<i>I am not aware of any broader movement-wide negative sentiment against said people</i>

Well, I am. There was a fat blogger who was pushing for a "normal fat" movement, excluding people with eating disorders and other health concerns. She got so fed up with the lack of enthusiasm this generated that she took her ball and went home.

I wonder what fat activists this person talked to for the story? It always confuses me when people don't go to the fatosphere, where plenty of people have their positions on tricky subjects like these laid out explicitly, sometimes dozens of times.

hey, this is a great commentary and i hope you consider sending it to Bitch as a reply to that piece.

Please do send this to Bitch

That was my thinking as well. Even a cursory Google search is going to bring up a dizzying variety of fat activisms.

Also, I don't mean to imply I think everyone in fat acceptance is hunky-dory with including EDs as a central topic - I know that's not true, and as a lecturer I personally used to have a no-ED discussion policy, though not for the reasons mentioned in the article, but because ED discussion would tend to utterly derail conversation about accepting fat without judgment.

I just feel as though the article in question was an extremely superficial and simplistic look at the very underanalyzed and difficult relationship between fat acceptance and eating disorders.

Yeah, that's why I was wondering who she talked to... it's really easy to defend a facile premise when you deliberately narrow your research.

And yeah, what's particularly frustrating is that it didn't HAVE to be a facile premise... the relationship between fat activism, EDs, and illness is extremely rich and complex. But yeah, I still haven't read the article, but from your critique and some other things I'm seeing, it looks like it's just a personal rant. It's irritating that Bitch is legitimizing it.

Your last sentence really hits it on the head, Lesley. I founded FatGirl Speaks and am one of several fat activists in Portland. My relationship with Lily was tumultuous from the beginning. She tried to talk to me, on a personal level, about eating disorders early on, but I was in the middle of supporting a friend and her partner with cancer and didn't have the personal energy to have a conversation about anything deep with someone I didn't know (regardless of topic.) I explained this to her. That was our only conversation on the topic. She volunteered for FatGirl SPeaks, but almost vicariously, as an assistant to our fashion show coordinator. She did a lot of work, but nowhere in the planning stages did she ever enter the political process and ask about our stances on disordered eating, or bring up a desire to be more welcoming/inclusive to those who have it. There was no forward momentum on her part towards acknowledging, much less fixing, the problem she claims is so prevalent. Futher, I was not invited to speak to this article due to a personal beef she has with me, and I've spoken to other activist who were so put off by her initial inquiry that they refused to speak to her at all -- not because they don't want to talk about eating disorders, but because her premise and tone were so self-indulgent and attacking that they didn't feel safe or comfortable engaging with her. So she created her own situation in terms of folks not wanting to speak with her -- not because they wouldn't speak to the topic, but because they wouldn't speak to HER. There is plenty of room in the fat activist movement, or the body-positive movement, to talk about disordered eating. I'm sure some activists would rather focus their energies on other things, which is valid, as we each gravitate to the parts of the movement we are the most passionate about, and no activist can cover all the bases. But there is room for conversation, there is room for improvement, and there is ALWAYS room for any movement to be more educated about the lives of those it touches. The problem is that the topic needs to be approached, like any sensitive topic, with a warm heart and an open mind and a genuine and passionate curiosity about what, exactly, *everyone* can do to make a situation better. I'd invite the author to remember that in any repeating cycle, there is only one constant: You.

I think you put this very well. To say that the whole movement has a problem figuring in and talking about ED is total bologna. Rachel Richardson and Harriet Brown are two of my favorite fat bloggers and both speak quite frequently to ED. Not to mention HAES is quite popular in the movement and it is all about dealing with disordered eating/body issues.

Lily-Rygh Glen has a history of destroying valuable connections in the queer/feminist/fat communities nationwide. That Bitch would publish her article is as disappointing as the content contained within.

Well, I am. There was a fat blogger who was pushing for a "normal fat" movement, excluding people with eating disorders and other health concerns. She got so fed up with the lack of enthusiasm this generated that she took her ball and went home

Well, yeah, but that flounce -- and the general reaction to it -- was evidence that this is NOT a movement-wide position, imo.

I take criticism for not being inclusive enough of people with EDs (note that this means, in this context, binge/compulsive eating, not anorexia/bulimia) frequently enough that I can accept the basic premise of it being a point of contention within the movement. But beyond that, yeah, the article just sounds like sour grapes.

The thing is, as I have said eleventy billion times, there are two major points I'm trying to get across here. 1) Fat people CAN be healthy and typically do NOT overeat any more than thin people do. 2) Regardless of what fat people eat or whether they're healthy, they are human beings who deserve dignity and respect.

Inevitably, if I talk about point 1 without explicitly stating point 2 in the same post, someone says, "But I DO overeat! What about me?" Well, the thing about you is, you represent less than 5% of fat people. And while I AM absolutely thinking about the rights of ALL fat people with regard to my activism, I think it's really important to get the message out that no, most fat people do not eat any differently than thin people. Not because I want points for being a "good" fatty, but because it is a huge MYTH that is constantly used against us all. I don't like it when false information has a hold on the public imagination. Sue me.

As I've also said eleventy billion times, I have a sister who's a compulsive eater, and categorically not the picture of good health. So when some stranger says, "You don't care about fat people with eating disorders!" I want to scream. Actually, I care more than you can freakin' imagine.

But that doesn't change the fact that fat acceptance has many facets, and many different issues to address. One of those issues is clarifying the difference between eating disorders and the typical eating habits of fat people -- not just because the "fat people are all gluttons" myth is just that, but also because the help available for people with binge/compulsive eating disorders currently SUCKS. It's way too focused on weight loss, and way too narrowly focused on another myth: that fat people overeat (and of course we ALL do, to one extent or another!) only because we're trying to stuff down emotional pain. No other reason, ever. BED/compulsive eating are just outgrowths of that, in the current paradigm -- not disorders that may well have physiological underpinnings (as they're finding with anorexia) and a zillion other complicating factors.

So the myth that all fat people constantly stuff their faces hurts ALL of us -- including those who do consistently overeat, and even including those who self-identify as "emotional eaters." Nothing about it is that simple, period. And we won't make any progress with fat acceptance or more comprehensive treatment for EDs if we can't get past the pervasive "fat people eat like hogs because they're sad" belief.

So quite frankly, if people with EDs think all that means I'm throwing them under the bus, I simply don't care. Not because I don't care about people with EDs, but because I am not in the business of holding the hand of every single person who ever reads my blog, and making sure they all feel 100% warm and fuzzy about every word I write. If you can read my blog and somehow convince yourself I wish to silence people with EDs -- which some people inevitably do -- then the problem is your reading comprehension skills, not my insensitivity.

And without having read the article in question, I'm pretty sure that's the gist of what I'd have to say in response to the author.