I'm Not the Woman at the Ballgame, But I Could Be

Recently, a hateful, fat-shaming photo surfaced on the internet.

OK, I'm going to have to be more specific.

A picture surfaced that showed a fat woman in the seats at a baseball game, taken from the back and clearly without her consent, with a caption that discussed how much she had eaten during the game, how many calories that was, and how "unhealthy" that made her. I'm not going to embed the appalling photo here and sully my blog, but if you really want to be enraged, you can view it on imgur.

To add insult to injury, a post was then released by "The Anti-Jared" claiming to be that woman, saying that she had lost a bunch of weight already and blah blah blah. But it actually turned out that that post was not written by the woman in the photo, it was written by this pathetic excuse for a blogger anti-Jared putting himself in her shoes.

This woman has been victimized and had her image used without consent not once, but twice now. As far as I know, she has not come forward or said anything, nor does she have any obligation to.

I'm writing this not to put any words in this woman's mouth -- enough others have already tried to do that -- but to point out that this could easily have been me.

I'm fat. Not curvy, chubby, plump, fluffy, or corpulent. Fat. If I were at a Cardinals game I would also be squished into the seats -- I know this because that's exactly what happens at Yankee Stadium. The seats are small and rigid and not made for fat butts. When I sit in them I squish uncomfortably, my belly and thighs forced out in different directions. If the human body wasn't somewhat malleable I wouldn't get in there at all.

I don't blame myself, I blame the stadium and those who designed it. I get that they want to put in as many seats as possible to sell, but there should be attention paid to human comfort. Yes, in case there's any question: fat people count as human.

I catch people staring at me on the regular. Before anyone jumps in and says "you're just saying that because you're self-conscious" or "you don't know what they're thinking" -- I know I don't. But I also know how the quantity and quality of stares change based on how fat I am (I have been varying degrees), what I'm doing, and how much I adhere to the arbitrary rules that say I should cover my body. I've had people take pictures (you're never as subtle as you think you are) and make comments to me. If I call out someone's lousy behavior (don't ride your bikes on the footpath, people!) the retort is always simply that I'm fat, as if that invalidates anything else about me.

So yes, you're damn right, I am self-conscious. I don't blame my fat for that, I blame the ways people respond to fat (mine and others'). I am very much conscious of the fact that people have bigoted notions about my body based on how much adipose tissue it contains and the way I feel and act about that. If I dare to eat, especially something that's deemed "bad," stares get worse. If I dare to sit down on the subway and my thighs touch another person, the stares get worse. If I dress in a way that makes me happy instead of wearing only muumuus in a black vertical stripe pattern, the stares get worse.

My fat is not the problem. Reactions to it are.

The woman at the baseball game is not the problem.

Whatever she was doing or eating is not the problem.

The fact that someone felt compelled to take her picture from behind, post it online with the express purpose of mocking it, and ascribe values and judgments to her entirely neutral behaviors is. The fact that someone else put a narrative in her mouth is a problem. Bigots who treat fat people as subhuman are the problem. Fat people are not. We have a right to exist in public, to eat what we want, to be as healthy or unhealthy as we want (or can be), to wear what we choose, and to live our own damn lives without input from anyone unless we ask for it. Our bodies are not an example to be made about some trumped-up issue plaguing the nation. They are our bodies. They are neutral. They deserve dignity and respect.

Facebook: Breastfeeding Bad, Sex Trafficking Good

Earlier today, a friend made me aware of a Facebook page for Songachi, which is the red light district in Kolkata, India. She just returned from a trip there and was working on a post for her own blog when she came across the page -- which, by the way, has about 3,000 likes. She explained that many of the women who are sex workers in the district are minors, and most are there against their will. Essentially, this page and those who like it are supporting sex trafficking.

In addition to the trafficking element, the page contains many explicit photos, including women masturbating and performing oral sex. There is really nothing about the page that doesn't violate Facebook's TOS.

So I and many of my friends reported it. I believe most of us chose to call it sexually explicit. I would think that, in light of Facebook's recent announcement that it would take pages encouraging violence against women seriously, it would be a no-brainer and the page would be removed.

So imagine my rage when I got the following reply.

Hi,

Thanks for your recent report of a potential violation on Facebook. After reviewing your report, we were not able to confirm that the specific page you reported violates Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

Learn more about what we do and don't allow by reviewing the Facebook Community Standards: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards.

Thanks,
Viki

Give us feedback to let us know how we are doing: https://www.facebook.com/survey/take.php?survey_id=242477152482072&cid=258497640937891

I don't know who Viki is, but she's not very good at her job. In fact, I've reported it twice and gotten the same reply. Maybe Viki is actually a robot.

Let's get this straight: Facebook takes down images of women breastfeeding, images of cancer survivors showing off their scars and tattoos, and body-positive images because there is a nipple distant in the background. However, Facebook leaves up pages that talk about raping women, calling them sluts, and this one, which promotes the sexual exploitation of minors AND blatantly displays graphic sexual images.

This is unacceptable and disgusting. Facebook's recent promise to take threats of violence against women seriously (which they should have been doing all along) indicates that this page has no business being on the site. Leaving it up, especially when positive non-explicit images are removed, just shows that in Facebook's eyes, women are unimportant. They are openly supporting hate, violence, and exploitation, and we need to stand against it.