Because none of us are finished. I’m not the person I should be yet. And if I want to see a world of justice and love and peace and kindness, then I need to realize that my attempts at changing the world must be matched by efforts at internal transformation. My anger at injustice should stem more and more from a genuine love of all people, who are ALL victims of unjust systems (one of the insights about patriarchy that often gets left out of discussions of feminism I’ve seen online is that, as the “rule of fathers”–NOT “rule of men”–many if not most men do not reap the benefits of it, and even those who do do so at a steep price).

RIGHT ON. I am so happy to see this post. Thank you for writing it.

It is entirely possible to disagree with and even get angry with other people without being nasty and if we hope to keep people embracing FA, we’re not going to do it by setting up cliques of “good” and “bad” fats, or feminist-enough fats, or whatever other category gets set up next. We can all be different, can all hold individual opinions, and all still get along reasonably well.

That means that Bianca needs to be aware of how her words may be perceived just as her readers need to be aware of how they are perceiving her words and question whether that is automatically what Bianca meant. Attributing meaning to someone else’s words deprives them of a voice as surely as does omitting the voices of women and minorities from Western history.

I hope you will post more!