![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susanstinsonI got a letter from a student at a school for the deaf. He told me that he was working on a project on discrimination. He asked if I had ever been discriminated against, or knew anyone who had been, and if I would write him about it with advice about how to handle discrimination.
Here's what I said:
Your project about discrimination sounds great. I'm happy to tell you a little about my own experiences.
I'm a fat woman. (It's a powerful thing to use the word "fat" with accurate respect.) In thinking about your question about whether I've ever been discriminated against, I started thinking about something that happened eleven years ago. I've told this story before, in speeches and perhaps – I can't quite remember! – in published articles. I'm using language here that is mostly the way I told it around the time that it happened.
A British group called SIZE had helped organize a book tour for me because I had written books that centered on the complex, fully engaged lives of fat women, and one of them was being published in a British edition. This was the first time I'd ever gone to Europe, and I was very excited.
One afternoon during the trip, I was at the Glastonbury Abbey, standing in the ruins of a very old church. There was grass growing on what was left of the roof, and figures carved on arches over the doors. I was alone. It struck me as being full of quiet, intense beauty. I stood there for a long time, deep in a sense of the history of the place, which included both reverence and violence.
I was taking a few notes, trying to mark what I was seeing and feeling, when a group of young men came through. There were eight or nine of them, and they all walked close to me because the passageway was narrow. The last young man looked at me as he passed, then made loud, rude noises -- raspberries -- as he went out the other door. I could hear the whole group laughing almost uncontrollably, just outside.
I know that there are a lot of different responses that fat people have to being harassed by strangers in public, and I've probably had most of them. Sometimes I carry soap bubbles to blow when small children are staring at me, to give them something else amazing to look at. If the person is an adult, sometimes I say simple things like "How rude" or "Grow up."
Usually, though, I don't say anything, I make a gesture with my hands, brushing the air like dusting off crumbs or telling a pesky dog to shoo. Some fat women I know say that they almost never notice when they get harassed, but I do notice it. I feel it, too.
That afternoon in Glastonbury, though, the rude noises and laughter didn't change my reflective mood at all. Instead, I had a slow, welling insight that those young men were uncomfortable with the intense beauty of the place, and they were also uncomfortable with the unexpected impact of my physical presence. I felt a little sad for them, but, mostly, I felt calm.
When I later thought about how unusual this serene reaction to being harassed was for me, I decided to try to see if I could trace what had made it happen. I came up with two strands that led me to that moment of calm:
One was many years of participating on a grassroots level in organizing and education aimed at changing cultural attitudes about discrimination based on size; and the other was a profound belief in the power of art.
The first strand, participating in a movement, has inspired me with the persistent courage of people doing organizing, research, media work, medical activism, working with kids and supporting legislation around these issues year after year.
It happens on so many different levels. That day in Glastonbury, I was staying with another writer who had published a book on issues related to discrimination based on size, so I immediately had someone to talk to about the incident.
The first time I told this story in public was at a fat women's gathering in New Jersey in 1997. The fact that fat activists in the U.S. have regular opportunities to meet, gatherings at which all sorts of support and information is exchanged and new efforts might be sparked, is a major accomplishment, something to cherish and sustain.
At the time I encountered the rude young men in Glastonbury, I was also in a fat women's group which met every other week in Massachusetts, where I live. For most of that year, it had just three members, but we supported each other in important ways. Because the three of us also worked for other kinds of social change, we challenged each other to keep educating ourselves to resist racism, sexism, classism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, ableism, and other systems of oppression, and to see the connections between these things. I believe that the kind of change that's needed to transform discrimination based on size won't happen unless we are also working on other problems in our society at the same time. Our group would dance and go to the hot tub together a lot, too, to keep our spirits up for the long haul.
So when I talk about fat liberation or read my work, or stand quietly in the corner of an ruined church, I'm sustained and surrounded by the work and insights of many other people, even if, as sometimes happens, I am the only fat person there.
The second element that helped me be calm when harassed is a working belief in the power of art, all kinds of art, but especially, in my case, poetry and fiction. The kind of aesthetic and emotional explorations that a person makes in engaging with great art help prepare the mind (and sustain the will) to take leaps of empathy; distinguish between inauthentic stories and those that ring true; and to recognize an ever expanding set of possibilities for joy.
That's what I would say are some of the most powerful responses to discrimination that I know: find others to share the experiences with, and act together to try to transform the attitudes and conditions which create them; expand your capacity for empathy, imagination and response by engaging deeply with great art; and keep being willing to be surprised by what you learn about the world, and what you have to give it.
Thanks for asking. Thrive. Susan
Here's what I said:
Your project about discrimination sounds great. I'm happy to tell you a little about my own experiences.
I'm a fat woman. (It's a powerful thing to use the word "fat" with accurate respect.) In thinking about your question about whether I've ever been discriminated against, I started thinking about something that happened eleven years ago. I've told this story before, in speeches and perhaps – I can't quite remember! – in published articles. I'm using language here that is mostly the way I told it around the time that it happened.
A British group called SIZE had helped organize a book tour for me because I had written books that centered on the complex, fully engaged lives of fat women, and one of them was being published in a British edition. This was the first time I'd ever gone to Europe, and I was very excited.
One afternoon during the trip, I was at the Glastonbury Abbey, standing in the ruins of a very old church. There was grass growing on what was left of the roof, and figures carved on arches over the doors. I was alone. It struck me as being full of quiet, intense beauty. I stood there for a long time, deep in a sense of the history of the place, which included both reverence and violence.
I was taking a few notes, trying to mark what I was seeing and feeling, when a group of young men came through. There were eight or nine of them, and they all walked close to me because the passageway was narrow. The last young man looked at me as he passed, then made loud, rude noises -- raspberries -- as he went out the other door. I could hear the whole group laughing almost uncontrollably, just outside.
I know that there are a lot of different responses that fat people have to being harassed by strangers in public, and I've probably had most of them. Sometimes I carry soap bubbles to blow when small children are staring at me, to give them something else amazing to look at. If the person is an adult, sometimes I say simple things like "How rude" or "Grow up."
Usually, though, I don't say anything, I make a gesture with my hands, brushing the air like dusting off crumbs or telling a pesky dog to shoo. Some fat women I know say that they almost never notice when they get harassed, but I do notice it. I feel it, too.
That afternoon in Glastonbury, though, the rude noises and laughter didn't change my reflective mood at all. Instead, I had a slow, welling insight that those young men were uncomfortable with the intense beauty of the place, and they were also uncomfortable with the unexpected impact of my physical presence. I felt a little sad for them, but, mostly, I felt calm.
When I later thought about how unusual this serene reaction to being harassed was for me, I decided to try to see if I could trace what had made it happen. I came up with two strands that led me to that moment of calm:
One was many years of participating on a grassroots level in organizing and education aimed at changing cultural attitudes about discrimination based on size; and the other was a profound belief in the power of art.
The first strand, participating in a movement, has inspired me with the persistent courage of people doing organizing, research, media work, medical activism, working with kids and supporting legislation around these issues year after year.
It happens on so many different levels. That day in Glastonbury, I was staying with another writer who had published a book on issues related to discrimination based on size, so I immediately had someone to talk to about the incident.
The first time I told this story in public was at a fat women's gathering in New Jersey in 1997. The fact that fat activists in the U.S. have regular opportunities to meet, gatherings at which all sorts of support and information is exchanged and new efforts might be sparked, is a major accomplishment, something to cherish and sustain.
At the time I encountered the rude young men in Glastonbury, I was also in a fat women's group which met every other week in Massachusetts, where I live. For most of that year, it had just three members, but we supported each other in important ways. Because the three of us also worked for other kinds of social change, we challenged each other to keep educating ourselves to resist racism, sexism, classism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, ableism, and other systems of oppression, and to see the connections between these things. I believe that the kind of change that's needed to transform discrimination based on size won't happen unless we are also working on other problems in our society at the same time. Our group would dance and go to the hot tub together a lot, too, to keep our spirits up for the long haul.
So when I talk about fat liberation or read my work, or stand quietly in the corner of an ruined church, I'm sustained and surrounded by the work and insights of many other people, even if, as sometimes happens, I am the only fat person there.
The second element that helped me be calm when harassed is a working belief in the power of art, all kinds of art, but especially, in my case, poetry and fiction. The kind of aesthetic and emotional explorations that a person makes in engaging with great art help prepare the mind (and sustain the will) to take leaps of empathy; distinguish between inauthentic stories and those that ring true; and to recognize an ever expanding set of possibilities for joy.
That's what I would say are some of the most powerful responses to discrimination that I know: find others to share the experiences with, and act together to try to transform the attitudes and conditions which create them; expand your capacity for empathy, imagination and response by engaging deeply with great art; and keep being willing to be surprised by what you learn about the world, and what you have to give it.
Thanks for asking. Thrive. Susan
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 02:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 02:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 03:05 pm (UTC)My frame of mind totally dictates my response. One day on a very very crowded bus a young woman got on and was staring at me with such hostility. Standing right in front of me. And under her breath and in a loud voice said, "hrummph taking up two seats". I looked at her and said, "dont blame me, blame it on the people who set the standards for such small seats". And at the next stop she moved toward the back of the bus and got a seat. I got really angry at her. Like how could anyone do that? And then I realized, as I was almost at my stop. This woman was a very sad and angry woman. And I felt badly for her. And before I got off, I put my fact right into hers (as she was seated)and I was exiting and I said to her, "I am so sorry you are such an unhappy person, I hope your life gets better."
It reminds me of what Margaret Cho said.. She was being interviewed by some Radio DJ who said to Cho, "what would you do if you woke up one morning really beautiful?" And she responded, "what do you mean?" and he said, "what would you do if you woek up 5'10" and blonde and weighed 125 pounds?" and she stated, "I felt so sad for him that he had such a limited idea of what beauty is".
I think we are lucky. I think our fat and our expansive minds opened us up to a world that we are able to see all the time. I wouldn't change that experience for anything.
And I wouldn't know you Susan, and that makes all the discrimination worth it!
xxxx
Leah
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 08:56 pm (UTC)Thank you for the response, and for the compliment.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 04:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 09:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-22 12:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-22 02:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-22 02:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-22 02:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 04:27 pm (UTC)btw,I've had the good fortune to sit for some time in that magical ruin myself,*and* had the good luck to be quite 'alone'. Wondeful.
So true about how intensely beautiful,powerful things and places sometimes seem to provoke crude mockery from personalities incapable of appreciating them, but somehow affected, just the same. They get scared, and act unpleasant, and yes, it is sad.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 09:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 07:38 pm (UTC)This is such a helpful reminder to me of what these communities do to sustain me. Not just in the face of things actively/externally happening--but in the surpising, internalized fat-hating things that still happen. These things you so beautifully articulate help me in the regular work of externalizing them, instead of carrying them around with me inside my body, which is a hard and ongoing work.
Thank you for sharing this with us.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-21 09:12 pm (UTC)