Interactions, within the many women�s organizations of which I have been a part, hold similar frustrations. I see the position fat activists have been in as similar to having to listen to women who were bent on �passing� for the privileged group, where we could not � and would not for reasons of honor. We were expected to accept a diversity of ideas where those ideas pathologized this �difference,� offered reasons for why it was a transient (and troubled) state of being which could be transcended � by proper behavior and by being able to heal from prior abuses.
In racial terms, we do not pass for white, nor did we wish to. But who are we, we have been challenged, to criticize when others feel their non-white appearance is owing to not taking care of their bodies properly? With careful hair straightening or coloring, or both, and attention to avoiding the sun or surgeries to �correct� those �improper� eyelid attachments, they could remain in passing status, escaping the terrible stigma of being known to be non-white! While we might be proud of our non-whiteness, others, in this supposed diversity of views, may have gotten to such degraded places by traumas which disallowed their proper care. It is, of course, fine for us to like and accept this non-whiteness in ourselves, but surely we can see the need for them to try to transcend it, for they fear and hate it, and fear and hate the bodies that contain it.
In class terms, we do not pass for middle-class, nor do we wish to. But who are we, we have been challenged, to criticize when others feel their class dis-privilege is owing to their not taking proper care to hide their lesser origins? With careful diction and clear identification with the ideals of the elites, they could remain in passing status, escaping the terrible stigma of being lower-classed! Of course this requires distancing themselves from the things �those� people do, like offering personalized examples to explain abstract concepts, or suspecting a sales pitch when another is careful to repeatedly call them by name, or offering to share whatever it is they have, or even by willingness to dig in and get hands dirty and feet wet, rather than expecting someone chosen for that task to do it. While we might be proud of our working-class and poor-class backgrounds, in this supposed diversity of views those others might have gotten to such degraded places by traumas which disallowed their proper care. Surely we understand their need to try and transcend this degraded status, for they fear and hate it; they cannot tolerate it, and really shouldn�t have to.