Spectating

Before and following my last post, I've been doing a lot of thinking about why I don't really fit into the fat acceptance movement. Now let me say, I hope this is not going to become or be perceived as a whine, it's more in sorrow than in anger. I also know that I'm not the easiest person to get along with and I underestimated not only that, but how much of an issue that was going to be.

I don't feel deliberately excluded, well, not for it's own sake, it's a product of how we all are. I'll explain it by relating about how I used to be genuinely shocked and appalled by people who wished to stick narrowly to people who they perceived as being exactly like them. I just couldn't understand how they could be so parochial. Having been on the blogosphere I can now see exactly what they are avoiding and frankly, I can't blame them at all, not one bit. Although I have no greater love for hegemony than I did before.

Having to be endlessly misunderstood over what are effectively differences that have little to do with the matter at hand means you are either excluded, or if you try to observe the rules, end up losing sense of yourself. That's just the way it is, it's unconducive to mental flow and the one thing I feel I need after years of living under the stagnancy of lies is to let what I've learned come forth. But we are what we are, we have an intellectual and mental centre of gravity and I've yet to discover mine on the internet. Some barrier always presents, class, race, education, gender, tone, nationality, underlying precepts etc if it's not one thing it's another.

It's funny, but I've also schooled myself in why I've been so reluctant to get involved in things in the past. I assumed it was because I was too lazy etc, yep a lazy piece of self contempt, passing itself off as honesty and self analysis. It turns out there were actually good reasons for me not to involve myself in the general conversation a lot of the time. Now I have to counter the sense that I didn't have the right anymore to keep sitting back and letting others speak for me/in my favour and speak up myself. It doesn't feel morally right, but it feels like it has to be.

I realise now that sometimes you just have to trust it to the insiders and go your own way, because you've got no choice, not because you wish others to do your dirty work for you. I can say hand on heart, I no longer feel ashamed to say this because I no longer see it so much as a defeat, as I might have before. I truly understand the why of it now and I have nothing to be bitter about. I have been dis-illusioned in the best possible way. I now understand the "apathy" of others, they know when it's not their conversation and that trying to take part would be like trying to board a merry go round that only stops for certain people, not them. It's just futile. Yes maybe if I was a better nobler person or whatever I might be able to get around that, but to be honest, I doubt that.

I know that people in FA want diversity, or like the idea of it more than the reality, I genuinely believe they feel that way, however, in the same way that if things were more conducive to me they might not be for those who find it right for them now. There's no getting around that, not that I can think of.

So as far as most FA and other blogs, it's better for me to learn the role of spectator. I've been aware of this for such a long time, but had so committed myself, that I found it almost impossible to walk away. I've had, and am having to consciously detach myself. What's helping is that I don't think the environment and underlying basis of it is helping me at all, in the end, despite all the positives there undoubtedly are.

I have certain spheres I tend to identify with, but I feel this way about the whole of the fatosphere, not any particular viewpoint, nothing fits enough for me to be useful to myself or others. Again, I feel no need to point fingers and whine about a mythical council of FA that has fingered me for the boot or whatever, it's just how it is. I'm accepting that I am what I am and equally others are what they are too.

What I'll do better to concentrate on is what I actually think. Although I've improved, I've gone through a period of lacking the courage to say what I feel needs to be said, because it feels so against the tide. I felt like I should do whatever I can to fight against infringements of rights, however, I can only do it in ways that make sense to me and right now, the fatosphere doesn't really. It is someone else's conversation. It always was, but I overlooked this by determinedly focusing on what we could agree on. Now that feeling has overwhelmed me, I've been told it too many times, finally I've heeded it. My commitment, doesn't feel like that anymore, it feels a bit like I'm way up my own arse!

Other people lurk, why shouldn't I? I can learn to restrict my take and comments to my own blog. One of my prime motivations was to exchange and challenge each others idea, but I see that blogs are not the forum for this kind of exchange and internet space more designed for this is either inactive or doesn't want me as a member. So that's that.