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March 21, 2022 - Louder with Crowder
17:15
UNDERCOVER: Crowder Infiltrates "FAT STUDIES" Conference | Louder with Crowder
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Academia.
We'd like to think of it as the key to the world of knowledge, with the key masters being the best among us.
Unfortunately, what we know as the world of higher education has become a bit of a farce.
And by bit, I mean entirely.
Enter the riveting academic world of Fat Pride.
Bursting at the seams with self-love, acceptance, and...
Well, just bursting at the seams, it turns out that there is an entire academic discipline known as Fat Studies, home to peer-reviewed think pieces such as Overcoming Fear of Fat and Queering Fat Embodiments.
Yes, this is actually being taught by professors at some of the world's most prestigious institutions.
There's even an annual Fat Studies conference at Massey University, where all the brave and beautiful post-grads can submit their essays and present them in their fun-sized safe space.
So let's meet a few of my soon-to-be peer-reviewed colleagues.
Our Fatlicious keynotes, Esther Rothblum and Sonia Renee Taylor,
have given us amazing talks about fat histories, our fat present,
and what our fat futures might hold.
How does fat blackness embody the future?
I am an artist.
I'm an activist.
I'm a serious macaroni and cheese maker.
I'm black.
I'm queer.
I'm fast.
I'm neurodivergent.
I'm upwardly class-mobile.
Quote, I'm a fat water jugger myself, and every time I go to the swimming pool, I can see what people are thinking about my appearance.
And fatness is always trying to be contained.
The world is always trying to contain fatness.
The world is always trying to wrangle fatness.
You need to see fat bodies take up space and allow them to move the way fat bodies move.
And I've called for a new fat ethics, acknowledging the role science has played in the oppression of fat people.
White men, small white men, who in many ways have been the early scholars in this area.
Interesting to see small white men studying large women, mostly.
So what you're looking at on the left hand is Sargi Bartman, also known as the Hot and Hot Venus.
She was a COSA woman from Africa and sold to circuses.
And by the time you get to Kim Kardashian in 2014, that is the aesthetic.
Now, I decided to write and submit my very own fat studies paper for presentation, and with the help of my brilliant researcher, I wrote an entire essay titled, Embracing Fatness as Self-Care in the Era of Trump.
I then submitted the abstract to the conference, and, uh, oh, did I say that I wrote the essay?
I meant to say it was submitted by Steve Matheson, a wonderful and totally academically legitimate genderqueer fat pride activist.
Alright, turn me into C. Matheson.
Creating an identity.
But I run.
Who p-p-puts a noose on the floor?
I know you're used to Lucy, but I run.
That's a shock.
That's a shock.
I know you're used to Lucy, but I run.
Now unfortunately due to COVID, the in-person conference was cancelled and the floorboards
Luckily, for Ms.
Matheson, there was still a virtual conference.
And that's great news, because Z's abstract was actually accepted by the chairwoman, Dr. Kat Posse, a self-described fat studies scholar, and just like that, C. Matheson was scheduled to speak alongside these intellectual titans.
So grab your popcorn, quadruple buttered, and let's start the show.
Ready?
Oops.
Hello, I am C. Matheson.
I am an activist based out of Austin, Texas, specifically working with the nonbinary and fat community to help increase presence of intersectional and nonbinary people with such events in Austin.
As a women's march, march for our lives, most recently the global climate strikes.
My preferred pronouns are she and her and my paper embracing fatness as self-care in the era of Donald Trump.
Is something I'm thrilled to be presenting and has been accepted here at the New Zealand Fat Studies Conference 2020.
Because of our current leader's bigotry, fatness, I will argue, acts as a distancing mechanism from the President.
As well as his supporters producing both physical and ideological space that can insulate the individual from intolerant, bigoted, or violent ideology.
So first off, I'd like to issue a content warning regarding some fat phobia discussed in this next portion.
It's widely acknowledged, of course, that the 2016 election of President Donald Trump was evident of America's Some would argue underlying racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic attitudes.
I would argue that it was always there, not so underlying.
It just took 2016 for more people to realize it.
If we can say that's a silver lining, for lack of a better word at all, Trump's fat phobia has received relatively little attention in comparison.
Trump regularly engages in attacks on fat bodies, individuals.
Trump is known to target women with his attacks, referring to women as having faces that are Quote, fat or ugly.
And Trump's fat phobia even reaches into the United States' international relations.
In his dealing with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump referred to the leader as, quote, shortened fat.
Atlantic writer Bess Levin responded to Trump's devaluation of fat bodies, not by calling out President Trump's bigotry, for which no one would have found fault, which is what's very upsetting, but by engaging in further degradation of fatness, noting that President Trump was, quote, definitionally obese and, quote, could share clothes with Jabba the Hutt.
When it comes to Trump's fatphobia, often the current progressive left, they resort to fighting fire with fire, using fatphobia in their own critiques and rebuttals.
Biden himself, the current Democratic candidate, recently lashed out at a campaign event, calling an attendee fat and challenging him to an exercise program, most notably push-ups.
Individuals have noticed an increased need for self-care in the era of Trump.
And this context necessitates, in my opinion, a reclaiming of fatness in the era of Trump.
And what follows is an ethnography of my attempts at affirming my...
of affirming my own body as an act of self-care.
Many who do so may not even realize it.
really well here. My own body as an act of self-care, affirming it, I will
present that as an act of self-care. Many who do so may not even realize it. Take
this quotation from the New York Times about self-care. Let me read this for a moment.
Or let's say that your health has dipped.
In that case, self-care for you might focus on building a workout routine.
Now here we see the linking of health with working out is clearly an example of anti-fat bias.
The general discussion of self-care often revolves around the concept of space.
Individuals express a need for some space.
Persons are said to be in a good or bad headspace.
The publication Mashable even recently highlighted the efforts of astronauts to practice self-care in outer space.
Space is an important element of self-care.
And one tool for creating both ideological and physical space is fatness.
When I was younger, on several occasions, I was touched or fondled sexually.
And on some of these occasions, it was done without my permission.
So in college and grad school, however, I Gained a significant amount of weight.
At first, I will say I was driven to shame by my friends and family.
They would say things like, you need to take better care of yourself.
And at this point, to be clear, I did not yet identify as fat.
One day, however, all of that changed.
I was fueling my vehicle at a nearby gas station, and as I was collecting my receipt, a man reached out and tried to touch me.
Okay?
Sexually.
And I realized, I had a realization that I wasn't worried.
Now, why was I not worried?
Because I understood that in that moment, because of what at this point I was referring to
as my freshman pounds, my newfound fat, this stranger, regardless of his determination,
would have far greater difficulty in grabbing my genitalia without my consent.
Um, I...
And that was where I began to explore the idea that fatness can be self-care.
From that point on, I actively chose to identify as fat, and I realized that I realize that once I was already being perceived as fat by others,
I protected myself from the baser impulses of toxic masculinity and rape culture.
Fatness, embracing a fat identity, ensuring one is always already perceived to be a fat individual, subject, these actions become performative acts of resistance.
Especially in this tumultuous time, as deaths from COVID-19 surge over 100,000.
Of course, my sympathies, I can't even imagine, go out to anyone affected by this pandemic.
But more than ever, space is critical.
The importance of space cannot be overstated.
Space is one of them, sorry.
Space often, we see now, is a matter of life and death.
We'll see you next time.
Recently I was picturing my favorite local grocer, and there I saw a man, of course you've all seen this person, without a mask.
And even though this man decided not to protect others, or myself, by wearing a mask, he had taken the time to put on his Make America Great Again cap.
But I wasn't worried.
And I knew that largely because of my fat, I was guaranteed at least a certain amount of space.
You may believe, wrongly as many people do, that fat is a threat to your life.
But I would argue that in many ways, it may save your life.
I used to feel guilty about eating certain foods or drinking certain soft drinks.
But I don't anymore.
Every scoop of Ben & Jerry's, or whatever your preferred food may be, I would like to see it restructured, and it should be seen as an act of resistance, not only against homophobia, but against fatphobia.
As the waist size, for example, of my pants increases, in many ways so does my power, and so does yours, and I want you to understand that.
I want all people to understand that and believe that.
So I would like to summarize this by saying that personal fatness is a visible statement.
What do I mean by that?
It says, I do not conform.
I do not submit.
I decide what I do with my body and no one else.
Not you, not a medical professional, and certainly not Donald J. Trump.
It is a visible statement that says, keep your distance.
I am not one of you.
I don't have to be one of you.
Arbitrary standards of so-called health do not rule me.
They do not rule over me.
I will not participate in your bullying as a society.
I am an individual.
I am here.
And I am resisting.
That is here.
And it is not silent.
Thank you again, I am C. Matheson, and I very much appreciate you giving me the time to present this, and look forward to answering your questions!
Of course, this was all pure lunacy, and I was certain that the jig was up and that it would be curtains for C. Matheson in the world of academia.
After all, these ideas aren't grounded in any scientific literature, data, or even reality, and it was clearly a goof.
So imagine my surprise when this absolute joke was not only accepted to a prestigious academic conference, but C. Matheson was met with rave review.
Dr. Esther Rothblum, PhD, even reached out to C. Matheson after the conference to peer-review a paper on, you guessed it, fat studies.
Look, Ma, I'm an authoritative source!
The problem isn't just that lunatic ideas like fat pride are accepted and even peer-reviewed at institutions as cleverly designed ruses to boost scholarly book sales, but the problem of education doesn't exist in a bubble.
Think about it for a second.
What happens to the students?
What happens when they grow up and become lawyers, doctors, or God forbid, teachers themselves?
Today's ivory tower quackery is tomorrow's gospel truth.
Crazy ideas like gender fluidity, endless pronouns, fat pride, they were all created the same way and became ingrained into our authoritative sources.
This isn't anything new.
The insanity of higher education has been influencing culture for decades.
In the late 1980s, you had the birth of queer studies with an academic conference at Yale.
The conference grew, and by the 1990s, had hundreds attending and presenting.
Fast forward now, 40 years later, we have prestigious academics preaching about the wonders of gender fluidity and actually identifying as two-spirited.
It's not just that these ideas are insane.
It's that they are unfounded, they're unverified, and most of all, untrue, which makes them seriously harmful.
When doctors are being pressured by academics to praise the beautiful bravery of their 350-pound land whale patients, lives will be lost.
Life expectancy will be traded to preserve the fragile egos and financial interests of academic elites.
But that doesn't matter, right?
As long as people like Dr. Cat Pawsay feel free to be themselves in all their super-sized glory.
So to all you beautiful woolly mammoths, raise your Twinkie!
The experts are on your side.
Oh my god, Becky, look at her butt.
What I find fascinating and think is represented in this quote right here is the collapsing of fatness and blackness.
When fatness merges with blackness, it stops trying to Hey, did you like this video?
Don't care!
Hit the notification bell, share it with someone, because, you know what?
Look.
Some people add value to society, and then there's you.
And you can start by at least sharing this.
You don't have to create the value, but you can spread the value.
And look at you.
Crowdershop.com, right?
Dave, look at this person.
Ah, he's garbage.
Look at you and now look at us.
Look at us.
Z is garbage, by the way.
Because that's the most offensive thing we've said.
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