If I have to hear someone refer to admitting to liking fat chicks as “coming out of the closet” one more time
rljd:
omg. this. sooo much!
Yup.
Absolutely disagree. fat bodies are queer bodies; no question that today it is less socially acceptable to admit to finding a fat body sexually attractive than someone of the same sex, in mainstream culture.
there for sure is a closet for this. hell, there’s a closet for being okay with your OWN fat body. it’s ready enough to get ostracized for confessing to not believing you need to change or be ashamed.
so don’t you dare post this image of violence in response to that idea. hang THAT shit back up in the closet with your skinny clothes. I hope it does not come back into fashion.
There are similiarities to an experience of growing up queer in our culture as growing up a fat admirer. However, the extent of this consideration most fat admirers engage in is appropriating “the closet” metaphor. Indeed, many do so while also whining that their experience is “worse” than being gay. Fat admirers do not remotely understand what they are appropriating and should most certainly be regarded with derision for this appropriation.
While there is cultural pressure to exhibit “normal” sexuality that extends beyond heterosexual behavior, the experience of this as a fat admirer is simply not remotely comparable to what queer individuals experience. These experiences merit discussion and respect, but that does not permit disrespecting others.
At the end of the day, the level to which our culture really cares about what women straight dudes are dating is fairly minimal. Now, its certainly a little variable and some people experience more pressure than others, but both as a fat admirer and someone who has read the experience of hundreds if not thousands of other fat admirers, the normal response to “coming out” is somewhere between a yawn and a meh. Maybe you’ll experience some teasing. Maybe some disapproval. At its worst, I’ve never seen anything comparable to risks queer individuals can face for coming out. Fat admirers aren’t getting disowned on sight. They aren’t being targeted for violence or even killed. They don’t face religious leaders condemning them to eternal damnation. So we don’t have the fucking right to act like our experience is at all comparable to queer experience on this matter. The number of fat admirers who append their appropriation of “the closet” with “the same as” or “even worse than” is inexcusable and places a far greater imperative on not coddling such dismissive notions than on respecting the real challenges fat admirers face when coming to recognize their sexuality.
I think there is a more important reason to refuse the “in the closet” metaphor, though. See, because while fat admirers aren’t being bullied, disowned, or morally judged, fat people actually are. While fat people don’t face violence in the same degree as queer individuals, they do experience significant bullying, often leading to suicide. They face significant familial disapproval, often resulting in withheld support, both emotional and financial. While extreme violence can be rare, it is by no means unheard of, which is to say nothing of the mortal risks of many weight loss schemes. Fat people are dying because of their oppression and they have no closet to retreat to. For fat admirers, the “closet” isn’t just about feeling social pressure. Its actually an enforcement of privilege against those we are sexually attracted to. A fat admirer taking the privilege of concealment is oppressive towards fat people and is a dynamic functionally not present with the “closet” as it was coined to apply to queer individuals. While this dynamic is at its worst for fat admirers who conceal their sexuality but still pursue sexual encounters with fat people, even the act of lonely concealment is a means of enforcing the disenfranchisement of fat people for one’s personal advancement. “The closet”, such as it exists for fat admirers, is less an example of our oppression but the oppression of fat people.
I’d like a conversation about how fucked up it is to grow up sexually orientated to fat attraction. I’d like a conversation about all the ways this disenfranchises fat admirers. To do that, we need to develop a vocabulary to do so without disrespecting others. To do THAT, we need to stop acting like we are the most put upon people in the world and recognize the oppressions around us and the ones we may try to participate in for our gain as fat admirers.
