I'm pretty well plugged into the internet, and I do research there as both a hobby and a job. Yet, in the last two Christmas vacations I took, I had to tune it out after just a couple of days, and the main reason was that aside from relatively-isolated cases like Deviantart, I just couldn't trust social media and search engines to deliver what I wanted them to when I tried to do research on fatness and fat acceptance. Go ahead. Try it. Try using Yahoo, Google, Ask... Heck, use Duckduckgo if you think it'll help. The vast majority of searches will turn up opposition to these things, rather than the things themselves.
Lest you think Facebook is any better, the fat acceptance page there hasn't been updated since 2014, and references a fat acceptance website that no longer exists, (Following the link leads to a blank page with a bunch of links to freaking diet info!) while the page devoted to attacking fat acceptance received updates as recently as October of this year. Youtube is even worse, with fat acceptance and body positivity videos either just not present, or not showing up in searches, and needing to be stumbled onto by chance in the associated videos bar on the side.
A while back, I found a really good website with a series of very well-written articles, debunking the myth of the "obesity epidemic," and within a week of my finding it, the page had been scrubbed from the internet.
People mention public outcry against Facebook for their abusive censoring of fat-friendly ads in appropriate places, but I'm shocked that no one's talked about this; that the FA Reddit page is packed with links attacking FA, and so on and so forth. Where does it end? Is there a whole world of civil Fat admirers out there, who just can't make their voices heard because some bureaucrat in Silicon Valley decided to "sanitize" the web, and as always with censorship, it's fat people and their advocates who suffer first?
This has only confirmed me in my current course, naturally. I don't have any other choice but to oppose this naked, broadside attack against free speech in my own way. Still, I wish more people would discuss this, because it seems like far, far too many people don't even talk about these issues anymore.
P.S.: At least Fanfiction net still has "the Unchosen One," so not all hope is lost, I guess.
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Addendum: More than one person has indirectly questioned my use of "Fat Acceptance" as a point of discussion, and my response is that the fate of Fat Acceptance represents the reason why just targeting fat-hating isn't enough. Just defending fat people from attacks isn't enough. Just trying to fix a few social issues, to make the lives of some women a little easier isn't enough. That helps fat people, sure. So who's helping FAs? Who stands up to defend the people who are treated as sickos and perverts for feeling emotions that are not mainstream, both by society at large, and by the very people they most care about? To use a quote I found online, "...men who find fat women attractive don’t have much more than a light peppering of creepy, small online communities, and several somewhat less creepy, unpopular figureheads to help shoulder public scorn."
We are human beings, and treating us as objects of ridicule for no misdeed is a wicked and shameful act. So, as I've said before, only the targeting of the stigma attached to fatness specifically will show even a glimmer of good faith in this area. Otherwise, it's just a sort of "Got mine, so forget you" attitude from fat people to FAs, giving up on a fight that deserves to be fought, and don't expect me to see it otherwise.
Lest you think Facebook is any better, the fat acceptance page there hasn't been updated since 2014, and references a fat acceptance website that no longer exists, (Following the link leads to a blank page with a bunch of links to freaking diet info!) while the page devoted to attacking fat acceptance received updates as recently as October of this year. Youtube is even worse, with fat acceptance and body positivity videos either just not present, or not showing up in searches, and needing to be stumbled onto by chance in the associated videos bar on the side.
A while back, I found a really good website with a series of very well-written articles, debunking the myth of the "obesity epidemic," and within a week of my finding it, the page had been scrubbed from the internet.
People mention public outcry against Facebook for their abusive censoring of fat-friendly ads in appropriate places, but I'm shocked that no one's talked about this; that the FA Reddit page is packed with links attacking FA, and so on and so forth. Where does it end? Is there a whole world of civil Fat admirers out there, who just can't make their voices heard because some bureaucrat in Silicon Valley decided to "sanitize" the web, and as always with censorship, it's fat people and their advocates who suffer first?
This has only confirmed me in my current course, naturally. I don't have any other choice but to oppose this naked, broadside attack against free speech in my own way. Still, I wish more people would discuss this, because it seems like far, far too many people don't even talk about these issues anymore.
P.S.: At least Fanfiction net still has "the Unchosen One," so not all hope is lost, I guess.
---
Addendum: More than one person has indirectly questioned my use of "Fat Acceptance" as a point of discussion, and my response is that the fate of Fat Acceptance represents the reason why just targeting fat-hating isn't enough. Just defending fat people from attacks isn't enough. Just trying to fix a few social issues, to make the lives of some women a little easier isn't enough. That helps fat people, sure. So who's helping FAs? Who stands up to defend the people who are treated as sickos and perverts for feeling emotions that are not mainstream, both by society at large, and by the very people they most care about? To use a quote I found online, "...men who find fat women attractive don’t have much more than a light peppering of creepy, small online communities, and several somewhat less creepy, unpopular figureheads to help shoulder public scorn."
We are human beings, and treating us as objects of ridicule for no misdeed is a wicked and shameful act. So, as I've said before, only the targeting of the stigma attached to fatness specifically will show even a glimmer of good faith in this area. Otherwise, it's just a sort of "Got mine, so forget you" attitude from fat people to FAs, giving up on a fight that deserves to be fought, and don't expect me to see it otherwise.
