4-12-12 Links Roundup
Several prominent feminist bloggers focus extensively on body acceptance, but their work often goes beyond the singular relationship of gender and fat. Writer and activist Tasha Fierce is a frequent contributor to Bitch and Jezebel and creator of the blog Sex and the Fat Girl, where Fierce documents her experiences as a self-described “fat, queer woman of color.” She is particularly passionate when addressing the intersectionality of fat bodies.
“Our approach to building fat community needs to be a comprehensive and all-inclusive one,” says Fierce. “White cisgender feminists who are fat need to recognize that there are different levels of oppression–not everyone who is fat is only facing discrimination because of their weight.” She pointed to a recent call-to-action by the organization NOLOSE which argues that people of color are too often portrayed as the impoverished, tragic face of a heavily politicized and trending obesity epidemic. Social justice organizers in both the fat-acceptance and feminist communities are responsible for facilitating inclusiveness within their ranks, she says. Fierce shared her insights for creating that environment. “When there are fat activist gatherings, the organizers need to make sure the venues and materials are accessible to those who use differing methods of communication — these are just basics to start with.”
- Fidel Castro, as Time magazine quoted him. That’s 5,000 times worse than wearing an Auburn cap to an Alabama wedding.
“Very stupid,” he called it. That motion is carried unanimously. It was foolish to even address the subject, given he has already been in some soup for seemingly kind remarks toward Venezuela strongman Hugo Chavez.
Rule of thumb: Better to be complimentary about your left-handed pitching rather than left-wing dictators.
The fact that race-based prejudice exists is undeniable. In a 2004 study, co-authored by psychology professors at Stanford and Yale, white people associated stereotypically black faces with higher levels of criminality than they did with those of whites. In addition, whites were less apprehensive about shooting black people, as demonstrated through a video-game simulation.
This bias is expressed and reinforced through the media. Author and antiracism activist Tim Wise has documented that local newscasts over-represent African Americans as criminals, relative to their actual share of total crime, and over-represent whites as victims, relative to their share of victimization. According to Wise, a large percentage of white hostility toward black people can be traced to the overwhelming amount of negative media imagery about them, even after all other factors are considered. And public-opinion polls consistently show that whites express greater fear of crime when in the presence of African Americans and assume greater guilt of African-American criminal suspects accused of crimes than of white criminal suspects accused of the same offenses.
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