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i love that everyone reached deep down in their social justice bag yesterday to defend jill scott against fatphobia. and also, i wonder if that tweet had mentioned, say, gabby sidibe, if the endless tweets about how attractive she is would also have happened.
(note that that tweet ends with a period, not a question mark. i know the answer; we all know the answer)
in 2018, i wrote about that dichotomy, that conflict—thick vs. fat.
it applies to the defense of jill scott. https://dashaunharrison.com/the-conflict-between-thick-and-fat/
it applies to the defense of jill scott. https://dashaunharrison.com/the-conflict-between-thick-and-fat/
but more than this, i wonder: what would it look like for us to defend fat women, period? why do they need to be attractive for our defense? would that question posed yesterday have been any less fatphobic if he’d use someone “less attractive” as an example?
fat Black women don’t exist to arouse us, and therefore any defense of their existence shouldn’t be predicated on our arousal.
AND we should be committed to interrogating our desires always. if you experience sexual attraction to women and jill scott does it for you but darkskin fat Black women just “aren’t your type,” you should be interrogating that. b/c it WILL determine how/if you defend someone.
this matters because desire is not only about who you would and would not have sex with. it determines who we believe (as survivors of assault); who we defend; who we value; who we criminalize. who/what you desire is about who you want to see live and who you want to see die.
fat Black people are criminalized when we aren’t desired. this is especially true for fat darkskin Black women. and so it matters that you are always working through your desires. and more importantly, it’s imperative that you are working towards the abolition of Desire.
and if you want to know why i capitalized the “D” in Desire, feel free to read this—where i theorize around Ugliness, Beauty, Desire/ability, and Insecurity. https://dashaunharrison.com/leaning-into-insecurity-and-ugliness-as-an-essential-politic/
