Fat Black & Ugly

(I posted this on my tumblr, http://hiphopcheerleader.tumblr.com/)

Let me start this off by saying that I'm not very familiar with Tumblr. I've been active on here for a couple of months but I'm not Tumblr famous or anything. I still can't figure out how to reply to people's replies and I don't really do any serious writing on here. The times that I do write, my posts never get as many notes as I feel they deserve. Lol.

But I'm writing here today to address something that I've noticed. The lack of blackness in the Tumblr fat community.

Now, I should also say. I'm coming from a place of thin privilege over here. Therefore, I use the word fat, not as a reclamation but as the word that is usually meant to mean overweight, obese, and/or overall "thick." Also, I want to make it clear that I am not in the position to speak for anyone, I know the fat, black community is in a perfectly capable position to speak for themselves. I am speaking (in solidarity, I hope) as a black woman who is permanently outside of white standards of beauty. That said, direct me, if you please, to any posts on this subject made by fat black womyn.

First, I want to make this clear for anyone whose forgotten.: White people who are fat, still have white privilege. I'm not sure why this is so difficult to understand but intersectionality folks. Intersectionality. Just because you are oppressed in some ways in your life, doesn't erase your position as a privileged white individual. For example, I am able bodied, meaning I have privilege over a black-disabled person. The fact that I'm black doesn't mean I can disregard the fact that I am able bodied.

What I've noticed is that the fat, white community on Tumblr has a problem with this fact. Why am I not surprised? Because its typical white people shit. Mu'fuckas just don't want to acknowledge their privilege. Following a few fat blogs, I see about 20 times the number of posts on the beauty of white fat womyn than I do for fat black womyn. I guess these fat white womyn feel they are rejecting the beauty myth but by leaving out womyn of color they are only reinforcing it. Remember the time a fat white woman compared her being fat to the struggle of a black woman goes through? Only one fail from the white, fat tumblr community. Another fail was when the woman who creates "ugly" graphics used a black woman in one with a banner across it stating "ugly don't care." Or the gif with the white woman from glee singing TLC's Unpretty, she wasn't fat & neither are TLC but still showed that y'all don't get it. Or the picture with all the white womyn with "real" bodies trying to show bodily diversity but didn't think to include any womyn of color. this is all just another reason & facet to why white feminists fail at developing full analyses, they stop at where their privilege meets & leave womyn of color out for the 5011th time. your whiteness doesn't erase shit. you're still white. fat white womyn are concerned by how well they fit into the perfect white beauty myth & black womyn are concerned that we are constantly judged by how well we fit into that myth, no matter how hard we try to fit in, our attempts are futile.

Here's where I get into the difference between being a fat black woman & a fat white woman: a fat black woman could so much more accurately talk about this than I can but here goes: fat tumblr has a white face. why am i not surprised? because its typical white shit. to exclude womyn of color voices & in the case of beauty politics, particularly, black womyn. the rhetoric still exists: black womyn are not really womyn & we're not even really human. our beauty politics don't matter because we're so far gone from ever being beautiful, trying to include us is a worthless, waste of time. white fat womyn on tumblr seem to be reclaiming their fatness in an effort to say "I am still a white woman! i am still apart of the beautiful people club! stop thinking my body is ugly! accept me!" they seem to be trying to (i don't want to assume anyone's motives) reclaim their stake in beautiful white womanhood because its been taken away from them due to their fatness. But black womyn don't have that privilege. Fat is seen as something that can be changed. This is why people tell fat people to lose weight. they just tell black womyn to die. The belief is that if fat white womyn just lose weight, then they can go back to being in the beautiful club. White womyn are still within the realm of attainable beauty. Black womyn are not. Skin color cannot be changed, its permanent. beauty is constructed. & its constructed against black womyn. black fat womyn get treated harsher (a fat black woman would do better in coming up with specific examples) than white fat womyn because of their ugly, permanent, unfortunate blackness. race compounds the fat plight. its seen as a continual, permanent ugliness. white womyn are seen as just being temporary deviants. if you lose weight you can come back to our exclusive white woman pretty club. but you black fat bitches are out forever because then we'd have nothing to measure ourselves up against.

the end.

*drops mic*

Black Womyn Hate as Manifestations of Heteropatriarchy

This hate of black women is not new, but it still fucking burns. I'm tired of this shit. I'm tired of black men who act like their dick is the second coming of Jesus Christ telling black women that we are not good enough to be with them. Rhetoric like this, based on what is wrong with black womyn, why we are not desirable, what we need to do to get a man, is rooted in heteropatriarchy and by extension, capitalism and homophobia. In "Heteropatriarchy and The Three Pillars of White Supremacy", Andrea Smith draws out the link between heteropatriachy and this type of conversation around relationships.

Andrea Smith quotes Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, "If we fail to enact a Federal Marriage Amendment, we can expect not just more family breakdown, but also more criminals behind bars and more chaos in our streets." We can see from this quote that in the eyes of right-wing, Christian, mainstream society, marriage between two heterosexual adults of extreme genders is a process of crime prevention. The assumption is, which is an assumption held by black men also, that when you invest in this traditional familial dynamic the you prevent delinquent little boys and sexually promiscuous girls, with no critical analysis to the criminalization of black youth and the high rate of black womyn experiencing sexual victimization. Smith then goes on to quote Lift High the Cross author Ann Burlien, "the investment in the private family makes it difficult for people to invest in more public forms of social connection. In addition, the investment in the suburban private family serves to mask the public disinvestment in the urban areas that makes the suburban life possible." Subscribing to the belief that one man should be with one woman and that men should be the ones we aspire to be with promotes patriarchal domination and homophobia. It promotes the myth of the American dream, which ultimately benefits a small sector of society.

Immigration and Race Relations

Most people assume that all Raza people are illegal immigrants. However, the majority of Raza persons in the US are legal citizens. Because of this, for the most part all Raza people get treated like illegal immigrants, as taking advantage of the system, as dirty, and as stupid. Being an undocumented person is racialized as being Raza. However, there are many more immigrant populations that are not apart of La Raza; mainly European and African. However, La Raza is targeted for the racism that comes along with discussion about immigration issues.

This also means that other races get left out of the immigration conversation. Anti-immigration rhetoric relies on the slaveability of Blackness and also as seeing La Raza as a threat to US empire building. Privileged persons who have high paying jobs and are able to successfully navigate the job world know that blacks will still be here to do the slave labor. They and anti-immigrant blacks are ignorant of the fact that undocumented persons do necessary labor for this country. With documented labor out of this country, all those people with jobs will see an decrease in the lure and viability of their position. In fact, Blacks have benefited largely and gained privilege in the job market because of mass immigration. Blacks, in the long run, are largely in a better economic position. We hold better jobs and live in more affluent areas than ever before.

Immigration can also be seen as threatening to an individual's personal privilege of being a legal citizen. Undocumented persons are seen as taking advantage of healthcare, welfare, and public educational services. This logic also seeps into the conversation when anti-immigrantion people accuse undocumented persons of taking American jobs. There is especially tension between Black Americans and La Raza. Black Americans have typically been situated as slaves in the American labor force, however, now more undocumented workers hold lower level positions; which can be interpreted as "taking jobs." However, when we complicate the notion of capitalism and white supremacy, we see that immigrants are not to blame for this. La Raza also has issues with unemployment. However, corporate entities will take cheaper labor, which is immigrant labor not black labor, because undocumented workers do not possess the means to fairly negotiate the workforce because they are without legal citizenship status. They are also pawns in a capitalist state, they take what labor is available to them out of necessity to feed their families.

Sex Work and Sexual Politics

In the essay by Jo Doezema, “Forced to Choose: Beyond the Voluntary v. Forced Prostitution Dichotomy” another binary of choice is exposed. The dichotomy that is talked about is whether people, mainly women choose to be sex workers or whether they are explicitly forced. However, the point that this piece makes is that poverty is the main factor when it comes to sex work, therefore these women are “forced to choose.” One cannot address prostitution without first addressing poverty and in the same vein one cannot criminalize sex work unless being poor is decriminalized. For so long feminism has been the place where an old debate exists: liberation versus exploitation. Sexism and misogyny tells us that a woman should be modest, reserved and quiet. In this society, showing off a little skin can get a woman labeled anything from a hooker to slut. 

First of all, modern feminists, generally, have taken a stance of favoring liberation in the liberation versus exploitation debate. Meaning they seem more readily convinced that sex work, in its many facets, is a form of liberation for a woman’s body instead of exploitation in and of itself. Feminism sees sex work as bodily autonomy. However, I also think that feminism has done a good job of leaving out the implications of capitalism and racism on sex work and those who participate in prostitution. This is the struggle that more people need to hear about, not just sex work as liberation. Feminism, as the traditional white ideal that it sometimes is, paints sex work as liberation for white women, but we never hear of the poor women and people of color who are held captive by this form of exploitation of the body. Sex is the most profitable industry, in the universe, ever. Sex is used to sell everything from music to cologne. Sex is capitalism’s biggest export and import. In her book, "Black Sexual Politics", Patricia Hill Collins discusses the connection between capitalism and sexual commodity, “making sex highly visible in marketplace commodity relations becomes important to maintaining profitability within the U.S. capitalist economy. The goal is neither to stimulate debate nor to educate, but to sell products.” Therefore, when women’s bodies are used in advertisement as a sales tactic, how can this be liberation?

Sex work is the most extended and serious form of exploitation of women’s bodies. Being that capitalism is contingent on exploiting the labor of underprivileged communities and race, it makes sense that poor women of color are most affected by this system of sexual oppression. Sex work is essentially the intersection of race and capitalism.

Sex work is capitalism’s most visible and hated form of all sexual exploitations. Among other things, sex workers are seen as dirty, dumb, and unworthy of protection under the law. When capitalism exploits sex, it also exploits those who are most affected by the system of capitalism, non-men of color. It is important to make the distinction between supporting sex workers and supporting sex work. We need to stop the criminalization of sex workers because these people are victims of brutal beatings by the capitalism, racism, and sexism found in society and sometimes even untreated mental illness. However, sex work needs to be a system that activists fight against because it is another product of what is wrong in this society. Essentially, feminism and other liberation movements need to support sex workers while fighting against the institution that keeps them oppressed. 


*cross posted at Refuse the Silence's blog*