I have been reading a number of feminist blogs lately and have found them to be very enlightening. I stumbled upon them while searching the internet for fat positive blogs and it turns out that a lot of the fat liberation stuff is closely tied with the women’s liberation stuff which isn’t all that surprising since even though fat men get their share of hate, fat women get a double whammy. Mostly I think this is because so many men value women mostly on how they look rather than any other qualities they might have.
As a person who has been fat for her entire adult life, I can talk about how this particular cultural value has hurt me. But I don’t really want to talk about that – not because I don’t think my experiences have value but because I am simply not in the mood to remember some of the more painful times in my life. Instead, I want to talk about this cultural value hurts the very people who perpetuate it most: MEN. That is right, our fat phobic patriarchal society hurts MEN too and the men it hurts the most are the very men who seem the most eager to engage in behavior designed to keep women and especially fat women down.
I recently read an article linked on a blog called Fatty McBlog (an excellent blog, btw. I highly recommend it). This article was about a practice that some men engage in that they call ‘hogging’ – having sex with a fat woman in order to humiliate her. Read the article in the link to get a fuller understanding of the practice. Granted, this particular practice is most likely only engaged in by a minority of men. I have been lucky in that none of the men I have ever called friend has never to my knowledge ever engaged in any of the behavior described in the article. Nevertheless, this practice of ‘hogging’ has been on my mind since I have had the misfortune to encounter such men in the past.
After I got over my initial anger towards the men in the article, I found myself feeling a little bit sorry for them. That there are men in the world who honestly view women only as a warm hole for their penis and/or a trophy deeply disturbed me. Because I know that relationships can be so much more than that. Any man who sees women this way, who basically views women with contempt, surely is unable to form the type of emotional attachment with one. Deep emotional attachments are highly rewarding and frankly, these guys are totally missing out. Even if they happen to find a woman who they consider trophy material, they are still missing out. And missing out not on just some small thing but missing out on one of life’s greatest pleasures: emotional connection to another human being.
I cant imagine not having that in my life. I would rather die and I am not exaggerating when I say that. It is *worse* that suffering the occasional humiliation at the hands of that sort of person. I can honestly say that I would rather be me (a fat middle aged single woman) than one of them.
3 comments:
Oh. My. God. I have read this article in this book.
I was so disgusted and felt so bad for these shallow, empty, seemingly tortured guys. How does someone get to the point where they have zero regard for fellow human beings and reduce interaction into something completely animalistic (which is prob. insulting to animals)??
I can only hope that, as you say, this is a teeny tiny niche fetish (and God knows there are a zillion more that are far more disgusting than this one) and that they were showing off a bit infront of the author.
But again, I'm totally with you in thinking they're just a bunch of guys looking for a hole.
Blech.
I just ran across this column, on Salon, and thought you might enjoy the read. Now, I'm not sure if it will click though as some of Salon's content is behind a firewall. But do give it a try.
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/06/22/big_love/index1.html
-Mary R-
Yes, I read that article on Salon a few days ago. I thought it was interesting and I thought it was nice that there are men in the world who can find themselves attracted to fat women and then opening admit it. What is funny is that I wouldnt have thought that article would be controversial. I mean, the basic theme of it was "I am attracted to fat women so I married one and we are very happy".
But, of course, our society at the moment is not exactly rational about fat these days. Some of the comments were pretty terrible and amounted to people pretty much saying that an attraction to fat people is some kind of deviant fetish that means the person with such an attraction might be mentally ill. FWIW, I think that being very focused on *any* physical characteristic rather than looking at the whole person probably isnt very healthy. That is different however than finding certain body types attractive. Some people have broader ideas of what is attractive and what isnt. I think that life is nicer if one finds more people attractive than if one finds very few people attractive but that is just me. What I found really awful about the comments were the way people were so critical about another person's tastes. Tastes are just that: tastes. That means that finding a certain breast size/shape or a certain butt size/shape attractive is pretty much the same no matter what the size/shape of the characteristic is.
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