We owe fat LGBT people everything

Being fat and “attractive” always comes with an addendum of gender hyper performance- literally think about how many fat guys you’ve found attractive unless they were big bearded lumberjack flannel wearing daddies and think many fat chicks you’ve found attractive unless they were pompadour having poodle skirt wearing 50s pinup dolls.

Big unabashedly fat GNC homos are the lifeblood of our community I love big fat obtrusive butch bulldykes who sit with their legs spread and take up space and I love effeminate fruity limp wristed fat bears that wear short shorts and feather boas. Stupendous magnificent showstopping

Never forget that the Republicans used the covid pandemic to use eugenics to kill off hundreds of thousands of chronically ill and disabled people by insisting we should use "herd immunity" as our response and went on about how it was okay because "most people won't die" leaving out the fact that many of those who died were chronically ill and disabled. They didn't care about the lives of the chronically ill and disabled if it meant they preserved wealth for millionaires.

I just want to add to this that the Twitter screenshot is slightly incorrect, because NOT ONLY did they refuse to consider it a war crime, but Hitler actually was INSPIRED by the American programs. They literally gave Hitler ideas.

The direct eugenic inspiration from US laws/programs was an even more grotesque convoluted mess than that, BTW.

And there likely never will be anything like the same historical reckoning. Much easier to keep brushing under the rug.

Too relevant, from the late Mel Baggs: There is ableism somewhere at the heart of your oppression, no matter what your oppression might be.

Being tired is not the same as clinical fatigue.

I know I’ve mentioned this in a few posts but I wanted to give it its own post, because it’s incredibly important for able-bodied people, and for disabled people who are otherwise fit and healthy, to understand this.

Being tired, even being exhausted, is not the same as the kind of fatigue that people with chronic illnesses are dealing with day to day.  And I knew this, intellectually.  But after going on steroids to treat adrenal insufficiency, and getting some stamina back, it’s like a revelation.

I haven’t really had much in the way of clinical fatigue since I got on steroids.  I only feel it on my bad days, and my bad days aren’t all that bad compared to how they used to be.

I do get tired.  I get exhausted.  But even at my most exhausted it’s not the same.

Fatigue, when talking about in a medical sense, is more than exhaustion.  It’s a sense that everything is drained from your body.  You don’t just feel tired, you feel sick.  Your body doesn’t work right.

I wish I could just upload the feeling into people’s heads so they’d understand it’s not the same.

Like, take the feeling of clinical fatigue, wrap it in a package, and hand it to all the people who think that chronically ill people are just lazy.  

And then take the feeling of ordinary tiredness without clinical fatigue, wrap that up in a package, and hand it out to people with chronic illness so they’ll remember that they’re not just lazy or tired.

Because that’s so hard to remember in the thick of things.  It’s easy to think that you’re only dealing with the kind of tiredness everyone else gets.  It’s easy to start believing that you’re just not trying hard enough.

But if you ever get the chance to try a treatment that works, and works big time, and alleviates a good chunk of that fatigue.  Then it’s crystal clear that if anything you were working harder than most people do, and for less results.

Because that’s what keeps coming back to me.  So many things are so easy now.  I was working harder than I’ve ever worked in my life, and getting nowhere.  And now I’m barely working at all in comparison, and I’m improving every day.

So this understanding is important for healthy people because they often expect too much of us.  But it’s also important for sick people because we expect too much of ourselves.

One thing that seems to be a consistent trait in almost all reactionary ideologies is this idea that everything is “biological” or otherwise innate. It’s the easiest way to justify inequality and prevent people from trying to change the social order– just convince people that it’s a “natural” order and that it’s impossible to change, and that obeying that order is somehow moral, that adhering to the hierarchies laid out by the society you find yourself in is the most moral thing you could do.

Misogynists invoke it. White nationalists invoke it. Capitalists invoke it. Transmisogynists invoke it. You just start to see it everywhere. “It’s biology” means “I have a god given right to hurt you.”

See also: Ableism (in the U.S.) aka Disablism (in the British Commonwealth):

Where a person’s ability is rooted in their (presumed) bodily existence and limits.

[Image description: a block of text, divided into four sections. The base of this box is bright yellow, with black text that reads: “Ableism: The belief that the value of a human life is best judged by a Measure of Ability.”

Above that, reading left to right, are three blocks titled “Racism:”, “Sexism:”, and “Homophobia:”.

The “Racism:” block is brick red, and reads (in white text): “Blacks are natural thugs because they’re not as smart as Whites, and they can’t control their emotions.” A yellow arrow points to this from the box defining “Ableism,” and yellow text reads: “That’s ABLEISM.”

The “Sexism:” block is dark teal, and reads (in white text): “Women are better off married to men, because they are weaker, and are less rational.”  A yellow arrow points to this from the box defining “Ableism,” and yellow text reads: “and that’s ABLEISM, too.”

The “Homophobia:” box is lavender, and embedded in the upper right corner of the sexism block; it reads (in white text): “Gay men are corrupting our culture by being effeminate and undermining healthy Masculine Values.” An arrow with a teal point and yellow shaft points to this from the box defining “Ableism,” and text (in teal and yellow) reads: “That’s SEXISM, which is ABLEISM.”

Description ends.]

https://ballastexistenz.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/there-is-ableism-somewhere-at-the-heart-of-your-oppression-no-matter-what-your-oppression-might-be/

—

Mel Baggs (b. 1980 - d. 11 April, 2020) “There is Ableism somewhere at the heart of your oppression, no matter what your oppression might be.” [Written for “Blogging Against Disablism Day,” 1 May, 2016]

I’m posting this here, in part, as insurance, in case hir blog gets taken down, after hir death.  There’s no guarantee that this blog will be long-lived either, but the more people who see these critical ideas, the more likely they are to live on.

Mel Baggs, a visionary autistic writer and advocate, has died. Mel was a pillar of the autistic community; ASAN, and neurodiversity as we know it today, would not exist without hir. We are heartbroken. Our thoughts are with Mel’s loved ones.

Over the last few years, Mel documented hir struggles with a service system that would not meet hir independent living needs. ASAN was working with Mel on this issue. It is a massive systems failure that Mel’s needs went unmet in hir last years. Sie deserved so much better.

We don’t know yet what caused Mel’s death. We do know that hir legacy will live on. Mel shaped the way our movement advocates for the rights of autistic and developmentally disabled people, and hir work will continue to do good in the world for decades to come. You can read Mel’s groundbreaking writing here and here.

Thank you, Mel. You will be so, so missed. Rest In Power.