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The Falsehood of Individual Liberation, the Last Acceptable Prejudice, and Oppression Hierarchies; Why We Need Intersectionality

I get promotional emails from Bust Magazine on a pretty regular basis. It’s a nice chance to preview what’s in store for the month and so on. This past week, I got an email promoting an article responding to the Marie Claire debacle (and good on Bust for covering this info) but as I was eagerly reading the promo copy, well, I wanted write an angry letter pretty much immediately. I was, however, on my way to work, so it had to sit for a little while.

What did Bust do? Their writer, as so many other writers have done, referred to fat hate as the last acceptable prejudice. They later issued an apology for the phrasing (another reason to love Bust) so I wound up glad my angry letter wasn’t needed anyway. Instead, I wrote this post.

So, here’s the thing – no matter what happens outside of the fat acceptance community, inside, here where we all are, fat acceptance needs to do better. Feminism is still reaping what it has sown when it comes to racism and classism; FA needs to do better than that, which is why intersectionality is something we must continue to incorporate. So I think it’s really important that we break down why this claim is so damaging – both to FA as a social justice movement and to us as a community of fat people in general.

Now, I run in pretty progressive circles for the most part. I’m friends with a fairly diverse group of people and I love that. I try to listen to many different people and to hear what they have to say and the people in my social circle do the same kind of work. It’s a pretty fantastic life, honestly. The drawback is that unless I remind myself, it’s all too easy to forget that the entire world does not function this way, that racism and classism and sexism and everything else are not just concepts – social justice movements exist because these are the lived oppressions of lots of people and just because I may not see it in my immediate social circle, well, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. That doesn’t mean it isn’t incredibly common. In fact, just because I don’t see it happening in my social circle doesn’t mean it isn’t still happening right here where I am!

As a white, middle-class, cis woman in a monogamous hetero relationship, it is my responsibility to remind myself that there are lots of things I do not get to see. When people of color, for example, tell me about their experiences with racism, well, let’s just say they are far more reliable witnesses in most cases than I would be – because there is some stuff that I can see, of course, but there are things that I will never experience; it is vital that I listen and hear the experiences of other people without dismissing them. All too often people jump to dismiss racism because they don’t see it – but they weren’t there.

What this boils down to is that if I were to say fat hate is the last acceptable prejudice then I would also be saying all of those people who were open and honest enough to share the stories of their oppressions were lying. Because those things wouldn’t be happening if those prejudices were not acceptable.

People try to get around this – oh, people say, that doesn’t mean those prejudices areculturally sanctioned the way fat hate is! My answer to this is that if hate of many different kinds were not sanctioned by our culture, hatred would not be so common. In short, having a black president does not mean we live in a post-racial society where racism is any less the usual way of doing business. Until the people who are being oppressed say the oppression doesn’t exist anymore, it really isn’t my business to say something doesn’t exist as an acceptable prejudice.

There is no way that one social justice movement can benefit by creating a false hierarchy like that anyway. There is no hierarchy of oppression. Undermining other social justice movements is a loser game.

And when we try to erase other privleges like that, we are failing the call for intersectionality. Many of us have multiple facets to our identities. We are a community: We are fat, we are queer, we are trans, we are asexual, we are poor, we are disabled, we are people of color – we are so many things. Asking any individual member of our community to ignore one aspect of themselves is telling them they cannot be a whole, entire person and participate in FA. To say we are only here to talk about fat – and not the ways in which fat and ability or fat and race or fat and class intersect – is to say to people that their true selves are not important to us.

It is unacceptable to deny a person’s identity. If their identity, or the way their multiple political identities interact, makes any individual uncomfortable, that is probably a good sign. Sit with that discomfort and unpack why it is such a challenge to accept that the needs and experiences of another person are different – and just as valid – as your own.

There’s an amazing post up right now at myecdysis.com about the origin of the word kyriarchy and some shady business that has happened of late. The whole article is fantastic but I especially want to highlight this:

Solely pursuing your own liberation often comes at the expense of others.

Lisa theorizes that there is no such thing as individual liberation (a phrase used in the article to which she is responding). I’ve been thinking about this because I do think individuals can experience liberation – but I don’t think a focus on MY individual liberation is useful in any grand particular sense. Yes, I want to escape the cycle of self-loathing our culture initiates – but I can’t accomplish that by focusing only on myself and my experience. It is only when I approach things from a cultural perspective that my own situation improves.

This is true of feminism and it is true of all social justice. If I seek an end to the oppression of fat people alone, I am seeking that liberation on the backs of every other oppressed group.

There is no need to take turns at liberation – this is not a line at a water fountain. Oppression of different groups often springs from a common source and it benefits us ALL – all of us, not just one small group – to recognize that and work from an intersectional approach. We cannot dismantle systemic and cultural hatred of bodies that look different if we are only digging away at one corner. To encourage, rather than erase, stories of other oppressions makes us stronger as a community, makes us better able to offer support to each other, and makes us better activists.

So now what do we do? I am, in many ways, talking to y’all with the understanding that, hey, you know this already! But I wanted to say it all again because I want to challenge you – and myself. Whenever you hear someone make the claim that fat hate is the last acceptable prejudice, I’d like you to find someway to mention that it isn’t. That is going to depend a lot on your comfort level – it might take the form of a raised hand offering protest or it might be an email privately sent. But I don’t want us as a community to fall into silent support of such claims because that’s how it gets perpetuated.

More than that, I want all of us to continue to work toward an fat activism that actively grounds itself with an intersectional perspective. We truly are not operating in a vacuum. Let’s make that our greatest strength.