#da’shaun l harrison

[softandorsweet]

just ~ if you haven’t listened to the podcast Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back GO DO IT!!! it’s a group of Fat liberationist discussing everything fatness and anti-fatness. plus they all exist with multiple marginalizations, most hosts are queer and trans. it’s so brilliant i’ll never get over it!!!! god

[spidergirl2000]

Hey y’all. So there are plenty of folks who want to get into fat liberation but don’t know where to start. I would recommend starting off with these two books: “Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness” by Da’Shaun L. Harrison (they are nonbinary and they use they/them pronouns) and “Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia” by Sabrina Strings. I also recommend listening to the podcast Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back. The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Audible and any other app you use to listen to podcasts. They also have a website so you can listen to all of the episodes they post. Just type Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back and you’ll find their website. They post a new episode roughly every two Sundays.

[fatliberation]

fat white person compares body shaming to racism. more at 12

This ask tells me you don’t believe that systemic fatphobia is a real issue. It goes so, so much deeper than body shaming. I don’t compare fatphobia to homophobia, racism, etc to say that they are the same, they’re not, although they absolutely do intersect - I compare it to those things because it’s discrimination and we should treat it as such. people should be called out on it like they should with any other ism.

Although I would never equate the two, fatphobia is a form of anti-Blackness. Its roots are in white supremacy. The ideal thin body was constructed as a marker of Whiteness and ‘purity’ before any of this was ever made to be about health. Read Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings. Read Belly of The Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da’Shaun L. Harrison.

This is the only ask like this I will answer. I’m not interested in playing oppression olympics.

[fatehbaz]

Just in case, some might enjoy. Had to organize some notes.

These are just some of the newer texts that had been promoted in the past few years at the online home of the American Association of Geographers. At: [https://www.aag.org/new-books-for-geographers/]

Tried to narrow down selections to focus on critical/radical geography; Indigenous, Black, anticolonial, oceanic/archipelagic, carceral, abolition, Latin American geographies; futures and place-making; colonial and imperial imaginaries; emotional ecologies and environmental perception; confinement, escape, mobility; housing/homelessness; literary and musical ecologies.

---

New stuff, early 2024:

A Caribbean Poetics of Spirit (Hannah Regis, University of the West Indies Press, 2024)

Constructing Worlds Otherwise: Societies in Movement and Anticolonial Paths in Latin America (Raúl Zibechi and translator George Ygarza Quispe, AK Press, 2024)

Fluid Geographies: Water, Science, and Settler Colonialism in New Mexico (K. Maria D. Lane, University of Chicago Press, 2024)

Hydrofeminist Thinking With Oceans: Political and Scholarly Possibilities (Tarara Shefer, Vivienne Bozalek, and Nike Romano, Routledge, 2024)

Making the Literary-Geographical World of Sherlock Holmes: The Game Is Afoot (David McLaughlin, University of Chicago Press, 2025)

Mapping Middle-earth: Environmental and Political Narratives in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Cartographies (Anahit Behrooz, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024)

Midlife Geographies: Changing Lifecourses across Generations, Spaces and Time (Aija Lulle, Bristol University Press, 2024)

Society Despite the State: Reimagining Geographies of Order (Anthony Ince and Geronimo Barrera de la Torre, Pluto Press, 2024)

---

New stuff, 2023:

The Black Geographic: Praxis, Resistance, Futurity (Camilla Hawthorne and Jovan Scott Lewis, Duke University Press, 2023)

Activist Feminist Geographies (Edited by Kate Boyer, Latoya Eaves and Jennifer Fluri, Bristol University Press, 2023)

The Silences of Dispossession: Agrarian Change and Indigenous Politics in Argentina (Mercedes Biocca, Pluto Press, 2023)

The Sovereign Trickster: Death and Laughter in the Age of Dueterte (Vicente L. Rafael, Duke University Press, 2022)

Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908 (İlkay Yılmaz, Syracuse University Press, 2023)

The Practice of Collective Escape (Helen Traill, Bristol University Press, 2023)

Maps of Sorrow: Migration and Music in the Construction of Precolonial AfroAsia (Sumangala Damodaran and Ari Sitas, Columbia University Press, 2023)

---

New stuff, late 2022:

B.H. Roberts, Moral Geography, and the Making of a Modern Racist (Clyde R. Forsberg, Jr.and Phillip Gordon Mackintosh, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022)

Environing Empire: Nature, Infrastructure and the Making of German Southwest Africa (Martin Kalb, Berghahn Books, 2022)

Sentient Ecologies: Xenophobic Imaginaries of Landscape (Edited by Alexandra Coțofană and Hikmet Kuran, Berghahn Books 2022)

Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884–1905 (Matthew Unangst, University of Toronto Press, 2022)

The Geographies of African American Short Fiction (Kenton Rambsy, University of Mississippi Press, 2022)

Knowing Manchuria: Environments, the Senses, and Natural Knowledge on an Asian Borderland (Ruth Rogaski, University of Chicago Press, 2022)

Punishing Places: The Geography of Mass Imprisonment (Jessica T. Simes, University of California Press, 2021)

---

New stuff, early 2022:

Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-fatness as Anti-Blackness (Da’Shaun Harrison, 2021)

Coercive Geographies: Historicizing Mobility, Labor and Confinement (Edited by Johan Heinsen, Martin Bak Jørgensen, and Martin Ottovay Jørgensen, Haymarket Books, 2021)

Confederate Exodus: Social and Environmental Forces in the Migration of U.S. Southerners to Brazil (Alan Marcus, University of Nebraska Press, 2021)

Decolonial Feminisms, Power and Place (Palgrave, 2021)

Krakow: An Ecobiography (Edited by Adam Izdebski & Rafał Szmytka, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021)

Open Hand, Closed Fist: Practices of Undocumented Organizing in a Hostile State (Kathryn Abrams, University of California Press, 2022)

Unsettling Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of French India (Jessica Namakkal, 2021)

---

New stuff, 2020 and 2021:

Mapping the Amazon: Literary Geography after the Rubber Boom (Amanda Smith, Liverpool University Press, 2021)

Geopolitics, Culture, and the Scientific Imaginary in Latin America (Edited by María del Pilar Blanco and Joanna Page, 2020)

Reconstructing public housing: Liverpool’s hidden history of collective alternatives (Matt Thompson, University of Liverpool Press, 2020)

The (Un)governable City: Productive Failure in the Making of Colonial Delhi, 1858–1911 (Raghav Kishore, 2020)

Multispecies Households in the Saian Mountains: Ecology at the Russia-Mongolia Border (Edited by Alex Oehler and Anna Varfolomeeva, 2020)

Urban Mountain Beings: History, Indigeneity, and Geographies of Time in Quito, Ecuador (Kathleen S. Fine-Dare, 2019)

City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763-1856 (Marcus P. Nevius, University of Georgia Press, 2020)

[chubbychiquita]

Wanted to share a quote that feels pertinent to the b.s. that was in your inbox today:

“Concepts like ‘greed(iness),’ and ‘over-consumption’ are the cages that breed Thinness… Thinness, as a politic, demands that one consume less, desire less, rather than make the demand that we end a World where what one desires would leave others without” (20). Da’Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of The Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

thank you so much for this! 💕

[thottybrucewayne]

Thotty's Spring-Summer TBR

To be started

Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive by Julia Serano Darkly: Black History and America's Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor Toward the African Revolution by Fanon Black Disability Politics by Samantha Dawn Schalk and Sami Schalk Notre Histoire: The First Hundred Years of Haitian Independence by Ghislain Gouraige Jr. Sexed Up by Julia Serano The Color of Kink: Black Women, BDSM, and Pornography by Ariane Cruz Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa Miss Major Speaks: The Life and Legacy of a Black Trans Revolutionary by Toshio Meronek Revolution is Love: A Year of Black Trans Liberation by Qween Jean and Joela Rivera Sisters in the Life: A History of Out African American Lesbian Media-Making Editor(s): Yvonne Welbon and Alexandra Juhasz Keith Haring's Line Race and the Performance of Desire by Ricardo Montez Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails by A. Cruz-Malavé

To Be Finished

When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost by Joan Morgan Whipping Girl by Julia Serano Black Trans Feminism by Marquis Bey Reel to Real: Race, class, and sex at the movies by Bell Hooks Culture and Imperialism by Edward Said

Re-reads

Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson Anarcho-Blackness Notes Toward a Black Anarchism by Marquis Bey Anarchism and Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire Cistem Failure by Marquis Bey Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States by Zora Neale Hurston The Book of Negro Folklore Editor(s) Langston Hughes & Arna Bontemps

Reccs

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon The Deep by Rivers Solomon Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace: The Worldwide Compendium of Postpunk and Goth in the 1980s by Marloes Bontje The Blood of A Thousand Roots by Dane Figueroa Edidi My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite Street Style by Ted Polhemu Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blacknes By Da’Shaun L. Harrison The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi Insights: Film & Television by TRUDY Shuckin' and Jivin': Folklore from Contemporary Black Americans by Daryl Cumber Dance

[ladygagataiwan]

📖 女神卡卡 Lady Gaga 更新 Instagram：以下這些句子可以在 Joy James 的著作《追求革命之愛》(In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love) 中找到。（2023.06.19）

【圖１】Joy James 著作《追求革命之愛》中的一段摘錄，建立在 Ominira Mars 的貢獻之上。

【圖２】Mumia Abu-Jamal 在同一本書的《Afterforward》中談到 Joy James 學術概念「concept of Captive Maternal」時的文字。

【圖３】Da’Shaun L. Harrison 為本書撰寫的前言。

【圖４】Joy James 著的《追求革命愛情》一書的照片。

💡 補充：Joy James 是知名美國政治哲學家、學者、作家 & 人文學科教授。

【Gaga 貼文】

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtrwWbRPqTI/

“All words can be found in 「In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love」 by Joy James

Image 1: Words from Joy James’ book 「In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love,」 in an excerpt that is 「building on the contributions」 of Ominira Mars.

Image 2: Words from the same book’s Afterforward by Mumia Abu-Jamal on Joy James “concept of Captive Maternal.”

Image 3: Words from the book’s Foreward by Da’Shaun L. Harrison. @dashaunlh

Image 4: Photo of the book “In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love” by Joy James.

小怪獸們 𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 記得「追蹤 𝐹𝑜𝓁𝓁𝑜𝓌」

才不會漏掉任何 𝐋𝐀𝐃𝐘 𝐆𝐀𝐆𝐀 的最新消息喔！

#女神卡卡 #女神卡卡臺灣粉絲團 #環球音樂 #西洋 #西洋音樂 #文學 #閱讀 #レディーガガ #레이디가가 #ladygaga #gaga #pawsup #littlemonsters #taiwan #ladygagataiwan #queenofpop #albumoftheyear #songoftheyear #Afterforward #book #ConceptOfCaptiveMaternal #kkbox #literature #songwriter #OminiraMars #grammys #oscars #MumiaAbuJamal #JoyJames #InPursuitofRevolutionaryLove

[yngsuk]

“Fat Black trans people are forced to move to and through gender in a way that makes most evident to me that gender itself is something worth interrogating more closely. In so many ways, fatness functions as a gender of its own. Fatness fails, and therefore disrupts, the foundation on which gender is built. This is why the request is made of fat trans people to lose weight before they can be affirmed in their gender, or why little fat Black boys are often misread as girls, or why fat Black women are often denied access to womanhood in a way that operates differently than the typical ungendering of Black subjects at large. But gender is birthed from violence, and therefore fatness operating as its own gender is not liberatory so much as it is forced. Fat people are situated in this extension of what is already a prison because fat bodies deviate from—or rather are already positioned outside of—the designated or assigned “look” of gender. This is to say that the attempt to broaden the normate template only further harms unDesirable people and reifies the very real violences of gender itself.”

Da’Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness

[rapeculturerealities]

“Who are you outside of your body?” — This is one of my favorite questions that has ever been asked, and it’s one that Da’Shaun L. Harrison tasks us with unraveling often. When we sat down to discuss their forthcoming book, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, I reflected on how I feel this question reverberating in every chapter. What Da’Shaun drives home with Belly of the Beast is why the question is so important, why it should be asked again and again, because there are so many things invested in us seeing ourselves as only a body.

In this conversation, we dig into many things: the limitations and failings of Body Positivity, the violent ways that Black fat beings are policed and violated by police, how fatphobia convinces us to police ourselves, parallels between the COVID-19 pandemic and the general ways Black fat beings are engaged by the medical industry, gender, humanness, abolition, capitalism, diet culture, the impossibility of “health” for Black people, the cannibalistic nature of whiteness, and more.

read more

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

30

that's Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da’Shaun L. Harrison!

[mission-to-dietitian]

Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da’Shaun L. Harrison ● Decolonizing Wellness: A QTBIPOC-Centered Guide to Escape the Diet Trap, Heal Your Self-Image, and Achieve Body Liberation by Dalia Kinsey ● Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement by Charlotte Cooper ● Fat Girls in Black Bodies by Joy Arlene Renee Cox, Ph.D. ● Fat! So?: Because You Don't Have to Apologize for Your Size by Marilyn Wann ● Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings ● Heavy by Kiese Laymon ● Revenge Body by Caleb Luna ● The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor ● Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom ● Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating by Christy Harrison ● Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach by Evelyn Tribole & Elyse Resch

[thaenad]

The types of policing that Christianity deploys against sexuality are very much aligned with the ways anti-fatness polices bodies through the common tenets of purity and non-gluttony. (x)

Read this excerpt from liberationist Da’shaun L. Harrison’s piece titled “Jackie Hill Perry Cannot Separate Herself From the Antagonizing Nature of the Church”, where they discuss the anti-Black and anti-fat nature of such antagonisms of the church.

Part of the underpinnings of Christianity, alongside anti-Blackness and colonialism, is anti-fatness. Calls to abstain from sex and to otherwise be “delivered from (sexual) sin” exist because calls to fast and to do away with “gluttony” exist. Purity demands that one denies their desire, and that denial stems in part from anti-fatness which is built into the (im)moral fabric of Christianity.

It is for this reason that, despite her unwillingness to name it as such, Jackie [Hill Perry]’s theology is one still rooted in and cannot be separated from the idea of deliverance. As stated by Sabrina Strings in Fearing The Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, the Protestant Church leaned heavily on identifying “overeating” as ungodly as to punish fat Africans who they read as “greedy.” It was this that created anti-fatness as a coherent ideology and it’s this ideology that produces the need for one to suppress or abstain from the things they want.

This is to say that abolishing the structures that permit/make room for/necessitate anti-fatness would in many ways free even thin people from the idea that they ever need to deny their desires. This would make clear that concepts like “greed(iness)” and “overconsumption” are the cages that breed abstinence as a prerequisite for the right to live; that for one to be free, they must be Thin—even if only in politic. As a politic, Thinness requires ones to be eager about scarcity; it demands that one consume less, desire less, rather than make the demand that we end a World where what one desires would leave others without.

It is no more greedy for any consenting adults to be with each other than it is for a person to get a third plate. We must feed ourselves. We don’t need language like “junk food” any more than we need language like “abstinence”; we don’t need language like “cheat days” any more than we need language like “deliverance”; we don’t need language like “gluttony” any more than we need language like “sin.” And it is more dangerous to teach people that something worth serving would actively command them to “deny their flesh” or otherwise not be exactly who they are. Da’shaun L. Harrison @dashaunlh dashaunharrison.com

I thought this would be a good subject to talk about for the feedism community especially, since our desires are policed in this way, not only by anti-fatness but by the anti-Blackness it’s rooted in, and how the church has weaponized sexual desire and “gluttony” as sins against white purity.

[the-final-straw-blog]

Fat Liberation for Revolutionary Leftists with Autumn

This week I am very excited to present an interview with Autumn (she/her/hers), who is an anarchist and scholar-activist, on Fat Liberation in all its many nuances, the pervasive, classist, racist, and colonial nature of fatphobia both in mainstream society and in far left spaces and thought, and the roots of Fat Liberation as a structure which originates and lives with Black, Indigenous, and brown, trans and disabled people. We also speak about Autumn’s syllabus entitled “Fat Liberation Syllabus for Revolutionary Leftists: Confronting Fatphobia on the Left AND Liberalism within the Fat Liberation Movement”. In this document, she compiles writings on the many aspects of fatphobia and gives her own analysis in bulleted form. This document is available for public use, and you can find it at https://tinyurl.com/FatLiberation!

People, works, and resources named by our guest in this episode:

- Da’Shaun L. Harrison book “Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness”

- Dr. Sabrina Strings book “Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia”

- Hunter A. Shackleford “Hunter Ashleigh Shackelford (they/she) is a Black fat cultural producer, multidisciplinary artist, nonbinary shapeshifter, and data futurist based in Atlanta, Georgia ... They are the creator and director of a Southern body liberation organization, Free Figure Revolution, which focuses on decolonizing antiblack body violence … Hunter illustrates the relationship between Blackness, fatness, desire, queerness, and popular culture.” (Instagram: @huntythelion)

- Jervae (Instagram: @jervae)

- Dr. Dorothy Roberts’ work on CPS and how anti-Black racism and fatphobia infect this institution.

- Health At Every Size, evidence based medical paradigm that heavily critiques the social constructions of “obesity” and diet culture, and aims to present folks with a compassionate and inclusive framework for taking care of themselves.

- Books by Dr. Lindo Bacon (founder of Health At Every Size)

- podcast Food Psych with Christy Harrison

- Marquisele Mercedes article “How to Recenter Equity and Decenter Thinness in the Fight for Food Justice”

- Caleb Luna (Instagram: @chairbreaker Twitter: @chairbreaker_) “Caleb Luna (they/them) is a fat queer (of color) critical theorist, performer, poet, essayist, cultural critic, and performance scholar. As a Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley, their research focuses on performances of eating, and historicizing cultural representations of fat embodiment within the ongoing settler colonization of Turtle Island.

- Sonalee Rashatwar (Instagram: @thefatsextherapist)

- podcast Maintenance Phase with Aubrey Gordon (Instagram: @yrfatfriend Twitter: @yrfatfriend)

- Fat Rose Collective (Instagram: @fatlibink)

. ... . ..

Music for this episode:

Reality Check by Noname (Instrumental)

Check out this episode!

[fatliberation]

love your page so much! have you read any work from Da’shaun L Harrison? they are so so amazing and have written an amazing book called the “belly of the beast: the politics of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness” they also co host the fat liberation podcast called “unsolicited: fatties talk back” with other fat liberationists whom i love like Caleb Luna, Bryan Guffey, Marquisele Mercedes and Jordan Hall! most of them are also trans! thought i’d share <3

Yes!!! I adore Da’shaun’s work as well as everyone else you just mentioned! I follow each of them individually and when I found out they were hosting a podcast together I geeked out SO HARD. I’m currently making my way through Unsolicited FTB and it is feeding my soul. What an incredible group of people. I highly recommend listening!

[kaile-hultner]

What Does God of War’s Thor Really Do For Fatness Representation?

Santa Monica Studios recently announced some of the secondary characters in God of War: Ragnarok. Prominent on the list is Thor, Norse god of thunder, sacred trees and groves, fertility, and hallowing. He’s a no-brainer choice for a series like God of War, but the way he’s portrayed is a bit different than other modern (superheroic) interpretations of the character. Rather than being a musclebound beefcake buff boy like Disney’s Marvel’s Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is, God of War Thor is fat.

When I first saw this, I thought, “oh shit, rad.” When put in conversation with that other Thor performance especially, instead portraying a big belly beef boy Thor also seems like a no-brainer (and something a little closer to realistic for the kind of god Thor is described as being). Considering this Thor is much closer to my body type than Chris Hemsworth’s is (even with that god-awful fat suit he put on in Endgame), my first thoughts were about how cool it was to see a strong, powerful, confident, FAT Thor in a piece of popular media.

But I’ve been sitting with that thought for a minute. It seemed like too easy a take to make. Something’s been bugging me about it.

Now to be clear, I’m not trying to shit on this version of Thor. I think he should exist, absolutely. I AM happy he exists, considering the typical way fatness is displayed in games and other popular media (to say nothing of that fucking fat suit in Endgame, god dammit I’m still so mad about that) — if fatness isn’t played up for laughs it’s played up for cheap scares, most of the time. Having any character who elides those common traits is a positive thing.

The problem I’m having with this thought is that not all fat is created equal. Showing off a fat cisgender, presumably heterosexual white dude’s body in a positive, even aspirational light in a video game is good in a narrow, “representation for representation’s sake” sense, but outside of fat cishet white dudes, who does this portrayal serve? I can’t really think of a good answer to that.

Not all fat is created equal. Race, gender, sexual orientation all effect and are effected by fatness. In Da’Shaun L. Harrison’s book Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, they demonstrate repeatedly how the medical establishment has, for centuries, pathologized and medicalized Black bodies, including (and especially) along weight lines.

“For anti-Blackness and anti-fatness to be legitimate subjugating and objectifying structures, their existence had to be predicated on a Thing unobtainable by Black fat subjects,” Harrison writes. “That Thing is health. In other words, to legitimize race, sex, and class statuses, health had a job to do. That job was to ensure that the Black — which is, too, the fat — was always fixed to be something that Black fat subjects could not be.”

During Hurricane Katrina, Harrison pointed out on Twitter a few months ago, doctors forcibly euthanized several hospital patients, including Black fat patients, because they were allegedly too tricky to move. That fact in itself is horrifying, but it is by far not the only instance of horrific actions taken at the intersection of weight and race, to say nothing of gender and sexuality.

When it comes to gender and fatness, especially trans healthcare, weight plays a significant role in the gatekeeping of transition care, whether medical or surgical. For fat cis women, serious medical issues are too often ignored or misconstrued as merely a symptom of their fatness. While this is acknowledged by the medical community as a stigmatizing approach to healthcare, this article from 2015 flat out says right up front that “Recent US Preventive Services Task Force guidelines recommend screening adults for obesity and offering behavioural interventions to those with a body mass index (BMI) over 30 kg m−2.” If I might wax anecdotal for a bit, I had a coworker who was considerably fat, and actively trying to access care that could help him lose weight, if the procedure was done; he was prevented from getting that care for three years because the procedure required him to lose the weight he was having trouble losing in the fucking first place.

Harrison: “Fatness and health, like race, are also double agents. They are all used to tell Black fat people who and what they are, but they are also used to tell white people who they should not want to become. When they fail to model that, it can be deadly for them too. Not in the same way as it is for the Black, but deadly as a result of even unintentionally aligning oneself with what exists as the obverse of whiteness.”

So again: who does Fat Thor, a fictional god-character in a video game, serve in this case? What good does his representation do for us?

Health isn’t the only facet of fatness worth looking at. There’s also the social facet of fatness and how it relates along gender, sexuality and desire/ability lines. Right away as Fat Thor was unveiled to the world, people were rushing to his defense with pictures of powerlifters and World’s Strongest Man competitors, big burly dudes in their own right but none of which I’d call “classically fat,” not like Thor’s depiction. The idea is well-intentioned — show other “large” bodies in positions of strength and power — but ultimately I think this harms fat folks more than simply letting the big guy speak for himself in-game and letting gamers die mad about it. And the reason I say this is because trying to connect Fat Thor to powerlifters and tire-throwers and car-pullers, etc. unintentionally draws a line between acceptable and unacceptable fatness. It’s fine if you’re a little, uh, chubby as long as you’ve got a super muscular core! Don’t worry about that icky flab, we know you’ve got MUSCLES underneath!

Like when I think about Big people in queer spaces, I am drawn to think of bear culture specifically first. Bears are cute, of course, but they’re not fat. They’re closer to a powerlifter than Fat Thor by a wide margin, and then there’s also the classic gay dating profile line of “no fats no femmes” to think about. True fatness is implicitly not allowed in much of the queer community, not in our depiction or in reality. If fat people are let in, it’s because of some “redeeming” quality, something to latch onto “in spite of” fatness.

The way we talk about fat women is similar, especially fat celebrity women. We scrutinize their bodies for the first sign of weight loss while putting up vapid posts about how much they “inspire” us for having the “bravery” to be fat in public. Then, if/when they do lose weight, we explode with effusive praise, “Oh my GOD, look at how amazing she looks! I-I mean, she’s always looked amazing, so BRAVE, but NOW she’s STUNNING!” Look ay what happened when a skinnier Adele showed herself off in a photo shoot for the first time in years.

Does Fat Thor serve anyone? Largely, no. He doesn’t serve fat people of color, fat trans or nonbinary people (especially not fat trans men), nor fat cis women; he isn’t meant to be an avatar for anyone other than fat, white, cishet men — arguably the group least considerably effected by fatness. So what does his inclusion in a video game matter? In terms of being marginally better than fat-as-comedy-or-tragedy-or-horror, it matters, I guess. It’s complicated. It’s better than no fat representation at all. But that bar’s so low we had to dig out a basement for it to live in.

[blackzoebarnes]

answer the questions and then tag nine people you want to know better/catch up with!

shoutout to the bestie @gingerale-addict for tagging meeeee

five songs you’ve been listening to on repeat:

Sugar Pills by iDKHOW

Let’s Get Lifted by John Legend

Television / So Far So Good by Rex Orange County

Welcome to Planet Earth by Jon Walker

When the Day Met the Night by Panic at the Disco

last movie: rewatched Love, Simon with my sister last night but the last new movie I watched was Bad Lucky Goat (2017, dir. Samir Oliveros)

currently reading (book): Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness by Da’Shaun L. Harrison and I Though You Said This Would Work by Ann Garvin

currently watching: Atlanta, The Legend of Korra, and Dear White People

currently reading (fic): like a melody in my head by sarcasticfluentry

I’m tagging: idk who’s on this hellsite anymore so do it if ur a mutual I guess!!