I'm going to post a couple links to sources for the next couple days to hopefully start a conversation in this space! These will fall in the area of Fat Studies and there's some norms you should be aware of:
- "fat" is taken as a neutral descriptor, think of it as reclaiming the word.
- "obese" arbitrarily medicalises fatness and Others fat people
I'm a cis man and I have (had) body image issues (in the past)
https://humanparts.medium.com/my-journey-toward-radical-body-positivity-3412796df8ff
I'm queer and fat
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yeefpijtl4s7orv/Flaunting%20Fat%20%E2%80%93%C2%A0Sex%20with%20the%20Lights%20On.pdf?dl=0
I'm queer and not fat
https://www.bitchmedia.org/post/fat-liberation-is-totally-queer
The others don't apply to me and/or I only have the energy/time to read one source
https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/
:sankara-salute:
What do you think about people who have a sexual preference for fat people? I myself have a strong preference for fat women, and fatphobia made me feel for years, especially in my teens, that I was disgusting and weird for having such a preference. I actually participated in fatphobic bullying at school in 6th grade and 7th grade. In the first instance, it was against a girl in my class who everyone picked on for being fat so I joined in because I wanted to fit in despite that I found her attractive. In 7th grade, I picked on a guy in my class who all my friends also bullied for being fat, again to fit in. As I went to high school and developed more crushes on girls I would try to avoid becoming attracted to the ones who were overweight because I felt sickened at being attracted to them. I'm a bit older now and I don't feel shame as much, mostly from learning about sex positivity, but now I worry instead that I am attracted to something that is unhealthy. I don't really want to be attracted to bodies that aren't good for the people who inhabit them. It again makes me not want to date anyone who is overweight. Thoughts?
Nothing sickening about it. We should focus more on showing attraction to different body types imo.
I have so many thoughts on this! Personally I think that attraction is something which doesn't factor in stuff like morality, health etc. Like Romeo and Juliet, you can't help who you are attracted to. Additionally, I think whether someone's body is unhealthy is very personal and individual — I know vegetarians that are skinny but don't exercise and live off cheese and bread. Should I feel weird about my attraction to these people as they aren't healthy?
I feel like I might be less "trusted"* for saying this, but I'm almost exclusively attracted to fat people and I've spent a long time feeling guilty and bad about it. This has basically led my research in this area, trying to draw the lines around what is the right kind of attraction, what is fetishising, what is problematic etc. There is definitely a lot of nuance involved, for example complimenting people on parts of their body which you find attractive can be alienating and harmful to them due to their insecurities.
Personally, I think we should be normalising attraction to people of all bodies — everyone deserves to feel attractive. I would be grateful to answer any more Qs you have:)
Hey thanks so much for your response, sorry it took me so long to get back to you, I have had a very busy week and a half with university starting up again.
That's an interesting perspective you give on different people's bodies having different standards of health. For me, at least the health of my partner would be important to me, I would not want someone I care about to contract illnesses or have problems with their body because they are overweight. Also their ability to do certain things. I like walking, for example, I would not want to date someone who would struggle to walk for more than 30 minutes for example.
I see your point entirely with regards to fetishisation. A while back I looked up stories on google of people in relationships where one partner had a fat fetish, all of the ones I could find were negative. Mostly because the fat partner felt objectified. Needless to say, I didn't feel very good about my sexuality afterwards.
I tend to feel as though I am objectifying women and being kinda misogynist when I feel attracted to their overweight bodies, and I feel uncomfortable talking about this preference with anyone because of this reason. I also feel kinda weird about it when it comes to dating preferences, someone's personality, values, interests etc are very important to me when deciding if I want to date someone. Having physical preferences seems to me to feel like it shouldn't mean very much in comparison to these things, and yet it kinda does for some reason.
What do you think? Do you mind going a bit more in detail about the kind of research that you did?