Taking on the fat haters

This post by the rotund made me consider how one can best respond to visceral and unfettered fat hate, of the type that seems everywhere.

It made me think about a comment from Sniper on a previous post  which brings a bit of a lump to the throat;

I read a few of those comments and found them terribly upsetting. There is so much hatred for fat people out there, it stuns me. Do these people really think we’re worthless?

The last but one sentence sums it up;

As far as they’re concerned fat people don’t have lives or feelings.

In a sense, that's the way it is, the whole hating of fat people is not really about fat people as people, but as a representation or idea of something else which is then projected onto fat people, as if it's about us.

When it's about you there tends to be some kind of recognition it speaks to and with you. The obesity crisis is not about us, it's about those who define it. It has been defined over and against our experiences and realities in every way.

The problem with this, is it all becomes very hard to avoid when it is directed straight at you. It is disconcerting, unnerving even. We are used to being addressed directly, see how we jerk our heads towards what merely sounds like our name.

That we are as much subject to the same ideas and ideals that shape what's coming at us makes it the meeting of a mindset we're trying to let go of.