Fat politics as a constituent of intersecting intimacies

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper we explore the ways in which fat politics shapes (our) fat-thin intimacies as friends, colleagues and occasional lovers. We are queer writers who are actively engaged in fat politics; one of us is fat and the other is thin. We are both poets, scholars, and performers, privileged by whiteness, and contingently read as non-disabled. This paper takes the form of alternating reflections where we explore the nuances of our thoughts and feelings about friendship, romantic involvement, and engagement in learning communities. Specifically, we surface the ways that the various realms of our relationship are co-constituted by fatness, gender, and trauma histories. While we have both had fat and thin lovers before, Kimberly is the first fat, fat- affirming lover Lucy had, and Lucy is the first thin lover Kimberly had who was pre-educated and pre-experienced regarding fat stigma, fat shame, and social bias. We investigate what this shared political grounding made possible through the trust and vulnerability thus enabled. We also consider the erotic as an influence on scholarship which leads to praxis.