Nah, that really isn't what I'd call ranty, at least not by the standards of the internet! There's nothing wrong with the odd bit of well-expressed indignation, and frankly quite a bit of indignation is due by now.
To everyone: I have been falling into that pattern women are trained into of agreeing with everyone in order to make nice, and I should probably spend less time doing this (because this post is going swimmingly and showing no signs of becoming a flame war) and more time thinking about what I want to happen. Right now, I am trying to finish reading
Thin for Life before my support worker gets here so that I can lend it to her (we've ended up being unofficial weight loss buddies), plus I went mad typing yesterday and this is not bright when you are trying to get over RSI. So I will try to summarise this bit as briefly as I can and then come back tomorrow.
I'd like to start a feminist weight loss movement. I think it's necessary and I think a lot of women will find it very useful.
I'd like to start a group blog, because I think that can accomplish more than a single-person blog in some respects, and also it means that it's not a full-time job for any one person involved.
If other people want to start blogs or local groups or anything else at all on the subject, FANTASTIC. Starting a movement is more than one blog.
I think that doing something within the context of feminism is a good idea - we can argue over definitions of feminism later, folks. Something that is for women who choose to lose weight; something that has a positive, non-sexist attitude; something that is a space for women to be among other women, without excluding non-cisgendered people or barricading out the men in a separatist fashion.
Men get overweight just as much as women do, and while there is a definite need for a female space, there is also a need for support for men which recognises their specific issues, many of which spring from sexism just as much as women's do with regard to weight. (Thank you for your fantastic illustration of this, Kaplods.) And then there are issues which affect everyone regardless of gender, and there are also going to be issues which specifically affect people who are not cisgendered.
I'd like to offer up the uni LGBT society I was talking about in
comment #34 as a model to consider. It started off as one big general society, using the term LGB at that time, and when I went along as a shy, closeted nineteen year old, there was a room full of men and precisely three women. So I fled for a while. Then they decided that this state of affairs was not precisely ideal, and they instituted a women's officer and a women's group. The women's group met on Mondays, the main meeting was on Tuesdays, and you got some women who went to one and not the other, but that was a good thing too, and the important thing is that we managed to get the male/female ratio up to 50:50 and the women felt like they had a good choice of places to be, suitable support, an atmosphere they enjoyed. Then after a while they realised that men have men-only issues too, and added a men's officer. They didn't bother setting up meetings for the men alone, because so much of the gay scene tends to be men-only that there was plenty on offer already. And after that, LGB became LGBT, and a transgendered officer appeared on the society committee. There weren't any groups for the trans students alone when I left, probably because the number of them was so small that they could all fit at someone's kitchen table, but their needs were carefully considered in the other groups, and non-student transgendered groups were growing in the city so there were other avenues of support. The women's officer ran the women's meetings, or rather we took turns taking the meetings and she was the one making sure we all did this. All three of the officers were responsible for befriending potential new members who were shy about coming alone and wanted the support of meeting up with someone in a cafe beforehand. There was a slight tendency for the men's officers and one or two of the women's officers to sleep with their befriendees, but hey, it wasn't exploitative and no system is perfect. If you see the uni LGBT society as the equivalent of the overall movement I want to create, and then the subgroups (formal or informal) as the equivalent of group blogs and the like, do you see where I'm going with this now?
By the way, the definitions I learnt at uni, and which I still like, are:
female - biological
feminine - social
feminist - political
While I agree that obesity in general very much needs its own support, we are sitting here talking about this in a huge forum that provides exactly that. I want to approach this from the angle of gender. Weight is already hugely defined by gender and sexism, affecting men as well as women, and other gender identities too.
So right now we have a highly sexist weight loss industry/mainstream approach, which is bad for everyone. We have the anti-weight loss Fat Acceptance movement, which is a subset of the feminist movement and very much not representative of how all feminists think, let alone all women, although it's fantastic when it comes to the rights-for-fat-people side of things. That's the history and situation that we're working with, it's already gendered up to the hilt.
I was originally thinking of Feminist Weight Loss for the movement, but a) that tends to exclude people who aren't women, and b) some people love feminism, some people are turned off by it. So we should see if we can come up with a good alternative title that indicates that gender is an issue without excluding anyone. Egalitarian Weight Loss? No, that sounds like "anyone can lose weight - ring us now for a free sample of diet pills!" Weight Loss for Gender Equality? "Lose fifty pounds and we'll change a piece of sexist legislation!" Non-Sexist Weight Loss? That's about as uninspiring as it gets. Blast, this may be tricky, and I'm getting drawn back to Feminist Weight Loss myself. Well, that's one to debate further.
That's the overall movement, at least the name and general purpose. Then we set up individual parts of that movement, and right now we're talking about blogs but it could be anything (and the movement will have a nice little logo we can all put on our websites). I'm trying to recruit people to join me in a group blog which will be a women-centred part of this movement. Other people can set up something for men only, or for transfolk, or for people with disabilities or people of colour or pagans or any other group, or for everyone together, but the point will be that this is about weight loss as it relates to gender. And if you want to set up something supportive for people who are losing weight, then that's also great, and you can always have a note somewhere saying, "We are friends of the people who want to lose weight in a positive fashion while examining gender constructs who can't think of a snappy name for themselves".
And maybe I'm trying to do this the wrong way around, and should just set up a group blog and call it Feminist Weight Loss because I really like that title, and let the movement grow out of that.