I’ve been thinking about this the past two weeks. My busy schedule hasn’t really allowed me to write about it in depth, and this post might be shorter than I’d like. But I think I’ve discovered why I was kicked off the FA feed.

1. Don’t give those you dislike/disagree with link candy.

ASSUMPTION: Internet denizens are stupid, and can’t decide for themselves what is right or wrong. So if you give a site traffic and allow people to read the opposing opinion, people might agree with the opposing opinion and not yours. So you should do what you can to best suppress that opposing opinion.

also

This is a form of internet boycotting. And for troll-powered or corporate sites, I understand the idea behind this. Can you really, honestly make the argument that I’m a troll? Or did I make an argument that was simply politically unacceptable by those who are currently in power, and I didn’t “shut up” at the end of the proper amount of time normally allowed for political dissenters?

2. Certain buzz-words and buzz-terms in an argument imply I can draw Conclusions X from the argument without even fully reading or attempting to comprehend the actual message being made.

For instance, there have been a bevy of “privilege” posts in the Fatosphere lately, which does not surprise me. The ones that support an idea of privilege-by-virtue-of-birth, on-topic or not, fat/thin/black/white stay up, as do the blogs. The ones that do not support this idea don’t even exist: the members of the Fatosphere that don’t agree have suppressed their voices, and the ones that would not shut up had their voices suppressed by the Fatosphere, or have been properly chastised (like for this post). Nice.

ASSUMPTION: Those who disagree with being labeled as “privileged” or “non-privileged” based on the color of their skin or the size of their waist believe that racism and/or fatism doesn’t exist.

This might be true for some people. However, the argument I was making—which is consistent with the argument of most individualists, so read close—is that individuals don’t fall into neat categories whereby you can deduce their histories, interests, jobs, experience, and so forth because you have in your hand (or on your harddrive) a sheet of statistics saying they should. I Am Not a Fucking Statistic.

Racism/fatism and so forth DO exist. I understand that there may have been times I walked into a store and had my run of the place, while a person with a different color skin/size/accent/hair color/gender could have been treated differently. I know very well not all people are color blind/size blind. I know there are obstacles to overcome that are different in nature because not all people are color blind/size blind.

My point is to weed out the hypocrisy inherent in much of the neo-Progressive viewpoint of race. By labeling people’s INSIDES based on their OUTSIDES, you are no better than a classic, stereotypical Confederate racist. You dig? I didn’t think so. I’m quite sure you believe, based on the bullshit ammunition from a hundred courses on modern forms of racism and so forth provided at heavily liberal academic institutions by extremist professors, that A does not equal A, and in fact you can cure racism by labeling people based on race, and you can cure fatism by labeling people based on size, and so forth.

Give those communities pride and power, and they will succeed, right? Individualists don’t believe in those communities. And here we come to the REAL reason I was kicked off the FA feed:

3. Individualism doesn’t square with socialism*. I.e., skepticism is the enemy of groupthink. If you allow individualism in your movement, you will have to suffer real fundamental difference of opinion, what your professors, or your parents, or the books you read, told you again and again to distrust and fear. Individualism is the enemy of socialism*, i.e., individuals are the enemies of communities.

Those who don’t accept your groupthink notions of pride, power, guilt, fear, anger as generated on a group basis, with group ideals founded in a shared skin color/size/etc, are to be distrusted and weeded out. You’ve been told these people are your enemies and that THEY are the ones that create the hate you are trying so hard to fight. These are the dangerous ones, you were told: the ones that refuse to be labeled AT THE SAME TIME understanding hate exists, and trying to fight it.

The funny thing is, it all seems to come down to a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of statistics. You seem to have got it down for Fat Science — correlation doesn’t equal causation, right? But you don’t seem to have applied that to your groupthink notions. Chew on this:

1. If 80% of white people did Thing A, you can’t assume a random white person you meet is part of the problem. Weird, huh? Cuz, yanno, you have an 80% chance of being right so you should just err on the side of the majority, and chastise them, right? Wrong.

2. If 80% of non-white people experienced Thing B, you can’t assume that the random non-white person you meet has experienced Thing B. This is easier for you to accept, I’m sure, though it’s still very easy to put out Privilege Lists and froth at the mouth when others don’t swallow your propaganda because they dare not to be labeled, correct?

3. Your enemies are: trolls, and hate propagandists. Not your own, who disagree with your politics. I know your professors and the books you’ve read have stressed that someone who disagrees with your politics is just as bad as a troll or hate propagandist, because they’re perpetuating a way of being that undermines the way you want others to be. However, by treating your own like your enemies, your interests will never, in fact, experience fruition. By alienating those that want to walk with you because they balk at some of your ideals, you split the movement. Did you read that last part? YOU, Fillyjonk, Fatsionista, Kate Harding, Fat Fu, and everyone who is trying to pretend that I wasn’t ingloriously kicked off the Fatosphere without a word because my politics disagree with the status quo, are splitting the movement.

Fat Fu’s feed is private. But if her intention is to ultimately promote Fat Acceptance, she’s not doing so by suppressing people who could bring to the movement a very large segment that is currently not being politically represented, and suppressing useful and passionate advocates against Size Discrimination.

And I’m going to make it my business to be the Fatosphere’s watchdog. For the good of the people in the movement who trust in their leadership, and who never knew how I was ostracized for being an individualist (since that information was suppressed in order to quell dissension. A typical propagandist’s move, by the way).

* edited for clarity and to avoid “weasel words” — thanks, Carl!