What Freedom Ain't: Fat Liberation for Folks Who Mean It
Pic is of a diverse group of people; fat, disabled, all genders. All are dressed in workout clothes in a studio. Source: Body Liberation Stock Photos from Lindley Ashline
By Denarii Grace
When I first started Fat Acceptance Month in January 2019, my primary goals were two-fold: 1) create spaces, both virtual and in-person, for fat folks to commiserate, unlearn, and organize and 2) create visibility for our community and our issues - share and educate as many people as I could reach about the ills of diet and weight loss cultures, the biased science, the systemic discrimination, how it all harms fat folks, and how we can do better by ourselves and each other. Lofty goals, to be sure, but I was compelled to do my part.
In the wake of the unprecedented modern movement building prompted by George Floyd’s murder, it has been inevitable, as a long-time activist, for me to think about the future. How do I imagine freedom, liberation? How do we get there? With whom should I build community? What should a revolution look like?
If you ask two dozen activists of various left-of-center political stripes for their thoughts on this question, you’ll get 50-11 responses, with some likely overlap.
But one thing that I’ve observed, not just in this past year, but over the last decade or so that I’ve been an organizer and teacher, is that there are fewer conversations about what freedom can never be. No matter how you think liberation should manifest, there are certain things that just ain’t gonna get us free.
As fat activists and our accomplices continue to imagine a world free from fat antagonism and shaming, discrimination, and inaccessibility through NAAFA’s first ever Fat Liberation Month and beyond, let us also be reminded of the things that can hold us back. We can keep each other accountable, build more effectively, and perhaps move more expeditiously toward liberation. This is what freedom ain’t:
Politicians and Laws
There is a long history of marginalized groups maneuvering local, state or provincial, and federal laws to establish and protect rights to which we are entitled. Symbolically, access to these rights highlights our humanity and rightful place as citizens in countries where we’re often treated as second-class. Particularly as yours truly is also Black, bi, trans, and multiply disabled, I know all too well that it is a rich, empowering, and hard-fought history.
And it’s not just in the past. Today, there are thousands of activists in the U.S. alone making the case on the ground, on social media, and on our TVs to ensure that our rights remain and are expanded. Invoking things like the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has proven effective. Fighting for laws on the books has always been an important tool for equity.
But, while I strongly believe that it’s important, in the short term, for fat liberation activists to advocate for more just laws, public health policies, and the like, I also believe that we have to be very clear-headed in understanding that the laws of a land that is inherently rooted in supremacy (of various kinds) is not the key to our freedom. Just as quickly as they can be codified, they can be siphoned off and taken away, as abortion and voting rights activists have been discovering for decades.
True liberation is beyond the laws of a white supremacist, sexist, ableist, capitalist, settler colonial government; if we put too much of our stock in their laws, we’ll continue to circle the drain instead of climbing out of the proverbial sink. I don’t know about you all, but I don’t like going in circles - it makes me dizzy. It’s a distraction.
Centering the Most Privileged
Fat liberation isn’t the only liberation movement with this problem and it’s not a new issue. Black women were critiquing the sexism and male supremacy in radical Black liberation spaces and organizations during the Civil Rights Movement era. Black suffragettes in the 19th century were critical of white suffragette activists’ refusal to give up their fervent commitment to white supremacy.
And there is no shortage of criticisms of the erasure of women, Black, Brown, and Native queer folks, trans folks, bi+ (plus) folks (among others) from Big Gay, Inc. as the movement has become more mainstream (and commercialized). For literal centuries, the most marginalized - those of us with the most at stake - have been screaming and signing at the margins. As a result, there has already been much written about why centering the most privileged is harmful as well as the ways that this harm can be remedied.
Unfortunately though, privileged people of all sorts historically have a hard time learning this lesson (because it benefits them not to), so it must be taught (exhaustingly) over and over again. And fat activists are certainly no exception to this rule.
Modern fat activism as we understand it today has been around for about 50 years (though the very nature of Black bodies’ constant “othering” means that fat liberation activism has actually been around much longer than that). Forever grateful to my elders for the foundation that has been laid, but the movement - like so many movements - still tends to focus on the fat folks who are the most privileged: the smallest, the abled, the class privileged (yes, that includes celebrities), the white, the fat U.S. citizens, the allocishets, etc.
Centering their needs means that the unique needs of marginalized people are pushed to the wayside. We are told to wait, that we’ll “get our turn” even though we know that 1) when the most marginalized win, we all win and 2) “trickle down” theory is bullshit. If you’ve already started examining your own privilege, how it informs the work you do, how it benefits you in a society geared toward your needs and desires, great! Keep going! But our freedom rests on all of us doing this inner work and holding one another accountable.
Every Person for Themselves
At 34, I am blessed to personally know quite a few living elders (and melders) from various civil rights and liberation movements: disabled, fat, and bi elders, among others. One thing that I have always admired is both their commitment to and ability to organize. Way before the advent of social media, they had methods of communication that allowed them to change or create not only laws but also the paradigm shift necessary to transform the culture.
As my contemporaries and I continue this work, I am reminded that division will not save us. Many of us are dealing with traumas of various kinds and, sometimes, we engage in lateral harm. We consider each other easily disposable and we allow capitalism to trick us into believing that we can “do it ourselves,” that we don’t need community care to survive and build the world we dream of.
To be clear, I myself am an “individual activist.” I am not formally attached to any organization (though I have been in the past). I am not arguing that, as activists, we must all be members of an organization (or the same organization) to be legit, particularly considering the many critiques of the nonprofit industrial complex. There are grassroots organizations and lone activists of all kinds doin’ the damn thing every day. They don’t necessarily share strategies or use the same tactics. That isn’t necessary.
However, what is necessary is that we lift each other up. What is necessary is that we acknowledge each others’ work. What is necessary is that we make and keep connections when it would behoove us to do so. What is necessary, for all liberation movements, is that we address, manage, and if possible, root out our trauma and the harmful habits we’ve formed to protect ourselves.
This doesn’t mean that people get to weaponize marginalized identities to manipulate people. This doesn’t mean that community members who cause harm should not be held accountable, or that accountability doesn’t sometimes look exactly like disposing. That doesn’t mean that we “cancel ‘cancel culture’” or give abusers a pass (that would actually be contradictory to my previous point about centering the most marginalized, which includes victims/survivors of abuse). This doesn’t mean that we don’t get to make our own decisions about the people we allow into our lives - not everyone is safe.
But I am a strong believer in - I am a living witness to, in fact - the power and importance of community care and organized cohesion. Some semblance of togetherness will save us from isolation, backlash, and will help keep each other accountable. There are agents out there that would prefer that we stay separated and unconnected. We’re easier to manipulate when we don’t know what other members of the community and their organizations are doing. It creates opportunities for intellectual theft and other forms of exploitation. Let’s not give them the satisfaction. Learn about who your elders, melders, and contemporaries are. Start conversations. Buy each others’ books. Serve on panels together. Follow one another on social media. And protect one another from predators and others of ill will.
It’s essential to our survival as a movement.
The Cops in Our Heads
When there is so much to protect ourselves from, individually and collectively, it can be easy to go on the defensive. It may even seem righteous to do so. But in finding the balance between calling people in (or out) for real harm (usually stemming from some kind of privilege) and treating community members with care, we have to be careful of policing, of adopting the state’s mentality of punishment and ostracization for every little infraction.
In movements this large, people are ever-growing, evolving, learning, and unlearning. It is important that we step back and take the time to assess our desire to immediately jump down someone’s throat when they, for example, use the wrong language at a monthly meeting. It is important that we gain an understanding of how and when to use certain tactics to address our oppressors, but also to address each other.
The cops in our heads would have us believe that every real or perceived slight or harm deserves a bloody tongue lashing, a scarlet letter on the forehead, and exile. The cops in our heads would have us believe that no one is teachable, no one is worth saving. The cops in our heads would have us believe that what they do is actually helpful, reducing harm and making the world safer for fat folks and other oppressed peoples.
But the only thing that cops, real and figurative, are capable of doing is simping for the state, a state that actively wants to harm marginalized folks. Kill the cops in your head. Lead with love, be firm, take correction with humility, be willing to learn, admit that you don’t know everything, practice active listening skills, tap into your ability to discern and assess situations. These and other skills are important for a robust movement if it wants to survive, otherwise we will tear one another - and ourselves - apart.
Watering Down the Message
There has been a lot of discourse around “Defund/Abolish the Police.” When it comes to liberation for marginalized people, it is a demand that is imperative. We needed it yesterday, we needed it last year, we needed it a century ago. As this particular movement gained mainstream steam, there were cries for grassroots Black activists to “tone down” the messaging. While no one is taking the bait, thankfully, folks were made to believe that the message was incendiary, so much so that it would reduce support for an otherwise noble and just cause.
As previously mentioned, the laws and politics of an inherently corrupt nation state will not free us. What does free us are actions implemented that are radical - that attack problems at their source instead of beating around the bush. Much of what fat activists talk about is, by its very nature, radical. It challenges the very concepts that society holds dear: what beauty is, what health is. It rips the rug of calorie counting, restriction of whole food groups, and svelte waistlines from under every unsuspecting person. We talk about set point theory, we declare that it’s okay to be fat, we establish that intentional weight loss and dieting are inherently ineffective and, as a result, recommending or doing them is harmful.
Anyone who has been in the game long enough knows that there will be an immense wave of pushback: from family and friends, from doctors, from celebrities and politicians (another reason why they ain’t it), even from activists in other movements!
But we cannot afford to fall back. We’ve already seen some of the destruction that a watered down message can do within our own spaces, as “body positivity” was co-opted (read: stolen) from marginalized fat activists, commodified, repackaged (centering the smallest fats and even thin folks), and sold back to us for capitalist profiteering. We see what it looks like when billion-dollar diet companies try to sell the same concept (diet culture) couched in different language (“lifestyle change”).
When the demands get diluted, we lose focus and sight of the main goal. When the messaging changes, when the mission changes, the end result will also inevitably change. And the most marginalized of us cannot afford for the messaging to change. Do not waver and one day - probably not in my lifetime - we will be victorious.
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It won’t always be easy to be strong. There will be days when it’s hard to remember this message: when someone’s harmed you or otherwise pissed you off, when you’re feeling particularly vulnerable and don’t like being reminded of the ways that someone else’s oppression benefits you, when you’re feeling like you just can’t win so it becomes easier to fight for less than you deserve. And, in most cases, it’s okay if you as an individual aren’t always strong. We all have our moments, our days when being our “best selves” just isn’t in the cards. If we cause harm as a result, we take accountability, make amends if possible, and keep it movin’. But as a collective, as a movement, we must be strong. We cannot falter. So as we continue to celebrate and advocate, please keep these words in mind. Our liberation depends on it.
Note: Denarii Grace is the creator of Fat Acceptance Month (FAM), celebrated in January. For more on Denarii and other activists who influenced NAAFA's first Fat Liberation Month, check out FLM History.
Pic of Denarii Grace, a proudly fat, Black, bi, trans (non-binary), poor, multiply disabled, intersex femme wearing glasses, a white blouse with a black tank and a yellow flower in their hair.
Denarii (rhymes with 'canary') Grace is a proudly fat, Black, bi, trans (non-binary), poor, multiply disabled, intersex femme who has been doing movement work of various kinds for over 13 years. They are a writer (essayist, journalist, poet, songwriter, screenwriter, and ghostwriter), singer, public speaker and activist with primary focuses on race, color, bisexuality, fat liberation, and disability, with gender, class, and other issues often in the mix as well. She coined the term "exogender" in March 2018 to describe their experience of gender; it's a term for Black people only. They founded Fat Acceptance Month in January 2019, which has so far featured a series of virtual events to teach, support, and build fat community. You can support her via Patreon, Cash App, Venmo (@Denarii-Monroe, and Paypal and learn more about their work on their website.
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