One of the things that helps perpetuate stigma and hold oppression in place is peoples’s tendency, when told about someone else’s experience of stigma and oppression, to immediately engage in an attempt to try to explain it away or justify it.
A comment on an article published by MinnPost about a recent study on stigma and “obesity” (which I’ll call “fat” from here on out because this is my blog and I prefer a term that describes my body without pathologizing it) shows us exactly how this works. First, let’s talk about what the article said:
Women who are obese experience many more incidents of stigmatization because of their weight — an average of three incidents a day — than previous research has reported, according to a study published in the Feb. issue of the Journal of Health Psychology.
I am Ragen’s complete lack of surprise.
Past research has tended to suggest that people who are overweight or obese experience negative weight-related stigmatization only a few times during their entire lives.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA OMG HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! SO FUNNY I FORGOT TO LAUGH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. I’M CRYING OVER HERE! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! No, seriously, I’m crying that anyone would suggest that this is true.
The 50 women cited a total of 1,077 stigmatizing experiences during that single week — an average of three a day for each woman. The most common experiences involved “physical barriers” (84%), “nasty comments from others” (74%), “being stared at” (72%) and “others making negative assumptions” (72%). Experiences least frequently reported included “job discrimination” (22%), “comments from doctors” (16%) and “being physically attacked”(12%).
Yeah, I’m going to have a heart attack and die from not surprised. (Not to get all mathlete on you, but that’s an average of 1,123 experiences a year for each woman!)
The article gave some examples:
“With friends at a baby shower. Went to McDonald’s first so people wouldn’t look at me eating more than I should.”
“Teenagers made animal sounds [moo] outside of a store I was in.”
“I was told what a bad mother I am because I can’t set limits as to what my son or his friends eat during sleepovers, because I can’t even control myself.”
“Boyfriend’s mother denied me access to food, also stated that I was so fat because I was lazy.”
(Sadly) I exhibit no surprise.
The study authors drew the conclusion:
“It is therefore important that researchers continue investigating all aspects of this important phenomenon. Future interventions to reduce stigma and better equip overweight/obese individuals for their encounters with stigmatization should be based upon solid empirical and ecologically valid research.”
Yes! Thank you. And let’s be clear that equipping fat people to deal with bullshit should be nothing more than a stop-gap measure as we insist that fat people should be able to exist in fat bodies without shame, bullying, stigma, or oppression. Remember that – no matter what someone thinks about why we’re fat, or what being fat means – there is absolutely no reason to believe that oppressing us will improve our lives, or society, in any way.
But then I broke the cardinal rule of being fat on the internet and read the comments, and that’s where I was reminded of how all of this stigma is held in place:
Not to quibble, but the term “social stigma” seems incorrect.
SUBMITTED BY CHARLES HOLTMAN ON JANUARY 26, 2016 – 6:10PM.
I understand the term “stigma” to refer to a posture of being disgraced in the eyes of others. The most frequently cited “social stigma” in the study is “physical barriers.” The fact that the typical chair in a public place is not designed comfortably to accommodate the obese doesn’t implicate “stigma.” It reflects that because of material costs and space considerations, typical chairs are designed for those of typical size.
Another fault of the study, it seems, is that incidents of “social stigma” are based on the subjects’ perceptions. It seems likely that a person who is obese, who is self-conscious about her obesity, and who is participating in a study about how others respond to her in light of her obesity, is going to be somewhat more inclined to perceive “false positives” in the eye contact, comments, etc of others than “false negatives.”
What the study seems more to be measuring is the self-stigmatization of those who are obese – i.e., how often, and in what respects, someone who is obese is negatively self-aware of that fact when in public.
Oh Charlie – can I call you Charlie? What a mess you’ve made. Let’s clean it up:
I understand the term “stigma” to refer to a posture of being disgraced in the eyes of others. The most frequently cited “social stigma” in the study is “physical barriers.” The fact that the typical chair in a public place is not designed comfortably to accommodate the obese doesn’t implicate “stigma.” It reflects that because of material costs and space considerations, typical chairs are designed for those of typical size.
For the purposes of this exercise, I’ll go ahead and use Charlie’s definition: First of all, does he honestly think that not being able to fit in a chair isn’t being disgraced in the eyes of others? Does he imagine fat people to be like “No, it’s cool, I’m not embarrassed at all. I mean obviously it’s just way too difficult to have some arm-less chairs in this restaurant, so I’ll just stand through this business lunch, it won’t be weird at all, it won’t feel stigmatizing in any way, it’s really my fault for existing.”? The fact that he thinks that his (weak) justification for the stigmatizing experience erases the nature of the stigmatizing experience, tells me that Charlie’s not really working this out logically, but let’s move on:
Another fault of the study, it seems, is that incidents of “social stigma” are based on the subjects’ perceptions. It seems likely that a person who is obese, who is self-conscious about her obesity, and who is participating in a study about how others respond to her in light of her obesity, is going to be somewhat more inclined to perceive “false positives” in the eye contact, comments, etc of others than “false negatives.”
Nope nope nope, swing and a miss Charlie. In a world where the diversity of body sizes was respected and there was no stigmatizing of fat bodies, there would be no self-consciousness about body size. That the self-consciousness exists (and as Charlie illustrated is expected of fat people) is a pretty good indicator that fat people are living in a world where fat people are stigmatized (possibly to the tune of over 1,000 incidents a year and that doesn’t include all of the constant messages we get that “thin = good/fat=bad” from the media.)
Telling people who are experiencing stigma that you know better than they do what their experiences are isn’t new, and as long as it’s been around, it’s been a way to hold oppression in place – this is what happens when people think that “No I’m not.” is a complete and acceptable answer to “You’re hurting me.”
What the study seems more to be measuring is the self-stigmatization of those who are obese – i.e., how often, and in what respects, someone who is obese is negatively self-aware of that fact when in public.
Let’s examine the situation:
“Teenagers made animal sounds [moo] outside of a store I was in.”
“I was told what a bad mother I am because I can’t set limits as to what my son or his friends eat during sleepovers, because I can’t even control myself.”
“Boyfriend’s mother denied me access to food, also stated that I was so fat because I was lazy.”
Oh sure, Charlie, these are all just examples of people being negatively-self aware, I totally see it now! (Why isn’t there a font to indicate sarcasm? Can someone get on that please? I need it more than Oprah needs bread.)
But what about “With friends at a baby shower. Went to McDonald’s first so people wouldn’t look at me eating more than I should.” Surely that’s just in the fat person’s head right? Wrong. First of all, this person knows their friends and family better than we do, so if they tell us that their experience of stigma led them to avoid eating in public at an event where food was served, we should take their word for it. In general, ask yourself this – if this person hadn’t experienced stigma around eating in public as a fat person, where would they have gotten the idea to avoid eating in public?
Again – one of the things that helps perpetuate stigma and hold oppression in place is peoples’s tendency, when told about someone else’s experience of stigma, to immediately engage in an attempt to try to explain it away or justify it. We do more to work against oppression and stigma when our first thought upon being told that something is stigmatizing is “tell me more” or “wow, let me think about that” rather than “no it’s not, and let me tell you why.”
Charlie (and so many like him) are missing the point here (perhaps aggressively, purposefully missing the point.) Fat people don’t just wake up and “self-stigmatize” out of the blue. Internalized oppression happens when fat people believe all of the stigmatizing messages that we get (from teenagers who moo at us, people who question our parenting, and boyfriend’s mothers who deny us food, the US Government which is waging war on us etc., all because of a physical characteristic that is easily identifiable by sight and thus easily stigmatized. ) The suggestion that the existence of internalized oppression somehow invalidates a fat person’s experience of stigma is truly awful.
It’s also an excellent example of oppression – If I’m able to convince some fat people that the fact that they are fat makes them bad/ugly/unhealthy/immoral etc., then I can declare that fat people aren’t competent witnesses to their experience of stigma, because they “self-stigmatize.”
Fat people face real stigma, and it needs to stop right the hell now, and a great place to start would be to stop pretending that it doesn’t happen.
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