We all know justice is good, but does it include the F-word as well?
It should, according to an ever-growing movement.
Iowa State University teaches a soldier who fights fat fairness
As reported by the University Innovation Alliance (UIA), Dr. T.J. Stewart — assistant professor of Student Affairs and Higher Education — recently appeared on the The Scholarship for Practice podcast.
Amid modern priorities, T.J.’s interests are absolutely at home:
[They]Students with stigmatized identities can be included in identity-based student activism and other critical qualitative methods.
According to the teacher, reach was possible: Could you get your arms around obesity?
“Once we think we’ve got our arms around all of the major equity and justice issues around race, gender, and class…who is still missing and why?”
“We know these students exist,” he explained, “but are not necessarily centered in our everyday equity and justice conversations or work.”
A huge concern was expressed by the academic:
“How are fat students experiencing fat phobia and sizeism?”
You may not know that People of Portion get cut from college.
According to the article, T.J.’s “extensively studied the issues of fatphobia and sizeism on campus, the signaling that excludes larger people from the promise of higher education.”
According to the professor, people with wider waistbands will be more likely to become victims of violence.
“[I]It can be expressed as beliefs and ideas about fat people. Are these students subject to violent situations based on the way they are treated academically or socially? Do we think about that as a form of bias, as an identity?”
They’re also run off by an aggregate of undersized accommodations; as the saying goes, it’s the little things that count:
“Physical environments impact students — what type of furniture do we buy? … Furniture should be inclusive of body size. We would not expect an ‘average’ student to sit on some rickety chair that has a piece of iron digging into their side. That’s a safety issue.”
There’s reported resistance to robustness. But the instructor’s on the case.
As noted by The College Fix, T.J. helped pen the fat-forward piece “‘Feeling Good as Hell’: Black Women and the Nuances of Fat Resistance.”
It raises the bar for race-specific understandings. And if you’re an identifying accomplice, here’s your attaboy:
Grounded in Black women’s ways of knowing, we explore the philosophical bounds of fat activism and fat resistance and through citing examples of Black women engaged in resistance to body-oppressive structures, we highlight the ways fat people and their accomplices (nonfat and non-fat identifying people) contribute to the collective effort for fat justice. There are many actions that can be recognized as contributing to fat body freedom.
Fatness will always try to be free.
Consider the past few years’ expansion:
University Celebrates ‘Plus Size Appreciation Day,’ Cancels Columbus and Pronoun Privilege
‘Cosmo’ Manhandles Myths With Its New Series of ‘This is Healthy’ Covers – Featuring Plus-Size Women
Viral Video Rips the Racist Roots of ‘Fatphobia’
Medical School Hosts Seminar on ‘Body Terrorism’ Against ‘Fat LGBTQ+ People’
However, there is resistance.
Charles Barkley Recalls His Fatphobic Fight For San Antonio, Slams Cancelculture
Woman Is Dumped by Fiancé for Being ‘Too Fat.’ She Loses Weight and Becomes Miss Great Britain
As for the aforementioned “terrorism,” it seems to me wokeness is quickly creating its own language.
These days, there’s big talk of “bodies” as if people are pieces of meat.
Medical Journal Apologizes to Its Empowering Call for ‘Bodies Without Vaginas’
https://t.co/2rK4IFJ2Qv— RedState (@RedState) September 28, 2021
And “phobia” — meant to indicate irrational fear — appears rarely accurately employed.
The same goes for “violence.”
Beyond that, words such as “populations” and “communities” — once important ideas — have had their substance lipoed.
In our enlightened era, if your second toe is longer than your big one, you’re an identifying member of the Larger Second Toe “Community” — a completely meaningless affiliation with other people you’ll never meet and who will never have your back…even if they have your toe.
Back to T.J, he just wants fat people to fit…in:
“There are a lot of fat-bodied students who experience places where they are not able to be comfortable, where they don’t fit in the classroom, in the residence hall. It is possible that athletes may be given preference for certain spaces. How radical would it be if we thought about that for larger students?”
But don’t assume his interests aren’t expansive.
Dr. Stewart’s also attentive toward Critical Race Theory and that relegated resident of the “margins of the margins,” the on-campus sex worker:
“I…do work around college students engaged in sex work as their labor choice. … Sex work is not inherently exploitative or degrading. The fact that sex workers are engaged in capitalism-related labor is not surprising. … I am of the belief that all students deserve support, inclusive of their labor choices.”
Still, he’s firmly for fatness.
His official bio is here:
“I am currently collecting data for a study exploring the experience of fat students on campus using the construct of ‘body terrorism’ grounded in Black women’s ways of knowing.”
It’s a new world. And populations and communities with fat bodies in the margins are — like “good-as-hell”-feeling folks in an insufficiently-dimensioned desk — stuck.
Hopefully, liberation will soon see them livin’ large.
-ALEX
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