Once More with Feeling

Dear Jamie Oliver,

I used to like you. You were this cute little gap-toothed British dude who made a mean pasta with mushrooms. Your recipes were good. You had chops when it came to cooking Italian food. I could tell.

Then you got interested in helping schools have healthier meals. Cool, I thought. Everyone should have healthy meals at school! And I was still with you.

Then Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution happened and I decided that you, like so much of the rest of the world, weren’t someone I wanted to follow anymore because you were conflating health and fat and morality in a way I found distasteful.

Now, I see, you have a petition. And this petition makes me have feelings toward you beyond mere indifference. Angry feelings. So let me break it down for you.

Your problem with “obesity” is ostensibly that you believe it is costing governments millions in health care related costs. I’m not going to argue with that, although I could, as despite conventional “wisdom” – and I’m gonna blow your mind here – it’s not adipose (fat) tissue that causes disease. No really. And better health outcomes for populations are achieved if you throw out the scale and ask people to be a bit more active, and eat as many varieties of food as they can. But you’re not really worried about my health are you?

No, it’s become increasingly apparent to me that you just think fatties are gross, because if you were really concerned with healthy children, you’d know shaming the fat ones sets them up for a lifetime of yo-yo dieting, which, in case you haven’t read my blog before, causes some of the exact same diseases you are trying to “save” their fat bodies from. It also sets them up for a lifetime of self-esteem issues that can cause, among other things, eating disorders, which ALSO kill people.

So I’m going to say what I’ve said so many other ways in so many other places, but I’m going to say it to you, specifically.

Leave the children alone.

Going into schools and helping them acquire better sources of good fruit and veg is a wonderful cause. Going into schools and designing a physical education program that allows children to discover what kinds of exercise they enjoy, a PE program that makes them feel good about movement, instead of setting up PE as a chore, is also a great cause. Telling kids their bodies are wrong? That’s sort of evil and serves no purpose that the other two goals would not accomplish.

Let me break it down for you as an actual fat person:

My body is mine. My body dances and sings. It cooks and, yes, eats. It sleeps and it dreams. It breaths and it swims. It makes love and some day it might carry a new life within it. It’s not an epidemic. It’s not a global health problem. It’s me. And when you write on your petition in all caps OBESITY IS PREVENTABLE you are erasing my very real, very lived experience as someone who started off fat an only got fatter much to her own attempts (and perhaps BECAUSE of her own attempts) to prevent it.

Fat people are people. We. Are. People. We are not a disease and you should not be inflicting your unscientific and hysterical views about fat bodies on unsuspecting, impressionable children.

We.

Are.

People.

Our bodies serve us the same way thin bodies serve thin people. You cannot separate my fat from who I am, because you cannot separate my physical vessel from the person that I am. And that’s why what you are doing will hurt children – when you tell them their bodies are wrong, there is no way for them to contextualize that within a culture that arbitrarily values thinness. What they hear is that there is something wrong with them and that feeling makes people desperate. It makes them desperate and sick.

So by all means, get that corn syrupy shit out of schools! Get kids moving! But make it about health, not about fat. And I know you don’t believe me, but the truth of the matter is, those two things aren’t always related.

Sincerely,

A Real, Live, Fat Person

PS – You might want to check out the Shakesville response too because those are truths you also need to hear.

My Planned Parenthood Story

This post is in support of the Blog Carnival put together by Shakesville and What Tami Said.

Primarily, the blog carnival has been put together by progressive bloggers in Indiana, due to the recent attempt by state officials there to defund Planned Parenthood.

I live in WA state, where we’ve actually just been able to pass legislation funding low-cost birth control for even more people through clinics like Planned Parenthood. Our local affiliate is not in danger of being defunded. Still, the national news has scared me, scared me into not taking anything related to my health for granted. And Planned Parenthood, both the organization and the idea, is not something that me and the rest of this country can take for granted these days at all. So I’m writing about my story here.

I am a power volunteer for my local Planned Parenthood affiliate. In fact, this weekend, I will be standing behind a table in Kent, WA, handing out condoms and asking people to sign petitions in support of the Limited Service Pregnancy Center legislation we weren’t able to push through this past legislative session. I serve on 2 committees as part of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest’s Young Professionals group, dedicated to raising $10,000 for PPGNW by the end of the year. I write letters to the editor, I post constantly on Facebook. I donate as much as I possibly can per my current budget. In short, I spend a lot of my non-working life thinking about how best to advocate for Planned Parenthood and doing that advocating. It’s how I choose to spend my time.

Here’s the thing about me and Planned Parenthood, though. I’ve only ever needed them once. Just once. When I first moved to Seattle, after living abroad on and off and receiving free birth control and health screenings through the United Kingdom’s NHS. I was brand new in a job and the pills I’d stocked up on had run out. My new job offered health insurance, but it hadn’t kicked in yet, and on top of that, I didn’t feel like I could ask for time off to go to the doctor (on top of which, I didn’t have a doctor).

I could afford to pay out of pocket for my birth control thanks to my new job, so when I ran out of the stockpile I’d gotten in the UK, my first call was to Planned Parenthood, which ran a program out of Oregon that allowed me to talk to a nurse over the phone and receive a prescription without leaving my office or taking time off work. I cannot tell you what relief I felt. I actually wasn’t even sexually active at the time, but going on the pill the first time had made me feel bloated, weepy, seriously depressed and have acne breakouts for months before it leveled off. Being forced to stop the pill and then restart it again in three months was the last thing I needed.

Three months later, my health insurance kicked in, I started seeing my current doctor, and I was able to continue with the birth control I’d started in the UK all the way through to this past Spring when I got an IUD, never having to go on and off it again (which is a serious risk factor for accidental pregnancy).

In 2006 I needed Planned Parenthood. They were there for me. I know if I lost my job now and needed a pap or to go back on the pill, they’d be there for me again. I feel, somewhat terrifyingly, that I’ve now reached a point where if I accidentally got pregnant, I’d probably keep it, but I’m only just at the point now where I feel parenthood is within the realm of reasonable possibility for me. Planned Parenthood was always there, in the background, making me feel like I could take control of my health and my body and empowering me to make the right choices for me.

There are women and men all over this country who use Planned Parenthood has their primary health care provider. There are women and men who use Planned Parenthood only for STD tests and annual exams. There are women and men who, like me, know it’s a safety net that will catch you and take care of you when you have a gap in health insurance coverage. Planned Parenthood is more than a health care provider. It’s peace of mind for so many people like me and it’s a vital health service for so many others.

The defunding efforts are nothing more than a naked attempt to strip bodily autonomy from millions of Americans. I believe in bodily autonomy. I believe in the vital link Planned Parenthood provides to health care and empowerment for millions of Americans underserved by our broken health care system. I believe anyone who tries to imply Planned Parenthood is simply an abortion factory is wrong, wrong, wrong, because I’ve never had an abortion, and every day of my life I am thankful that Planned Parenthood is around.

Please consider supporting your local Planned Parenthood affiliate (like PPGNW), the national org, or Planned Parenthood of Indiana, which is turning away patients who need their care because of the mendacious actions of politicians who have no regard for our health, our minds, our well-being.

Read more stories by clicking on the link below.

The Privilege of Being Sloppy

I was born in New York City and it is my birthright to be neurotic. I make no pretensions about it – some things just wig me out.

I’m pretty clean in the kitchen. I’ve (unfortunately) lived in my share of apartments with pests – insects AND rodents – so you will never find food left out or crumbs on the floor in my kitchen. For similar reasons, I am vigilant about mold and rotten food. The moment I even think something may have started going off, it gets chucked. I can’t help it. Knowing something rotten is in my fridge makes me feel gross.

Another thing that makes me feel gross: Stained clothing.

I’m clumsy. It’s another one of my lovable traits. Almost all of my friends have seen me fall flat on my ass once or twice in their lifetimes. So you can imagine I run into the stained clothing issue pretty often. Just last week I was biting into a delicious strawberry while wearing a white sweater and, well, you know where that story ends. With baking soda and vinegar, is where.

But I absolutely cannot stand wearing stained clothing for very long, particularly if it’s a food stain. I have to go home and change or, if that’s not possible, somehow cover the stain up. If that’s not possible, I basically spend the rest of the day until I can get into a change of clothing obsessing over the stain and awkwardly covering whatever part of myself is stained with my arms, elbows, hands, jacket, whatever I can.

This particular little quirk of mine is directly related to my body size. Similarly, until a few years ago, I had trouble walking down the street eating “bad” food, especially if I was by myself. Friendless fatty and her ice cream cone! The stain thing is the same impulse – fat people are perceived as lazy slobs; me walking around in stained clothing feels like it proves this stereotype correct, which I cannot stand. It’s why I never, unless I’m going to the gym, leave the house in sweatpants or without fixing my hair. It’s why I literally have to talk myself into leaving the house without makeup on. It’s why I tend to overdress for events rather than be the one who shows up “too casual.” You will never see me at an event where I’m too casual. I’d rather wear a ball gown to a beach party than be considered under-dressed, mostly because I don’t want to be the fat, sloppy girl.

Fatness has become synonymous with sloppiness in a way that affects my life and the way I present myself every single day. I go to great lengths to not be perceived as sloppy, as if a stain on my shirt or a day where I run out to the grocery store briefly in my sweatpants somehow “saves” me from the judgment I face walking around in this body. The neuroses surrounding these stereotypes of fat people affect me emotionally some days, to the point where I am near tears if I look in the mirror while I’m out shopping or whatever and my hair looks messy.

Intellectually, I know that 99% of the time, there would be no one who would bat an eyelash about seeing me in a grocery store with my sweatpants on; most people are busy themselves and either wouldn’t notice me, or if they did, would know that sometimes you just need milk for your coffee, so you run out in sweatpants and greasy hair. But there’s that 1% of the time, the 1% of the time I’ve been called fat cow while walking through my neighborhood minding my own business (happened twice last year), the 1% of the time when someone will ask “Should you really be eating that?” and I know I’ve got to haul my butt out of bed and make myself look as “acceptable” as possible, because I cannot give the 1% any more ammunition.

I dress myself for that 1%, and as much as it sucks to admit it, I don’t really see this changing any time soon. What I’m saying is, when you’re marginalized because of the way you look (size, shape, ability, color, gender presentation, whatever), making yourself acceptable to the majority becomes work; it changes your behavior. It changes who you are. It burrows so deeply inside of you, you occasionally find yourself tearing through the streets of Seattle looking for one of those Tide pens without really fully gasping how ridiculous you are being. When you are marginalized because of the way you look, you feel so constantly on display, it’s useless to try and tell yourself that probably no one is looking at you – probably, most of the time, no one is EVER looking at you, because people have lives of their own to live. It doesn’t matter. You feel on display at all times, because the small amount of time you do become visible to someone who’s set on being hateful can be at best humiliating and at worst dangerous (thinking more in terms of racism, homophobia and trans misogyny rather than fat hatred here).

So now you know. If you see me shifting uncomfortably over and over again during my morning train commute, it’s probably because I was overzealous sipping my coffee and now I’m facing a day of feeling awful about myself all because I am constantly worrying if the people I encounter over the course of the day are thinking about how lazy and sloppy I must be. I won’t stop worrying until I can change clothes. That’s that way it is for me to live in this body. I think it’s worth sharing. There are millions of other people who live in bodies who have so much more to worry about than I do, and I think that’s worth thinking about as well.

Being a Fat Teenager, Narratives, and Possibility

This is a repost of something I wrote on my private blog a little under a year ago.

Background is that I went to Lynbrook High School, and you should have a gander at that wikipedia page. It’s one of the best public schools in the country, in a minority-majority district that is also very, very wealthy. It’s a weird place, which I only want to get across because I think it’s very likely my experiences as a fat teenager at that particular school were somewhat mitigated by the fact that I “fit in” as someone academically motivated and smart and interested in learning. So with that in mind, here is the post:

***

Here is what it was like for me as a fat teenager in San Jose: Not bad. And surprising to me in its “not badness.” That is, I expected to be teased, and with each passing year as I grew fatter (I put on between 10-15lbs a year during high school, and, conscious of being a VERY FAT teenager, I tried and tried to stop it to no avail), I thought the teasing was coming. And it never did. Maybe it did for other people, maybe it was going on behind my back, but as far as I remember, it never happened to me.

There were “toxic jock” areas of the quad I wouldn’t walk past, but only because they were mean in a million different ways to a million different people. There were dancer girls I avoided talking to because they were always talking about how fat they were, and if they were fat, that made me a monster. But no one ever teased me. At least not to my face*.

And being as self-aware as I always have been, I felt this was as much as I could ask for. Hell, I thought it was more than I deserved. I was very, very aware that I was one of the largest girls in my class, and that informed everything I expected about my high school experience. You know the phrase self-fulfilling prophecy? Yup.

Now it breaks my heart just how much it informed my expectations about my high school experience. There was a lot I removed myself from – dating, for one – because I didn’t think it was supposed to be a part of the Fat Girl High School Experience.

Which is not to say I had low self-esteem. I didn’t. I thought I was pretty awesome (still do!), but that awesomeness hinged on my intelligence, my tenacity, my loyalty to my friends. Not on my looks. I didn’t really think I was horrible looking. I didn’t particularly think I was pretty, mostly because entertaining the idea of being pretty seemed ridiculous; “pretty” was not a word for fat girls. It was more like “I’ve done okay with what I was given.” Again, these are the expectations I had about “what happens to fat girls.”

For the record, I looked like this in high school (from after a play, with my friend Dennis, which is why we’re goofy and gussied up; I’m 17 here, about 5’4″ and around 220 pounds):

 

But maybe that was the gift being a fat teenager gave me. Having my self-esteem be built mostly around thinking I was a smart and interesting person has served me better than building it around thinking I was a beautiful person. Smart and interesting are far less fragile than beautiful.

A good friend said “That’s heartbreaking” when I told her I remembered distinctly coming home at the end of sophomore year of high school and thinking to myself “halfway done and no one has called me a fat pig yet!” I thought those exact words. I thought I was lucky. I thought I’d dodged some sort of magical bullet.

I don’t think I was unique. We’re fed a big lie by pop culture and the lie goes like this: High school is rough if you aren’t beautiful/thin/rich/white**/straight, if you aren’t in some vague “popular person” category. That I internalized this before I even hit 8th grade is stunning to me. This is the message I took from pop culture:

This beautiful, thin, rich, straight, white person is a Popular High School Student and you cannot be a Popular High School student if you aren’t all those things – which you aren’t, at least the first three – and, unfortunately, for everyone else high schools sucks, so expect it to suck.

Since I found myself lacking as compared to the Popular High School Student Paradigm, I decided that high school was going to be rough for me. This is a leap in logic so huge as to be ridiculous. Almost. The expectations I had for my social life were built around very real narratives I heard all around me. I did not experience the level of bullying I expected, but the fact that I expected to be treated like shit and was surprised when I was not is the heartbreaking part of this story.

But I think most kids do this in some way, with something about themselves that is “different” or does not fit that Popular High School Student Paradigm. Fear of being called out for being different is a powerful thing that is hard – so hard – to just “get over” as a teenager. My way of coping with it – which is maybe the least extreme way a teenager copes with being different than this paradigm – was to self-exclude myself from things. I took myself out of dating, certain sports, certain clubs; I wanted to do the dance class sophomore year but didn’t because “fat girls aren’t dancers” so I took Independent Study PE instead. There were two boys who showed interest in me at different points during high school, which I thought was a joke, and instead I made myself miserable over other boys because miserable and pining was my Fat Lot in Life. A million little things every day that I could have done, I didn’t do.

How would I have been a different person if we saw images in pop culture that were more inclusive? That’s my real question here in this post. I’m not even talking about how others react to my body; I’m talking about how I place myself within that narrative, how I centered my expectations of teenage life. If I saw even just a few images of happy, fat teenagers, how would I have been different?

As I said, I was even one of the more confident people I knew and thus somewhat inured to the self-hatred all too common in your teen years (although my parents will tell you I was prone to a certain sullenness)! I was a ballsy teenager and didn’t let people get away with shit around me. I was a tough cookie (Cookie was my nickname but for different reasons). And now I see that the big pop culture lie I was fed was just that – a lie. I could have done anything I damn well wanted and likely no one would have teased.

When I say my lived experiences in the romance department don’t match up with the narrative we are given about lonely, single, desperate fat women, I say that with the footnote of “when I don’t self-sabotage myself into fitting that narrative.” No one in high school cared that I was fat, really. It was all in my head. I could have danced and dated and played volleyball. It was possible to have been all those things and a fatty.

I just needed someone to tell me it was possible.

I don’t blame my parents for not knowing I needed that. I didn’t even know I needed it. That’s how insidious the lie about Who Is Popular On TV and In Movies is! I took my inability to do things to be fact instead of an emotional side effect of Hollywood only casting beautiful/thin/white people on TV and in the movies!

So I will tell any kids I have – who will, let’s face it, probably be fat – that it’s possible: It’s possible, even if you never see it portrayed realistically. It’s possible to be any number of things that make you “different” than what you see on TV and in the movies and still date or play volleyball or break dance or take ballet or be popular. You can do all these things!

Expect more. It’s possible.

(N.B. I don’t want to dismiss the very real notion of bullying of kids who don’t fit into the thin/white/het/cis paradigm, which is a huge problem; but that was not my experience, and I wanted to talk a little bit about the expectations shoved down our throats by pop culture; I also want to point out that except for the fat thing, I actually do fit the popular teen paradigm and have a lot of privilege that way; I’m white, I’m straight, I’m cis and I’m middle class, although poorer than most of my classmates were, but all of that afforded me a whole ton of privilege that queer/trans/working class kids didn’t get, and I did in fact witness bullying happening to kids who were perceived to be those things. Although the question of whether more inclusiveness in pop culture leads to better outcomes for kids belonging to marginalized groups stands as a backdrop on this whole thing still).

*With the exception of a teacher, once, which is a story I should also write about here.

**Race was complicated at my school and is something I don’t have the space to get into here…

Strawberry Jam And Simple Canning Technique

Look, it’s been all biz all the time in this blog recently, so I figured I’d give y’all a sweet treat and write a post about one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever taught myself – how to can and pickle. There are tons of great resource books for home canning with fantastic recipes in them. This is a nice one with “modern” recipes. I have Well-Preserved: Recipes and Techniques for Putting up Seasonal Foods and it is a seriously excellent starter book. Highly recommended.

I thought I’d start with strawberry jam since it’s a) to date been the most delicious jam I’ve ever made and b) it’s something most everyone likes.

I try to put up fruit or pickles about 4 times per year, twice in spring, once in summer and once in fall. I put up everything and use them as Christmas gifts for friends and family. That way, I have a variety of things to choose from and can send people combos of flavors I think they’ll like. Jars wrapped in bubble wrap travel well and trust me when I say that everyone loves a homemade gift. That’s right, I do some of my Christmas “shopping” in March and April. WHAT OF IT?

So here is a pictorial demonstration about how make jam. Here is a fine recipe for the proportions, but as you can see, it’s an extremely easy recipe. And if you just want it for yourself, you can make it and put it into reusable freezer jam jars, stick your extra in the freezer and you don’t even have to bother with any of the actual canning techniques below.

This is an image heavy post, so please click after the jump to learn more.

WA HB 1366, Limited Service Pregnancy Centers, and Taking It Personally

Yesterday, a bill that I have done a lot of volunteer work over the past year in support of died in my state house, and I want to write a bit about the bill and why it meant so much to me to pass, and why it continues to mean something to me to pass it or a similar bill.

WA HB 1366 concerned “Limited Service Pregnancy Centers,” those places you see in strip malls, often in poorer neighborhoods, that tout “Free Pregnancy Test!” and are, in fact, fronts for anti-choice organizations. They will give you a pregnancy test, but they may make you wait for it; they may lie to you about how far along you are, show you anti-abortion propaganda while you wait for your results, harass you if you say you’re going somewhere else to get an abortion and, most appalling of all here in Washington, which does not have any abortion parental notification laws, are not required to abide by HIPPA regulations, meaning there have been instances where minors who have told volunteers in these centers that they intend to seek an abortion have had their parents, school, and/or friends called as a way to pressure them to remain pregnant despite the fact that it is illegal for any place classified as a medical center to do this. If you want to know more about them, I cannot recommend the documentary 12th and Delaware enough.

HB 1366 would have done 3 things. It would have required these centers to disclose that they were not a medical facility and did not refer for abortions, it would have required them to abide by all HIPPA regulations in regards to medical information and it would have required them to deliver the results of any pregnancy test within the reasonable amount of time you’d have to wait for it at an actual health clinic. It would have done all this by making these centers open to non-compliance injunctions and lawsuits. It would have been the first law of its kind in the country (although Baltimore has similar regulations within its city limits as municipal code).

To me, all of this seems pretty reasonable. Yes, I’m on the pro-choice side, but really all we’re asking these centers to do is not lie to their patients. Of course, places like CareNet got in front of our state house and testified that this would shut them all down because us “pro-abortionists” would shut them down with crazy-ass faulty lawsuits. I find this argument ridiculous. All you have to do is comply with those three things; you don’t even have to give out “medically accurate information” which was a provision of the bill that had to be thrown out after the last leg session after the ACLU refused to support it under free speech concerns. So! Just tell people what you are! And give them their test results! And don’t cross privacy lines you have no business crossing! And if you’re doing all that? Presto, no lawsuit.

In the end, the bill passed out of committee but essentially died as it failed to get scheduled for a full floor vote before the cut-off date and time. Rep Clibborn, who I like and support (but who is not my rep), and who was the main sponsor of the bill, claims a bill “like that” takes up too much time and the state house is completely overwhelmed with the budget cuts that they have to make in order to save the state from a $1.4 billion shortfall in the next biennium. That’s probably fair. Having been down in Olympia twice already this leg session, I understand just how hard the Democratic state reps and senators are working trying to get a state budget that doesn’t completely trample on the state’s most vulnerable.

But it also sticks in my craw – to use an expression my southern great-aunt would – that the moment when legitimate medical centers are being threatened nationally by a cut of Title X funding (aimed mostly at Planned Parenthood, but Title X affects a bunch of different organizations) is the moment the state house and Speaker Chopp choose not to run a bill that would protect people from the non-medical centers that pop up to fill the vaccuum places like Planned Parenthood leave behind, and do so at the expense of those same vulnerable people the legislature claims to be wanting to protect. And I do blame this on Speaker Chopp and plan on holding him accountable in whatever way I can, not being one of his constituents.

I take this setback personally; I really do, even though I’m now experienced enough in the legislative process to know I shouldn’t. I did a lot of outreach and talked to a lot of people in the community about Limited Service Pregnancy Centers and even anti-choice people way out in East King and Pierce counties (traditionally very conservative places) were horrified that they weren’t subject to HIPPA laws. The idea that you could walk into a center, thinking you were speaking to doctors, and instead have your private medical information broadcast to precisely those you were trying to hide it from isn’t something the public generally supports, no matter how they feel about abortion.

Because I believe in bodily autonomy above all else, I believe that medically accurate information about your body is essential to everyone’s personal empowerment in society, and these centers simply trample on a person’s ability to make the best decision for hirself.

It’s not right, and it needs to be stopped. And I don’t know how much time it takes to run a bill like this precisely, but I do feel that with Title X funding under attack this was the year to do it, although, as I said, I understand that the bills affecting the budget need to take priority over a lot of other bills.

But I’ll continue to do outreach on this issue and I’ll continue to talk to communities in whatever capacity I can, and help them understand that places that undermine others’ bodily autonomy as seriously as LSPCs are not working in anyone’s interests, even if they are an arm of your church or your community center, or express viewpoints that you agree with.

My Body is Mine: Toward a Unified Political Outlook

I’ve written two posts now, one on fatness and one on reproductive rights and anti-rape activism.

I think it’s important to point out an obvious thing: Both these things are related.

My body is mine. Your body is yours. These two statements are at the core of almost every strong political opinion I hold. Equality and respect for everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender, gender presentation, body size, kink, skin color, religion, class and a bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting absolutely hinges on bodily autonomy. A cultural, fundamental belief that each of us can do as we wish with our own bodies, so long as we are not hurting anyone else in the process, is 100% vital to a truly progressive, respectful culture.

You can’t have marriage equality without a fundamental, cultural belief that who you have sex with doesn’t matter. You can’t have strong support for abortion rights without everyone on board with the idea that pregnant people have the right to determine where and when they give birth. You can’t have decent safety and support nets for trans folks without the fundamental, cultural belief that how you dress/identify/what pronoun you use is a part of how you treat yourself and is therefore not anyone else’s business. You can’t have a real discussion about health for all people without the belief that some people are fat and some people are thin and some people are disabled and all those people are worth supporting in a culture that promotes real paths to health, rather than just thinness.

So bodily autonomy is, to me, the thread that holds all my other beliefs together.

I think it’s important to state that and to ask all of you reading this to stop and think about what true bodily autonomy would look like in the U.S., both in terms of a cultural acceptance of the concept of real bodily autonomy and in terms of laws we make that subvert true bodily autonomy. What does drug policy look like in that world? Are trans folks less afraid of being murdered simply for being who they are? Are the logistics of pregnancy different? How do social nets change?

It’s an entirely different world, is it not? I think it’s a good world, a better world, a world worth fighting for.

It’s not like I can just fight to introduce a bill in my state legislature that would “grant true bodily autonomy.” This is a fight that takes place on all the levels I mentioned above. Reproductive rights is where it gets cited the most, but there is so much overlap between reproductive justice and fat activism, for example. And I see so much overlap between fat activism and trans rights activism (even though, I will state that fat people are mostly fighting for respect while trans people are very often fighting for survival and I don’t want to minimize that). I see overlap between the rights of pregnant women and the fight to allow terminally ill patients to end their lives in how hospitals restrict bodily autonomy.

So I always keep the idea of that world, where each person has the expected right to full bodily autonomy where it harms no one else, in mind, whenever I think about my overarching political philosophy.

I don’t just fight for abortions on demand, I fight for all people to be respected to know how best to deal with their own reproductive choices, even Lila Rose, who’d like to see abortion rights curtailed for everyone. But I fight for her, because some day she might be pregnant and want a vaginal birth after C-Section, and not be allowed to do that  because the hospital is allowed to dictate that to pregnant people.

I don’t just fight for respect for fat people. I fight for all people to be respected to know how best to deal with their own mental and physical health. I fight so that the word care can be used in a proactive way by each person, so that every person can feel supported to stand up and say as I did in the post below, “well this is what I need to do to care for myself.”

I fight for the world where every body is respected because quite simply, it’s the world I want to live in and it’s the world I think kindest and most morally just.

What do you fight for?

Why I Don’t Diet: A Personal Manifesto of Self-Care

This is the story of my relationship with food and why I chose to stop dieting.

I’m fat, and have been that basically my whole life. And not like 20 pounds “overweight”. We’re talking full-on Death Fat here, people.

Coming out of high school, I dieted. Boy, did I diet. I did Weight Watchers in college and lost something like 30 pounds, but I stopped (and, predictably, gained the weight back) because dieting feels extremely disordered to me and, in fact, I found myself engaging in disordered thoughts about my body and disordered eating habits when I was dieting, and I am convinced most women have a higher proportion of disordered thoughts when they are dieting. I stopped, too, because I grew up in a household where whole foods mattered, meals mattered, and in the diet days, I found myself reaching for the no-fat-super-processed stuff instead of making my own meals. Non-fat cool-whip and low-fat graham crackers, for example , was a dessert I often ate, because it was like 1 Weight Watcher point. Strawberries? Were 2. To me, choosing the former over the latter was an unacceptable way to eat. (And as a side note, I think Weight Watchers has changed this to give foods with, like, actual vitamins in them preference over the processed stuff).

I can’t tell you exactly when it finally clicked that simply because every woman in the world seemed to be constantly dieting and worrying about her caloric intake didn’t mean I had to as well, but it was a series of events in late 2008 that really cemented my personal and political commitment to living a diet-free life.

1. I started becoming involved in Fat Activism and started reading the work of writers like Kate Harding, Lesley Kinzell and others in the “Fat-o-Sphere” and learning about how fat is a feminist issue.

2. I went to see a new doctor, who said the most life-changing words anyone has ever said to me. I had become accustomed to deflecting talk about my weight with medical professionals by saying “Well, I’m a vegetarian and I exercise for 30+ minutes 3-4 times per week and I just don’t lose weight without drastic changes to my diet” (all of which is true). Fat prejudice is rampant in the health care system and among doctors, so being treated like I was somehow a failure for not being thin, like I was ruining my health and shortening my life, by every doctor I’d ever seen had become the norm. But this doctor, the most wonderful doctor I’ve ever had, asked me how I felt about my weight. No one had ever asked me that before. “Um. Actually I… I’m fine with it? This is…this is the only body I’ve ever had so…” And then I went into my “But I’m a good fattie!” spiel. She did a quick check of my chart, shrugged and said “Maybe this is just your body. Some people are larger than others. Your blood pressure is great, your heart is strong, you are active, you don’t smoke, you don’t do drugs, you’re fine. If you’re fine with your weight, I am fine with your weight.” I literally almost cried.

3. It started to click that I thought I was attractive freaking hot and started actively rejecting cultural messages that fat bodies were somehow less beautiful than thin ones. And I started dating more (mostly fat men, whose bodies I happen to find attractive) and had more men hit on me and tell me I was beautiful. Which, is kind of a horrible thing to admit as a feminist; like, I was using male attention to buffer my self-esteem, but it’s true and there it is.

4. I like being a freak. A fat body is a non-conforming body. It pleases me to be non-conforming in a visible way. It has always pleased me. I have a nose ring. I dye my hair crazy colors. I have always felt like “the weird kid” on the inside, mostly due to my brains, so being non-conformist on the outside, well, I dig that. Being a big-ass stylish fattie, fucking with perceptions of beauty in a very small way? I dig that even more.

5. Dieting does not work. It doesn’t. 95% of people on diets will gain all the weight back within 5 years and studies have shown happy, active, fat people have better health outcomes than dieting, unhappy skinny people. In fact, dieting is really, really bad for you. Possibly worse than actually being fat.

Far be it from me to tell you what to do with your body, because I certainly believe above all else in this life that your body is your own, and you may do with it what you wish, including diet. But nearly every study that has shown a correlation between high BMI and bad health outcomes has been bank-rolled in some way by the diet industry. It’s a billion+ dollar industry. Those people don’t have your best interest at heart.

That was the final piece of the puzzle for me. The diet industry? Not my friend. I know my body better than they do. I know what it likes to eat and when it likes to be active and I want to take care of myself the best way I know how. Dieting had never sat right with me, and now, for all those reasons above, I decided to stop. Put down the Weight Watchers Points Manual. Start eating again.

So sometime in late 2008 I signed an opt-out with myself. I opt out of dieting. Forever. Because I’m expected to do it, as an American woman in the 21st century, for no other reason than vanity and I reject that reason. Because women will talk about their diets instead of talking about other, more interesting things, and I refuse to participate in that. Because, above all, I believe that I was less healthy and more disordered when I was 30 pounds lighter. Because I believe that I can be the size I am and be healthy, and I believe that being healthy is a subjective, not an objective measurement anyway. Because I believe that health should be divorced from thin and should be divorced from any moral judgment.

But if you want to know the truth of it, taking care of myself, that euphemism you so often see on dating sites to mean no-fatties  (“I want someone who takes care of herself”) involves not dieting. It involves exercising 3-4 days per week. It involves getting enough sleep. It involves actively disengaging myself from cultural messages about fat bodies. It involves looking at pictures of happy fat women at various places around the internet in order to disengage from cultural messaging about fat bodies. And it involves eating when I’m hungry, not eating when I’m not, eating a wide variety of whole, delicious foods, mostly making up meals I cook myself. It means I do not worry about good foods and bad foods, because I trust myself and I trust my appetite’s ability to steer me in the direction of the good stuff it needs.

And my version of taking care of myself also involves not beating myself up for not doing one or more of these things if I can’t manage it that day/week/month/year.

I am thankful every day I opted out of dieting 2+ years ago and figured out how best to care for myself. I’m happy. With the way I look, with the way I feel, with the energy I have. I’m healthy. All those things that the “after” people tout about weight loss in weight loss product commercials? Well I achieved all of them. How? I stopped listening to people in weight loss commercials.

H.R. 3, Abortion and Sexuality

So, here are some thoughts on H.R. 3 I put together. But first, have some links from people smarter than me!

• Sady’s first post, the #dearjohn Twitter campaign, and the re-victimization of sexual assault survivors
• List of resources from Chunky Monkey
• Melissa McEwan and contextualizing H.R. 3 within popular rape tropes
• Yes Means Yes tackles the redefinition of rape angle
• MoJo gives a good history of the Hyde Amendment
• Aaaaand the problematic “forcible rape” language is taken out but, surprise, it’s still a shitty bill!

But for those of you new and unfamiliar with H.R. 3 who are too lazy to click (I know, I know, we all have lives), it takes the Hyde Amendment, which prevents “federal funding for abortions,” which must be renewed yearly, and seeks to codify it into law. What the Hyde Amendment does and what H.R. 3 would do, essentially, is prevent abortions from being covered under Medicaid, making abortions difficult for low-income cis women and trans men to obtain, particularly low-income cis women and trans men covered under Medicaid who live far from community clinics that may offer sliding scale services.

Originally, the Smith Bill (H.R. 3) contained one very problematic word that was not in the Hyde Amendment. That word? “Forcible.” See, the Hyde Amendment makes an exception for a pregnancy which is the product of rape and incest, and that is the language in the bill. “Rape and incest.” So a low-income cis woman or trans man who is on Medicaid can in fact get hir abortion covered by Medicaid if zie was raped or the victim of incest. That language has been removed, but the law would still make abortion access more difficult than the Hyde Amendment does and a law is harder to repeal than an amendment is.

H.R. 3 has been introduced under the guise of a “conscience clause” by its Republican and Democrat (ugh) sponsors, that is something that would object to abortion being paid for by “the taxpayers” because of our collective conscience and collective objection to abortion. The reading by its sponsors being, I suppose, that everyone must agree that abortion is immoral, or unseemly, or shameful. But the reality of the situation in this country is: No social safety net, poor health care access, bad sex education; your basic perfect storm for accidental, unwanted pregnancies. And do I see those same Republican and Democrat sponsors fighting for a better welfare state? Reader, I do not.

With the “forcible rape” debacle, H.R. 3 very plainly showed the right’s true colors, and the very plain agenda of its sponsors. What they wanted was for rape victims to have to demonstrate that they were victims before they would be allowed to terminate their pregnancies. You were raped? Prove it. Let me see the bruises. Otherwise, no abortion for you.

Let’s be clear here – although it was the re-victimization of rape victims at stake with the “forcible rape” language, those foul words are an act of war against all women (cis, trans, poor, rich, black, white) and trans men.

See, it’s not only about rape victims, and it’s definitely not about abortion. What H.R. 3 is about, what every single piece of legislation against abortion is about, is punishing and controlling women*’s sexuality, and the “forcible rape” language just brought that cold, hard truth to light.

Can’t show your bruises after your rape? You were probably asking for it, slut. Got roofied and raped? No force! That’s not really rape! Boys will be boys when there’s an unconscious woman around, after all.

And, still, we have this: Want to abort, but are poor? Sorry, should have kept your legs closed.

And don’t come asking for welfare, either, whore.

The attacks against Roe at the state level are increasing with each passing year, and it’s scary; I can’t tell anymore if I’m just more aware or things really are getting worse, but the reality is that they definitely aren’t getting better. Abortion is not getting any easier to access, particularly for low-income people. And the reality is also that my voice in the political landscape – and the voice of other abortion activists that want abortion on demand – have been silenced by years of concessions made on Roe. Okay, no partial birth abortions. Okay, no late-term abortions. Okay, no abortions in South Dakota. I don’t wish to make light of the work activists have done around those issues, because they fought – and continue to fight – hard and long. But they lost in some places. And with each loss, the popular mentality shifted a little against abortion as a valid choice for all pregnancies, a valid choice that should be an available option for all, to something you only do when you’re desperate or stupid. And with each loss, we actually made the most vulnerable people just a little more desperate, until we’re close to creating a world where abortions are only available to the most desperate, those willing to die rather than be pregnant.

The worst case I saw, and one I hope no one else will ever have to face, was that of a nurse who was admitted with what looked like a partly delivered umbilical cord. Yet as soon as we examined her, we realized that what we thought was the cord was in fact part of her intestine, which had been hooked and torn by whatever implement had been used in the abortion. It took six hours of surgery to remove the infected uterus and ovaries and repair the part of the bowel that was still functional.

This from Dr. Waldo Fielding, writing about what he witnessed prior to Roe in this New York Times opinion article from 2008.

That nightmare world where intestines spilled out of wombs, where hangers and knitting needles punctured into abdominal cavities, resulting in death from sepsis? It existed. And if H.R. 3 passes, we’re just one step closer to it existing again. “Forcible rape” is incredibly objectionable language, but all legislation to tighten restrictions on abortion are acts of violence against ALL women and trans men, and all legislation to tighten restrictions on abortion are a direct assault on women’s sexuality. The Hyde Amendment is an act of violence. H.R. 3 is an act of violence. Forcing anyone to carry a pregnancy to term when they don’t want to is an act of violence. It’s an act of war against my body to force me to carry a pregnancy to term that I do not want, or to make it so hard for me to access an abortion that I stop trying . It means my body will change without my consent. It means something that I don’t want to be there will feed off me. It means my hormones will change and affect everything from my emotions to my hair. It means I will go through childbirth, whether I want to or not.

But I consented to all of that when I opened my legs, right?

Stupid slut.

No, the Smith Bill, seeking to codify the Hyde Amendment into law is an act of war against women’s sexuality and against all women and trans men’s bodies. It’s an act of war that targets the most vulnerable – those reliant on the tiny sliver of a welfare state that we do have in the U.S. It’s an act of war against me and it’s an act of war against you, if you are someone who can get pregnant, regardless of how you feel about abortion, because forced pregnancy is forced pregnancy, whatever your views on the subject.

And the casualties in this war? Well, they aren’t going to be the rich white people on Capitol Hill, are they?

Pro-life? No. Pro-punishing-sluts. Pro-killing-women. Pro-sepsis. Pro-disembowelment. Pro-leaving-babies-in-dumpsters. Pro-desperation.

Related, Sady’s most recent post #DearJohn: On Rape Culture and a Culture of Reproductive Violence.

*Here I’m going to stop using gender neutral terms to refer to people who can get pregnant because I’m referring now specifically to women’s sexuality, all women.