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I believe this is my first actual sexism rant.
Explicitly, I mean.
Last week, an article came out on Witchvox about someone's experiences as a fat priestess. On one of the online forums I read, someone started a discussion about it.
Anyway, back to that thread.
There's a lot of fat-bashing in there.
One can pretty much go down the standard responses: if you only tried harder, all fat people just stuff cake and pizza in their face, *anyone* can get skinny if they just do what I do. If someone came up with a bingo card, we'd have hit bingo on about page 3 of what is currently a 10 page thread.
I've done my bit of size-acceptance ed there - pointing out that people's bodies are different, that our past history changes how we respond to exercise and to food. And that there are ways in which we don't fully understand some of those issues yet: yet the reality of the world suggests that plans focused on improving *health* (i.e. encouraging better eating habits and exercise, without worrying about the number on the scale) tends to have a better and more reliable outcome than those focused on the scale.
I've mentioned I've got lung scarring (totally unrelated to my weight) and asthma (ditto), and that these limit the intensity I can exercise to. I've pointed out that I have a life that includes full time work (10+ hours a day including my short commute), sleep (8 hours) and a need to do other things at home (make dinner, do the dishes, do the laundry, whatever.)
I pointed out that my past experiences with extreme calorie restriction and exercise have permanently changed my body. (As have periods of being on hormonal birth control and steroids for the asthma.) And that in my experience, the last time I tried it, I need to exercise (at the intensity my lungs can handle on a moderately good day) for about 3 hours a day to drop weight.
Given that I work for a living - that's only barely possible. But if that's the case, forget staying current in my profession outside of stuff I can do during the workday. Forget being a priestess. Forget writing, or teaching, or helping on Pagan Pride. Forget having friendships or relationships that don't fit with my exercise schedule.
(And there's the minor problem that the next time I get a cold, I won't be *able* to do that 3 hours of movement that day. Or probably for a week or two. Because, see, I'll stop breathing if I do that. Stopping breathing is more immediately fatal than the potential risks of being fat, so guess which one I pick. And thus, the weight would come back. Etc. etc. etc. I refuse to get on that Endless Hamster Wheel of Doom, thanks.)
Anyway. This evening, mulling over why this thread was bugging me so much, I finally went "Oh, duh." It's the standard sexist trope about how my body is everyone else's to lay out standards for.
I don't know why it's taken me this long to hit this one. Because, dude. I'm 33. Been living with this body in this shape for a decade or two now. I can chalk up some of it to having gone to a women's college (with women of varying shapes, sizes, and comfort with same, but where the *agency* for those shapes was a lot more stable: my friends focus on what makes their bodies feel better, not on some external standard.)
But then I remember that I spend most of my social time in geek-friendly spaces (where larger women are not uncommon, and which for all their flaws, generally don't attract men who think they know more about your body than you do. Or at least, usually don't talk about it to you.) And I've had the benefit of working in a school where I'm one of the largest women in the building. (And yes, thanks, I notice that.) But *no one* has ever made even a passing comment about it. (I admit to usually avoiding eating lunch with a small number of people who spend a chunk of time in diet talk, but that's easy.)
Anyway, I wanted to call out the sexism 'you claim you know my body better than I do', so here is what I ended up posting:
I want to be really clear here. You are saying you know my body better than I do. This is not supportive. This is not a way to be helpful.
This is *directly* implying that I am out of touch with my body (and that you, someone who's never seen me, met me, seen me in action) knows more about what I can or should do than I do.
Not helpful. (Especially when for a lot of people, one of the ways weight gain happens in the first place is being disconnected from their understanding of what their body needs to be healthy. Sometimes that's through illness, but often it's by buying into the idea that other people know our bodies better than we do.)
I've already outlined what I'd find helpful: most of it is not available from people online. (Support for finding more methods of exercise that work with lung scarring and asthma when I have flares. The very real support I get from my doctor and herbalist on making changes that improve my actual health in measurable ways, not my theoretical health later in life. Etc. Etc.)
Being told I don't know my own body isn't it.
(I did not explicitly call out the sexism part because that board has some rules that make that very tricky, and I am not up for that right now. But the "Dude, hands off my life" part I could manage.)
I expect there will be nastiness following, or cluelessness, or something of the kind. And I may have to go avoid that thread for a while, because this (on top of the stuff brought up by my visit to my mother, which threw *all* my eating patterns out of whack, especially since I've been too tired to do serious proper cooking the last few weeks) is not particularly healthy for my eating patterns either. But y'know. I'll cope.
(I am enjoying, mostly, my .6 mile walk each way from my car to Elise's rehab center, and back again. But the round back has been a little iffy this week, as the allergens start creeping upwards, and the humidity's been higher. I hate having to juggle the "Exercise is good" against the "Not needing to fall over mid-walk" equation in my head, on the go. Has very little to do with how much exercise I've been getting, or what I've been eating, and a lot more to do with the state of my lungs. Also, I have serious and major protein cravings this week. Argh.)
On the topic of priestessing: I want to take good care of my body. I don't take good care of my body because I'm afraid of dying. (Got over that one at 15, thanks). I like this world, and love my friends, and want to be around for a while to come.
But I also don't see the point in misery *now* in order to have a few extra years later. (If we were talking *decades*, the equation gets a little harder, but given my current health history and my family history, we're probably talking more about 'dying at 70 something' versus 'dying at 80 something' in terms of weight-implicated conditions.)
So, I want to take care of my body, but not at the cost of the rest of my life. That means I do my best to get exercise that my body can tolerate. I do my best to feed it food that is sustaining and satisfying, and that is connected to what my body actually wants. (and becoming more aware of things like the link between lung issues and draining my reserves of vitamins A and E much faster than normal. Seriously. Learned more from my herbalist about keeping my body on an even keel than 30 years of doctors combined.)
But it also means I don't *just* tend to my body. I tend to my mind by reading, by being active in my profession, by being creative. I tend to my emotions (those friendships). I tend to my spiritual practice (more time involved there, and I'm behind on some things I want to do because of exhaustion still.)
And it also means routing around some past damage. Calorie restricted diets get me into an obsessive mindset *really* fast, and I can't even do food tracking for more than a few days at a time without getting into that place. (Solution: I do it periodically, and at times when I'm otherwise under less stress, so I continue to get a useful baseline.)
It means knowing that I almost certainly can't do the amount of exercise it takes to lose weight - because of paying too much attention to my mother (ok, and not having the financial resources to supplement my food intake, those two summers). But of looking at options that I *can* do. (I'm seriously contemplating a Y membership and swimming in the very early morning before work, but that's only a very recent option in my budget.)
And it means looking at the full spectrum of health - not just aerobic capacity but flexibility, and all the 'can I do the amount of physical activity I *want* to do in a given day?' questions that come up. (These days, I'm mostly there, when my lungs are functional.)
All of those are intimately tied up in what it means to be a priestess to me. In what it means to live in a world with many cracks and imperfections that - yes, show signs of past breaking points, but that also refract the light in brillant new ways. Perfection is not my goal. Living in my body, in this world, is. Not merely subsisting, in hopes of some greater reward yet to come.
Last week, an article came out on Witchvox about someone's experiences as a fat priestess. On one of the online forums I read, someone started a discussion about it.
Anyway, back to that thread.
There's a lot of fat-bashing in there.
One can pretty much go down the standard responses: if you only tried harder, all fat people just stuff cake and pizza in their face, *anyone* can get skinny if they just do what I do. If someone came up with a bingo card, we'd have hit bingo on about page 3 of what is currently a 10 page thread.
I've done my bit of size-acceptance ed there - pointing out that people's bodies are different, that our past history changes how we respond to exercise and to food. And that there are ways in which we don't fully understand some of those issues yet: yet the reality of the world suggests that plans focused on improving *health* (i.e. encouraging better eating habits and exercise, without worrying about the number on the scale) tends to have a better and more reliable outcome than those focused on the scale.
I've mentioned I've got lung scarring (totally unrelated to my weight) and asthma (ditto), and that these limit the intensity I can exercise to. I've pointed out that I have a life that includes full time work (10+ hours a day including my short commute), sleep (8 hours) and a need to do other things at home (make dinner, do the dishes, do the laundry, whatever.)
I pointed out that my past experiences with extreme calorie restriction and exercise have permanently changed my body. (As have periods of being on hormonal birth control and steroids for the asthma.) And that in my experience, the last time I tried it, I need to exercise (at the intensity my lungs can handle on a moderately good day) for about 3 hours a day to drop weight.
Given that I work for a living - that's only barely possible. But if that's the case, forget staying current in my profession outside of stuff I can do during the workday. Forget being a priestess. Forget writing, or teaching, or helping on Pagan Pride. Forget having friendships or relationships that don't fit with my exercise schedule.
(And there's the minor problem that the next time I get a cold, I won't be *able* to do that 3 hours of movement that day. Or probably for a week or two. Because, see, I'll stop breathing if I do that. Stopping breathing is more immediately fatal than the potential risks of being fat, so guess which one I pick. And thus, the weight would come back. Etc. etc. etc. I refuse to get on that Endless Hamster Wheel of Doom, thanks.)
Anyway. This evening, mulling over why this thread was bugging me so much, I finally went "Oh, duh." It's the standard sexist trope about how my body is everyone else's to lay out standards for.
I don't know why it's taken me this long to hit this one. Because, dude. I'm 33. Been living with this body in this shape for a decade or two now. I can chalk up some of it to having gone to a women's college (with women of varying shapes, sizes, and comfort with same, but where the *agency* for those shapes was a lot more stable: my friends focus on what makes their bodies feel better, not on some external standard.)
But then I remember that I spend most of my social time in geek-friendly spaces (where larger women are not uncommon, and which for all their flaws, generally don't attract men who think they know more about your body than you do. Or at least, usually don't talk about it to you.) And I've had the benefit of working in a school where I'm one of the largest women in the building. (And yes, thanks, I notice that.) But *no one* has ever made even a passing comment about it. (I admit to usually avoiding eating lunch with a small number of people who spend a chunk of time in diet talk, but that's easy.)
Anyway, I wanted to call out the sexism 'you claim you know my body better than I do', so here is what I ended up posting:
I want to be really clear here. You are saying you know my body better than I do. This is not supportive. This is not a way to be helpful.
This is *directly* implying that I am out of touch with my body (and that you, someone who's never seen me, met me, seen me in action) knows more about what I can or should do than I do.
Not helpful. (Especially when for a lot of people, one of the ways weight gain happens in the first place is being disconnected from their understanding of what their body needs to be healthy. Sometimes that's through illness, but often it's by buying into the idea that other people know our bodies better than we do.)
I've already outlined what I'd find helpful: most of it is not available from people online. (Support for finding more methods of exercise that work with lung scarring and asthma when I have flares. The very real support I get from my doctor and herbalist on making changes that improve my actual health in measurable ways, not my theoretical health later in life. Etc. Etc.)
Being told I don't know my own body isn't it.
(I did not explicitly call out the sexism part because that board has some rules that make that very tricky, and I am not up for that right now. But the "Dude, hands off my life" part I could manage.)
I expect there will be nastiness following, or cluelessness, or something of the kind. And I may have to go avoid that thread for a while, because this (on top of the stuff brought up by my visit to my mother, which threw *all* my eating patterns out of whack, especially since I've been too tired to do serious proper cooking the last few weeks) is not particularly healthy for my eating patterns either. But y'know. I'll cope.
(I am enjoying, mostly, my .6 mile walk each way from my car to Elise's rehab center, and back again. But the round back has been a little iffy this week, as the allergens start creeping upwards, and the humidity's been higher. I hate having to juggle the "Exercise is good" against the "Not needing to fall over mid-walk" equation in my head, on the go. Has very little to do with how much exercise I've been getting, or what I've been eating, and a lot more to do with the state of my lungs. Also, I have serious and major protein cravings this week. Argh.)
On the topic of priestessing: I want to take good care of my body. I don't take good care of my body because I'm afraid of dying. (Got over that one at 15, thanks). I like this world, and love my friends, and want to be around for a while to come.
But I also don't see the point in misery *now* in order to have a few extra years later. (If we were talking *decades*, the equation gets a little harder, but given my current health history and my family history, we're probably talking more about 'dying at 70 something' versus 'dying at 80 something' in terms of weight-implicated conditions.)
So, I want to take care of my body, but not at the cost of the rest of my life. That means I do my best to get exercise that my body can tolerate. I do my best to feed it food that is sustaining and satisfying, and that is connected to what my body actually wants. (and becoming more aware of things like the link between lung issues and draining my reserves of vitamins A and E much faster than normal. Seriously. Learned more from my herbalist about keeping my body on an even keel than 30 years of doctors combined.)
But it also means I don't *just* tend to my body. I tend to my mind by reading, by being active in my profession, by being creative. I tend to my emotions (those friendships). I tend to my spiritual practice (more time involved there, and I'm behind on some things I want to do because of exhaustion still.)
And it also means routing around some past damage. Calorie restricted diets get me into an obsessive mindset *really* fast, and I can't even do food tracking for more than a few days at a time without getting into that place. (Solution: I do it periodically, and at times when I'm otherwise under less stress, so I continue to get a useful baseline.)
It means knowing that I almost certainly can't do the amount of exercise it takes to lose weight - because of paying too much attention to my mother (ok, and not having the financial resources to supplement my food intake, those two summers). But of looking at options that I *can* do. (I'm seriously contemplating a Y membership and swimming in the very early morning before work, but that's only a very recent option in my budget.)
And it means looking at the full spectrum of health - not just aerobic capacity but flexibility, and all the 'can I do the amount of physical activity I *want* to do in a given day?' questions that come up. (These days, I'm mostly there, when my lungs are functional.)
All of those are intimately tied up in what it means to be a priestess to me. In what it means to live in a world with many cracks and imperfections that - yes, show signs of past breaking points, but that also refract the light in brillant new ways. Perfection is not my goal. Living in my body, in this world, is. Not merely subsisting, in hopes of some greater reward yet to come.
no subject
I'm glad I seldom read WitchVox. I don't need that kind of shit.
What's very interesting is the studies coming out that what the doctors charts have considered "normal" weight" is NOT the healthiest in terms of mortality rates. I forget the exact figures, but you have to be very obese to match the mortality of the "normal" and "underweight" categories. The media is denying them right and left, because weight loss is Big Business.
no subject
Me at the high end of the "normal" range is 'five pounds over too skinny to sit down without bruising my ass'.
This weight stuff is fucking defective. And the way it spills out onto people has some damn weird cascades. I've been triggered into borderline-disordered thinking by being around people talking about how they oh so need to diet and lose weight because they ... look like normal people ... which gets me staring at myself in the mirror wondering what I'm missing and if there's something really wrong with my weight.
So I tend to get kind of pissy at people who talk about their diets around me these days. And, as noted before, I'm a skinny bitch. (Which is probably why I've gained nearly fifty pounds over the course of this pregnancy, I don't have reserves.)
no subject
In what plane of existenc is that interesting? Or better for the rest of the world? I have a perfectly nice brain that has a much wider scope than that. Why not use it.
(And as I said, the last time I was in the normal range on the BMI charts, I was 15, my father was on the low-everything diet, and I was getting 2-8 hours of active (and pretty intense) exercise a day, usually in the 3-4 hour range between walking to school, gym, and being at the barn. No way I can manage that and work for a living, y'know?)
no subject
no subject
This weight stuff is fucking defective.
*vigorous agreement*
I've been triggered into borderline-disordered thinking by being around people talking about how they oh so need to diet and lose weight because they ... look like normal people ... which gets me staring at myself in the mirror wondering what I'm missing and if there's something really wrong with my weight.
I'm sorry that's happened.
I've seen this kind of thing not infrequently - discussion among [people who are involved in diet monitoring / losing weight] where there are also [people who have no need, no desire, and/or no ability to lose weight but may be driven batshit by the discussion thereof] present.
I don't know what the solution is. Telling the discussers to just shut the heck up cuts against that whole "trust people to know their own bodies" thing. Telling the non-involved folk to just leave is clearly rude. Perhaps telling the talkers that they are inadvertently spilling societal crazy on some listeners? Dunno.
no subject
Heck, I'm part of the crazy, but I try not to talk about it. Instead I talk about running, which I'm sure isn't any better.
no subject
I feel like talking about exercise/fitness is a degree or two less entangled with societal crazy? There are still people who can't (or don't want to) exercise much, but exercise tends to be more about the process, the doing (not that people don't set goals, but the societal "GOOD THING" label is more attached to "have you exercised recently?" than "can you run a 5-minute-mile?"). Plus, the benefits of exercise are far more established than the benefits of weight loss? (Unless I'm misremembering, "heavy and in shape" is way better than "skinny and out of shape".)
no subject
There is a point where talking about anything to excess is part of the crazy. Any conversation that involves the condition of the human body can end up in a proverbial pissing contest of who is more or is doing more (or less) of anything: being sick, exercising, eating, losing weight or anything. And the contest doesn't take into account the differences in people's bodies, what is actually healthy, or even what different people consider reasonable choices.
no subject
I think it's that there's a lot less of the implication that we should all be doing the same things with exercise, where with food, it's a little trickier. (and the philosophies about it often contradict.)
So, when you have someone who's calorie resticting and who only has margarine and totally non-fat milk in the house and who eats a lot of pre-packaged frozen foods (erm. My mother.) and me, who believes in whole foods and who has butter and whole milk in the house (because I use them mostly for cooking, where the fat content matters but I don't consume a lot of that item at any one time) and who tries to cook from scratch when I can, there isn't a lot of middle ground, and someone's more likely to start feeling cranky, or like they're not doing 'enough', whatever that is.
When it's "Well, I love running, and you started swimming, and so and so is weight lifting right now", it's a much more pluralistic model, and there's no one implication that one thing is totally and amazingly best. And it's a lot clearer that they're different kinds of activity and work differently in our bodies, so it's not like 10 minutes of one equals the other, or should.
no subject
(And the fact that I'm falling over desperate for a nap most afternoons is a sign that I should perhaps not be adding exciting new exercise to the schedule just yet.)
I know from their website that they open for laps at 5:30, which is the very appealing part for me: I need to be out of a pool no later than 6:30 in order to get to work on time, so that gives me a little flexibility. (Also, they also appear open for lap swimming when I'd be getting off work.)
I agree on the stats and research - me, I'm in the "Look, my doctor's okay with it, because she gets the surrounding issues: we're not going to drastically change my ability to do much more intense exercise unless I have new lungs.
And the stuff with Liz (the herbalist, for everyone else) has been tremendously helpful in figuring out what my body's actually aiming for, so I can do more of that.