i've been listening to a lot more fat liberationist stuff recently and like...
so obvs i already had some backing in a lot of the basic theory, stuff like institutional anti-fatness in medicine, fashion, travel, etc, but like
so as a really thin guy who's always found it impossible to gain weight, its been unbelievably emotionally and mentally liberating to hear people talking really casually about the disability that's associated with thinness
so like being really thin, you lack additional joint and bone support - if you fall, you have less padding and less STRUCTURE to protect your bones from breaks and fractures, right?
obvs theres plenty of fat people that do have issues with bones and joints, im not saying thsres not, its just that normally i feel like im the lone person saying "being this thin is bad for me and is part of various health problems i also have"
and idk its just like. my whole life i was such a sickly child lmao
like i couldnt stand for long periods except "long period" would often be like. any period. i didnt understand how my peers were just standing for so long and just weathering that, bc to me it wasnt possible at all - i breathed badly, my joints were fucked etc
and looking back and realising as i get more disabled like the extent to which i was similarly disabled in my youth, and how i lacked the language to verbalise or sometimes even recognise my own pain and struggle
but also like
the treatment of me as so evil and lazy because i wasn't exercising, or because like. a PE teacher would pick me out as an example because i was so thin, and then be furious that i wasn't remotely physically fit, and that i was disabled
i remember multiple times esp from cis female teachers just. frothing rage at my diet and the things i ate, or when i wrinkled my nose at talk about diets, bc i was so thin so i had to be doing The Right Things, and if i was that thin and doing bad things i had to be punished
and its bc a lot of these ppl thought of fatness and being fat as a punishment, a target for abuse that people deserved, and bc i was a young disabled trans guy like. i deserved punishment for my laziness and nonconformity, and it became a lot about my weight
like expressing that i wanted to gain weight, that i was cold all the time, that i had no energy etc, that eating was hard but that i enjoyed food, all of that was met with such fuckin aggression and really sharp policing, esp from PE teachers and esp from women
and obvs all that is to do with the way that diet culture particularly targets women and those perceived as women, and the desire to engage in lateral violence to police others into complying with gender roles etc as they were upholding them
but idk like. fat liberationist politics is imo inherently tied up with disability liberation, because of the way that "health" is weaponised as a symbol of being good or deserving, and how fatness and disability are both used as targets and symbols of evil and punishment
MOST OF ALL for fat & disabled people
but for nondisabled fat people disability is often threatened as punishment - if you don't become less fat, you'll (deserve to) become disabled
and for disabled thin people, if you don't act less disabled, you'll (deserve to) become fat
and its not a punishment to be fat or disabled or sick. its just how some people are. its not BAD to be this way - and what makes things hard for us is not something inherent to the badness of our bodies, but instead the lack of kindness and accommodation anybody is willing to extend to them