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There’s been enough time elapsed that I can subtweet this, but one of the funniest things that’s happened in the last ~10 months is that after literally decades of fat activists fighting to change the way people talk about diet, body size, and health 1/
they’ve had some moderate success. Such that socially conscious and progressive people are a little more mindful about how they talk about body size and fat and the assumed link to health 2/
and even though this success is *very limited,* like not in the widespread cultural milieu at all, there is now a backlash where ppl talk about how they feel super lonely and isolated because they need to talk about body size, fat and health but they can’t 3/
because mean fat activists will attack them if they do. Like I’ve seen ppl say stuff like “i have a condition that is mitigated by keeping my weight down and I’m terrified to talk about it” or “i started an exercise regimen and feel great about how I look 4/
but I can’t say anything because of fat activism!” And I’m really, really gonna beg ppl not to fucking do that. The fact that you think twice about sharing weight loss desires or diet needs publicly and sometimes decide it’s not worth it to do isn’t harming you 5/
And I can absolutely PROMISE you that there are 2,000x more spaces where you can safely talk very openly about weight loss and health without any input from fat activists than fat people have to talk about being fat! 6/
And when you take to public spaces and say stuff like “i have to eat a special diet that involves a lot of cruciferous vegetables and I’m afraid to talk about it because fat people have ruined endless discussion of weight loss” fat ppl see you 1) not understanding the point 7/
and 2) blaming them for the inconvenience that the extremely modest gains of fat activism has on their ability to talk about dieting. 8/8
