Whoa, careful there, OOP! Are you suggesting that it’s not affluent white women in first world countries who are the most oppressed demographic in history?
Better recant this immediately, or the wrath of social media may fall upon you before you know it!
Cisgender heterosexual white affluent women from first world countries who have enough social support to become morbidly obese without severe financial hardship
They'll frequently talk about eating out, traveling, buying plane tickets, going to shows, shopping, etc. but never touch on the amount of money required for all these things.
Not to say that marginalized or poor people can't do these things, too, but most of their talking points are overwhelmingly consumption-based.
Not to mention they are constantly at the drs office, which is a privilege in itself to have so much access to medical care. It’s a shame they refuse to use this gift and instead act like all medical professionals are idiots and they know everything
No no no they're all totally QuEeR. Their identities as non dysphoric thembies, heteromantic gray-ace demisexuals, and pansexual because they realized a a celebrity meets the standards of attractiveness are totally VaLiD.
Ah as an asexual they’re my Favourite. ‘Queer’ asexuals who have sex on the daily with multiple partners but they claim it doesn’t count because they’re ’not attracted to them’
I mean low-key I think a lot of this is actually because of the idea of 'affluent white women in first world countries' being the retort from both sides to any womens issues.
I think weirdly, when oppression is a cudgel, the most woke among us are actually really unlikely to acknowledge the impact of misogyny? Because it's a type of oppression that doesn't give you special permission to talk over others as it effects half of everyone. The alt right and the woke left equally will hear an unremarkable woman talk about an issue and inject wealthy or middle class and 'white' in front of 'woman' to discredit her.
It's not that I think all these FAs are severely oppressed in fact or anything, but I think the drive to complain is sometimes because they don't see their own real complaints about real social issues like misogyny as real.
I definitely agree about misogyny not being taken seriously compared to other oppressions, or only being considered "real" oppression if it's paired with another (or several) oppressions, as well as agree with your point about people invoking rich white women to shut down discussions on misogynistic oppression.
Slight tangent, but in addition to what you brought up about people putting "white" or "upper-middle class" in front of "woman" in order to discredit or dismiss her experiences with misogyny as privileged whining (even if it's misogyny experienced by all women to some degree), but I've even seen a disturbing number of people argue that a woman being violated "isn't that bad" as long as she's of legal age, and I genuinely wish I was joking.
I have seen a lot of this as well unfortunately, especially recently. Off topic, but I have also seen the struggles of women in war zones being dismissed for being a certain race or religion, and have seen rape and having been bombed daily being downplayed simply because they are of a certain race or ethnicity and have a certain "privilege" despite living in a war zone. I have seen these dismissals from fat activists as well, when they talk about other social justice issues, who are not living in a war stricken country, but somehow believe their lives are harder than women and people who don't have access to food or water.
Old soapbox moment, but similar to thin marginalized people and thin minorities, FAs and people with FA mindsets virtually never touch on the sheer amount of money and resources it takes to get and stay fat.
It's either thin = privileged and wealthy (and almost always implied to be white, which has its own issues), while fatness is almost always associated with being marginalized, deprived, and downtrodden.
Ofc there are additional nuances and variations to this, but it still doesn't change the fact that getting and staying visibly fat/obese often requires a certain amount of money and resources regardless.
Likewise, in addition to the plane ticket and travel complaints, a lot of their "oppression" often revolves around eating out, restaurants, and clothes shopping. All of it is consumption-based and revolves around indignation when their impulses and desires aren't immediately catered to.
It kind of reminds me of cigarettes. My uncle smokes despite not really having the money to do so. He's pretty skinny, but my aunt has always been overweight as an adult. She doesn't smoke, and the extra she spends to 'stay fat' probably doesn't seem like much, especially since she mostly cooks all of their meals. I would bet thr cost is a similar dollar amount to what my uncle spends on cigarettes.
I do agree there is more nuance to this. My aunt is very much on the lower end of plus size and is almost always actively trying to lose weight. She's not an FA, just a woman who has struggled with weight for a long time. I think the fact that so much of the diet industry acts like all you need is this fad diet or this exercise program or this pill and you'll lose weight makes it seem impossible if you can't afford those things. The rise of GLP-1s probably makes poor people feel even more hopeless since they seem like a 'quick fix' that actually works.
For me personally, I'll acknowledge that there are aspects of my life that do make dieting easier than if I was poor and working multiple jobs or didn't have a decent education that helps me understand weight loss, nutrition, and exercise. Where the thin privilege argument falls apart is I know plenty of fat women in significantly better life and financial situations than me and plenty of thin women in similar or worse situations. I think Kirstie Alley and Oprah are great examples of how it doesn't always work that way. They have both thrown so much money at weight loss and still have continued to struggle with weight for years.
Money and privilege can buy thinness, but it'll only last if you make the mental and lifestyle changes and are able to stick with them long term.
I just did some quick research, and I was surprised to see how little it actually costs to maintain 150 pounds of extra body weight. Less than $5 a day!
I actually save a lot of money by not frequently buying lunch, snacks, and eating less in general (sorry, I mean *flips notes* forcefully depriving myself of nourishment in order to appease patriarchy).
I agree with you in that it doesn't always have to cost an exorbitant amount to maintain excess weight, but the same can be applied to weight loss. It also costs me literally nothing to eat less.
I have a really weirdly blended family and am from a poor town overall.
I've never had a FA phase, but because of the kind of redneck comments in my welfare receiving family about 'welfare queens,' I've been in a number of arguments about why poor people being obese isn't a sign of wealth or like, too strong of a social safety net.
The thing is, while true, terminally online people are generally not these people and I've realized how much they're using the idea of food deserts as a weird crutch. Yes, someone who lives in a trailer park and works at dollar tree is obese because they have a lack of nutritional knowledge and live in a food desert, and imo likely falls into the grouping of both metabolically obese and nutritionally malnourished. But the office admin with a Kia Soul and a Shop Local bumper sticker is only able to be fat because of privilege.
Aside from excuses for obesity, I think this idea persists because in my experience wealthy people are thinner. But it's an entirely different connotation. The reality is relative to the poor, being fat is a privilege. Not being the MOST privileged doesn't mean it's not. Culturally I just see how there's a huge difference between lulu lemon complete apple ecosystem families and the average person, yes that group is privileged and wealthy, but so are the fat people complaining about not being able to fit on an amusement park ride. They're all about intersectionality in theory, but only as ammunition to decry someones right to speak on their own oppression.
The discourse about privilege in general has become so exhausting. And I say that as someone who believes in power structures, systemic oppression, and social justice. “Privilege” has too often become a word people throw out during heated arguments, either to lend credibility to their cause or to themselves (hello, fat acceptance) or to demonize others. It’s unfortunate that it’s become so weaponized because it is an important concept.
I remember Funtie Times has talked about this too in one of her reaction videos, how privilege and lack of privilege gets micromanaged and is turned into internet currency
To paraphrase someone else on this sub, a lot of people (including FAs) often conflate privilege with discipline and hard work.
They think that if you take time and effort to work towards a goal that is not easily achievable, or intentionally put in time and effort to get the results you want, then it's simplistically written off as a result of privilege, and if you try to inject any nuance into the topic, you're accused of downplaying racism, financial struggles, being classist, etc. as a form of derailment.
You have a comfortable salary from a job you spent years working to get? Privilege.
You take steps to manage your budget and ensure all your necessary bills are paid on time? Privilege.
You spend years trying to finally get the body and appearance you want through diet and lifestyle alterations? Privilege.
You spend literal years working to own a home? Privilege.
This isn't to say that inequality or privilege doesn't exist, but I'm tired of seeing privileged being whipped out like a cudgel in order to simply and shut down nuanced conversations.
TL;DR, sometimes people can accomplish and achieve difficult things due to factors and conscious choices that can't always be easily chalked up to simply, "welp, they only have that accomplishment because they're just privileged."
Hot take, but I think online discourse around issues like this is unhelpful at best and often counterproductive because most platforms don't really allow or properly platform the level of nuance required to have an actual discussion. Discourse gets dumbed down by character limits and wanting to dunk on people, so disingenuous and ill-informed takes get more exposure, which causes people to ultimately knee-jerk further into opposition to said takes, getting us further from the goal of agreeing on the problem and how to address it. If people aren't willing to actually discuss things like privilege with the nuance they require, they shouldn't discuss them at all because they'll only make it worse. Reddit can be less awful in this regard (and that's highly subreddit-dependent), but most of the other major platforms are basically unusable for any sort of meaningful or productive discourse. Twitter in particular was never good even before the buyout. I feel discussions like this are usually best had offline.
I realize this kinda falls into the same pattern of lack of nuance in discourse I'm criticizing, but in my defense, the evidence speaks for itself.
What is usually spoiling the privilage discussion is assumption that some privilages are "ultimate". And instead of looking at issues as complex, and people being privilaged and disprivilaged in others areas, one overshadows the rest.
And instead of being used as "you should think about what types of issues you're blind to simply coz you never had to face them" it becomes "you're not as opressed as me so shut up"
I remember when someone said if you’re fat, you are privileged over people who literally cannot afford food, and people lost their minds over it. I wonder how this one went over.
Nah I would prefer if people shut the fuck up about not fitting on planes or roller coasters etc. No one needs to hear about an obese person's self imposed "struggles".
Plus, it ultimately doesn't matter what so and so is doing over there, regardless of whether or not they have some type of unfair privilege.
I could set up a TikTok or Tumblr and rant about billionaires all day long, but it's not going to change my low income, and Jeff Bezos will still be richer than god.
So, I do what I can to live a decent life with what I've got, which is all any of us can do.
they rly act like its not a privilege to be able to eat yourself to death, even tho that takes so many resources n privileges to even do. like, do you know how much food costs, esp when it's ordering out?
they rly need a reality check tbf. being able to overconsume all the time is also ironic in that a lot of times, these ppl claim to despise capitalism, yet wholeheartedly wilfully support it by proxy. like, wyd over there
This has been an ongoing frustration of mine regarding discussion of “privilege”.
I mean, there’s been a lot of frustration about it, but the first discussions I remember seeing about it were in the 00’s when owning a computer and having internet access was less common. No one seemed to get that if you are able to spend time online talking about privilege (and it was almost 100% people who had had access to a university education), you were actually a privileged person.
FAs and planes also fail to consider the roughly 1 in 37 people who are autistic, or the 1 in 10-12 people with anxiety disorders. Or the 1 in 4 women who have survived sexual assault.
For these people, someone impinging on their space with their flesh and touching without consent will cause serious issues. I should think the needs of someone with a disability or trauma they didn’t cause, should be more considered than those who simply have a food addiction.
My take has always been that FA is because privileged straight white women want to be included in the whole “oppressed minority” category for some reason. If there’s one personal attribute that can be changed, it’s weight.
Whoa, careful there, OOP! Are you suggesting that it’s not affluent white women in first world countries who are the most oppressed demographic in history?
Better recant this immediately, or the wrath of social media may fall upon you before you know it!
Cisgender heterosexual white affluent women from first world countries who have enough social support to become morbidly obese without severe financial hardship
They'll frequently talk about eating out, traveling, buying plane tickets, going to shows, shopping, etc. but never touch on the amount of money required for all these things.
Not to say that marginalized or poor people can't do these things, too, but most of their talking points are overwhelmingly consumption-based.
Not to mention they are constantly at the drs office, which is a privilege in itself to have so much access to medical care. It’s a shame they refuse to use this gift and instead act like all medical professionals are idiots and they know everything
No no no they're all totally QuEeR. Their identities as non dysphoric thembies, heteromantic gray-ace demisexuals, and pansexual because they realized a a celebrity meets the standards of attractiveness are totally VaLiD.
Ah as an asexual they’re my Favourite. ‘Queer’ asexuals who have sex on the daily with multiple partners but they claim it doesn’t count because they’re ’not attracted to them’
And if you point it out, they call you some form of "phobic." Because god forbid words have consistent meanings and coherency.
Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave.
Didn't you hear? Being big is the same level of opression as being black!!!
I mean low-key I think a lot of this is actually because of the idea of 'affluent white women in first world countries' being the retort from both sides to any womens issues.
I think weirdly, when oppression is a cudgel, the most woke among us are actually really unlikely to acknowledge the impact of misogyny? Because it's a type of oppression that doesn't give you special permission to talk over others as it effects half of everyone. The alt right and the woke left equally will hear an unremarkable woman talk about an issue and inject wealthy or middle class and 'white' in front of 'woman' to discredit her.
It's not that I think all these FAs are severely oppressed in fact or anything, but I think the drive to complain is sometimes because they don't see their own real complaints about real social issues like misogyny as real.
I definitely agree about misogyny not being taken seriously compared to other oppressions, or only being considered "real" oppression if it's paired with another (or several) oppressions, as well as agree with your point about people invoking rich white women to shut down discussions on misogynistic oppression.
Slight tangent, but in addition to what you brought up about people putting "white" or "upper-middle class" in front of "woman" in order to discredit or dismiss her experiences with misogyny as privileged whining (even if it's misogyny experienced by all women to some degree), but I've even seen a disturbing number of people argue that a woman being violated "isn't that bad" as long as she's of legal age, and I genuinely wish I was joking.
I have seen a lot of this as well unfortunately, especially recently. Off topic, but I have also seen the struggles of women in war zones being dismissed for being a certain race or religion, and have seen rape and having been bombed daily being downplayed simply because they are of a certain race or ethnicity and have a certain "privilege" despite living in a war zone. I have seen these dismissals from fat activists as well, when they talk about other social justice issues, who are not living in a war stricken country, but somehow believe their lives are harder than women and people who don't have access to food or water.
Old soapbox moment, but similar to thin marginalized people and thin minorities, FAs and people with FA mindsets virtually never touch on the sheer amount of money and resources it takes to get and stay fat.
It's either thin = privileged and wealthy (and almost always implied to be white, which has its own issues), while fatness is almost always associated with being marginalized, deprived, and downtrodden.
Ofc there are additional nuances and variations to this, but it still doesn't change the fact that getting and staying visibly fat/obese often requires a certain amount of money and resources regardless.
Likewise, in addition to the plane ticket and travel complaints, a lot of their "oppression" often revolves around eating out, restaurants, and clothes shopping. All of it is consumption-based and revolves around indignation when their impulses and desires aren't immediately catered to.
It kind of reminds me of cigarettes. My uncle smokes despite not really having the money to do so. He's pretty skinny, but my aunt has always been overweight as an adult. She doesn't smoke, and the extra she spends to 'stay fat' probably doesn't seem like much, especially since she mostly cooks all of their meals. I would bet thr cost is a similar dollar amount to what my uncle spends on cigarettes.
I do agree there is more nuance to this. My aunt is very much on the lower end of plus size and is almost always actively trying to lose weight. She's not an FA, just a woman who has struggled with weight for a long time. I think the fact that so much of the diet industry acts like all you need is this fad diet or this exercise program or this pill and you'll lose weight makes it seem impossible if you can't afford those things. The rise of GLP-1s probably makes poor people feel even more hopeless since they seem like a 'quick fix' that actually works.
For me personally, I'll acknowledge that there are aspects of my life that do make dieting easier than if I was poor and working multiple jobs or didn't have a decent education that helps me understand weight loss, nutrition, and exercise. Where the thin privilege argument falls apart is I know plenty of fat women in significantly better life and financial situations than me and plenty of thin women in similar or worse situations. I think Kirstie Alley and Oprah are great examples of how it doesn't always work that way. They have both thrown so much money at weight loss and still have continued to struggle with weight for years.
Money and privilege can buy thinness, but it'll only last if you make the mental and lifestyle changes and are able to stick with them long term.
Apparently, I also had a soap box moment 🙃
I just did some quick research, and I was surprised to see how little it actually costs to maintain 150 pounds of extra body weight. Less than $5 a day!
I actually save a lot of money by not frequently buying lunch, snacks, and eating less in general (sorry, I mean *flips notes* forcefully depriving myself of nourishment in order to appease patriarchy).
I agree with you in that it doesn't always have to cost an exorbitant amount to maintain excess weight, but the same can be applied to weight loss. It also costs me literally nothing to eat less.
I have a really weirdly blended family and am from a poor town overall.
I've never had a FA phase, but because of the kind of redneck comments in my welfare receiving family about 'welfare queens,' I've been in a number of arguments about why poor people being obese isn't a sign of wealth or like, too strong of a social safety net.
The thing is, while true, terminally online people are generally not these people and I've realized how much they're using the idea of food deserts as a weird crutch. Yes, someone who lives in a trailer park and works at dollar tree is obese because they have a lack of nutritional knowledge and live in a food desert, and imo likely falls into the grouping of both metabolically obese and nutritionally malnourished. But the office admin with a Kia Soul and a Shop Local bumper sticker is only able to be fat because of privilege.
Aside from excuses for obesity, I think this idea persists because in my experience wealthy people are thinner. But it's an entirely different connotation. The reality is relative to the poor, being fat is a privilege. Not being the MOST privileged doesn't mean it's not. Culturally I just see how there's a huge difference between lulu lemon complete apple ecosystem families and the average person, yes that group is privileged and wealthy, but so are the fat people complaining about not being able to fit on an amusement park ride. They're all about intersectionality in theory, but only as ammunition to decry someones right to speak on their own oppression.
The discourse about privilege in general has become so exhausting. And I say that as someone who believes in power structures, systemic oppression, and social justice. “Privilege” has too often become a word people throw out during heated arguments, either to lend credibility to their cause or to themselves (hello, fat acceptance) or to demonize others. It’s unfortunate that it’s become so weaponized because it is an important concept.
I remember Funtie Times has talked about this too in one of her reaction videos, how privilege and lack of privilege gets micromanaged and is turned into internet currency
To paraphrase someone else on another sub I frequent, I feel like it's often used as a cudgel in order to simplify nuanced conversations.
To paraphrase someone else on this sub, a lot of people (including FAs) often conflate privilege with discipline and hard work.
They think that if you take time and effort to work towards a goal that is not easily achievable, or intentionally put in time and effort to get the results you want, then it's simplistically written off as a result of privilege, and if you try to inject any nuance into the topic, you're accused of downplaying racism, financial struggles, being classist, etc. as a form of derailment.
You have a comfortable salary from a job you spent years working to get? Privilege.
You take steps to manage your budget and ensure all your necessary bills are paid on time? Privilege.
You spend years trying to finally get the body and appearance you want through diet and lifestyle alterations? Privilege.
You spend literal years working to own a home? Privilege.
This isn't to say that inequality or privilege doesn't exist, but I'm tired of seeing privileged being whipped out like a cudgel in order to simply and shut down nuanced conversations.
TL;DR, sometimes people can accomplish and achieve difficult things due to factors and conscious choices that can't always be easily chalked up to simply, "welp, they only have that accomplishment because they're just privileged."
Agreed. Also, I haaaaate that “discipline and hard work” have become right-wing coded (I got into a fight with someone at my volunteer job about it).
Hot take, but I think online discourse around issues like this is unhelpful at best and often counterproductive because most platforms don't really allow or properly platform the level of nuance required to have an actual discussion. Discourse gets dumbed down by character limits and wanting to dunk on people, so disingenuous and ill-informed takes get more exposure, which causes people to ultimately knee-jerk further into opposition to said takes, getting us further from the goal of agreeing on the problem and how to address it. If people aren't willing to actually discuss things like privilege with the nuance they require, they shouldn't discuss them at all because they'll only make it worse. Reddit can be less awful in this regard (and that's highly subreddit-dependent), but most of the other major platforms are basically unusable for any sort of meaningful or productive discourse. Twitter in particular was never good even before the buyout. I feel discussions like this are usually best had offline.
I realize this kinda falls into the same pattern of lack of nuance in discourse I'm criticizing, but in my defense, the evidence speaks for itself.
Showing my age here, but I miss Livejournal for things like that.
What is usually spoiling the privilage discussion is assumption that some privilages are "ultimate". And instead of looking at issues as complex, and people being privilaged and disprivilaged in others areas, one overshadows the rest.
And instead of being used as "you should think about what types of issues you're blind to simply coz you never had to face them" it becomes "you're not as opressed as me so shut up"
Honestly this is rlly well said I'm going to steal this
I remember when someone said if you’re fat, you are privileged over people who literally cannot afford food, and people lost their minds over it. I wonder how this one went over.
Nah I would prefer if people shut the fuck up about not fitting on planes or roller coasters etc. No one needs to hear about an obese person's self imposed "struggles".
Plus, it ultimately doesn't matter what so and so is doing over there, regardless of whether or not they have some type of unfair privilege.
I could set up a TikTok or Tumblr and rant about billionaires all day long, but it's not going to change my low income, and Jeff Bezos will still be richer than god.
So, I do what I can to live a decent life with what I've got, which is all any of us can do.
they rly act like its not a privilege to be able to eat yourself to death, even tho that takes so many resources n privileges to even do. like, do you know how much food costs, esp when it's ordering out?
they rly need a reality check tbf. being able to overconsume all the time is also ironic in that a lot of times, these ppl claim to despise capitalism, yet wholeheartedly wilfully support it by proxy. like, wyd over there
This has been an ongoing frustration of mine regarding discussion of “privilege”.
I mean, there’s been a lot of frustration about it, but the first discussions I remember seeing about it were in the 00’s when owning a computer and having internet access was less common. No one seemed to get that if you are able to spend time online talking about privilege (and it was almost 100% people who had had access to a university education), you were actually a privileged person.
FAs and planes also fail to consider the roughly 1 in 37 people who are autistic, or the 1 in 10-12 people with anxiety disorders. Or the 1 in 4 women who have survived sexual assault.
For these people, someone impinging on their space with their flesh and touching without consent will cause serious issues. I should think the needs of someone with a disability or trauma they didn’t cause, should be more considered than those who simply have a food addiction.
My take has always been that FA is because privileged straight white women want to be included in the whole “oppressed minority” category for some reason. If there’s one personal attribute that can be changed, it’s weight.
👏👏👏