Monday 24 May 2010

Scanty privilege

Although I'm averse to the crude reductiveness of the term thin privilege. It's undoubtedly annoying the way that thin people are allowed to tell truths that if uttered by fat people would be subject to a slew of hate so distorting that any utterance is rendered meaningless, overtaken as it is by vitriol.

Having to watch this from afar as if it's a luxury, is one of the few times I feel any genuine tinge of envy about not being fat. The fact that you can know more easily what you think, because you're permitted to think and thinking is designed to recognise you and to exclude others-namely fat people.You don't have to think through a distorting minefield that is as tendentious as it is mindnumbing.

This exclusion, in terms of language as especially, often boxes us into positions that don't reflect the nuance of our understanding, opinions or attempts to chart a new course, our own course. We then get accused of being sinister and intrinsically more dishonest than everyone else. Even though people repeatedly say, "no-one takes any responsibility".


Not. A. One.

So yeah, the slim tend to retain the privilege of discovering that people on the whole don't eat things because they are "good for them", they eat them because they enjoy eating them and they taste good to them. And adding, "aren't I cute!" for good measure. And not expect to pay for the privilege of telling truths that people feel and want to hear.


edited for clarity

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