The idea of “but everyone knows that” needs to stop.
I saw a post about someone chiding Millennials for not knowing about JKRowlings transphobia, and asking how it is at all possible that people can exist in the world and the internet and, you know, not know.
Which I mean, I get. It is so present in so many of my online spaces that it seems astounding that someone could simply be ignorant! It feels impossible!
But let me tell you a story:
I went on a girls trip with a bunch of friends. All of us are rather incredibly liberal and all of us are incredibly online.
One girl would not stop talking about Harry Potter.
At one point, another girl asked her why she was ok with supporting it, and she had no real clue that JK Rowling was at all transphobic. She had heard that she likes to support Lesbian causes and thought “oh ok cool!” And that was it. She was AGOG with the news and rather horrified.
I must once again emphasize that she was an incredibly online person. She’s a foodie and a restaurant blogger.
Later in the trip we were picking restaurants and I suggested one I found on Google, and she gasped at me. Actually gasped, asking how I could ever be okay picking that one.
The shock must’ve been on my face, because she then told me all of the shitty things that restaurateur does. He abuses staff. Underpays them. Fires them on a whim. Is known for being one of the worst people to his employees in the entire restaurant business on this coast.
And she was so shocked I had never heard of this. Because in her mind, I was just as online as her. And in her online world, EVERYONE knew about this guy.
So I think the moral of this story is: always approach the other person with some empathy. Even online people, even people you think MUST know about how bad people are, may not have heard. It may truly be just them being on a different sphere of the internet than you.
So be gentle, be kind when letting people know they might not have heard about the cancellation of XYZ person. Don’t assume that everyone knows all the same info as you.
By all means, let them know so they can make informed decisions, but being kind will go a lot further than attacking them for some info they might not know yet.
Anonymousgiving increasingly loud sighs as I wait for my crush to ask “what’s wrong?” so I can say I’m in a state of depression unless I can touch someone’s boobs with no bra
I stop once I start getting short of breath
[Your crush, on the phone to someone unseen] Yeah I think she needs to be put down, her breathing– yeah I know it can be a problem for her breed, but it’s getting really bad.
I’M NOT A DOG??????
[clearly less interested now] Oh.
wait! au au
[walking over the distant horizon, towards the West]
AU AU!!! AU AU!!!!! 😭
the more educated you get on fat issues the more you realize that almost everything that supposedly justifies fatphobia is actually complete bullshit.
most of the health conditions that are treated as almost divine punishment for being fat (like heart issues and diabetes) are being revealed to actually *cause weight gain* instead of being caused *by* it.
this goes for social ‘consequences’ of being fat, too. is that “neckbeard” redditor actually fat because he spends all his time online, or is it that he spends all of his time online because he’s not treated like a person if you can see that he’s fat, so the internet is his best option?
everything is less accessible to fat people. seats on busses, at restaurants, and even at things like amusement parks, are frequently too small to comfortably sit in for a fat person. people treat you worse if you’re fat, or even try to avoid you entirely. you get judged for doing leisure activities, or even for exercising at a public gym, (which proves the claims of trying to motivate you to get fit are bullshit btw) getting filmed and laughed at, posted online for your body to be a punchline.
if you want to be progressive or body positive you *need* to be examining your beliefs. oppressed people are routinely forced into positions that, from the outside, may justify the narrative about these people. black folk are pushed into poverty, so that crime is often their only means of survival, enforcing the idea that black folk are criminals. queer folk are made unsafe in public so that we use codes to identify each other, enforcing the idea that queer folk are trying to secretly seduce people to be gay. and yes, fat folk are forced indoors and online so that they can enforce the narrative that we are lazy shut-ins.#if you are skinny you need to take an interest in this#get involved with fat liberation#start fighting people on fatphobia#get mad at them when they are casually fatphobic around you because youre thin#make them afraid#defend your fat friends
