing community. I can't explain the amazing feeling or being around hundreds of strangers... and not having to be afraid.