Over the last few years, we hope that you’ve noticed more and more from the NAAFA Board about taking an intersectional approach to our work as a fat rights organization. The term intersectionality was coined by law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw over 30 years ago. She used it to talk about the ways systems of oppression intersect and overlap. While legal scholars were the main ones using the term for many years, it’s gained in mainstream usage over the last decade. It has also been expanded to incorporate types of oppression not as widely discussed in the legal situations being analyzed when it was originally used. Fat community has adopted the term to talk about how size discrimination impacts people differently based on the ways other kinds of discrimination also do or do not impact us. We also use it to urge examination of the oft-spoken myth that anti-fatness is the “last acceptable prejudice.”
Read More
