Comments on: fat-phobia is not vegan

By: jenna

jenna — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 03:15:41 +0000

hi, lui: thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and your story. i completely agree that veganism does not equal thinness and thinness does not equal healthiness, and i wish more people would give those concepts some consideration. additionally, very few people, vegan or otherwise, will actually achieve the arbitrary standard of thinness (and, more generally, beauty) to which ingrid newkirk and PETA hold women. and no amount of hate-filled, fat-shaming vitriol will magically turn people into the "skinny bitches" that PETA and other fatphobes keep hoping for. it's my understanding that ingrid newkirk is in a relationship with neal barnard of PCRM. while i recognize that being a female-identified person in a long-term relationship with a male-identified person does not indicate that either person identifies as heterosexual, i would think that if ingrid did consider herself a member of the LGBT community, she and her corporation would be a lot less horrible to the "T" portion of the show.

By: Lui

Lui — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:38:18 +0000

Thanks for this Jenna (and Ida and others). My partner and i have been vegan for several years now. We mostly eat whole foods, with no additives, and try to eat organic when possible. Both of us have actually GAINED weight over the years. I’m up ten pounds since last October and I think I eat much healthier than what’s offered in the vegetarian starter kit, or “Skinny Bitch” (another fatphobic text) for that matter. I used to actually be quite a bit skinnier BEFORE I went vegan. My partner, who has been a vegetarian for 16 years, has never been as skinny as Newkirk would want her to be. My point here is that, for me and my partner, being vegan (and even consuming organic, whole plant foods) does not equal skinny at all. Then again, being skinny does not equal being healthy.
Thanks!
Also, Jenna, how do you know for sure that Newkirk is heterosexual?

By: fiercefemme

fiercefemme — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:03:59 +0000

Thanks for this, Jenna. It saddens and upsets me that, since PETA has so much name-recognition with the general public, people look at their antics and assume all vegans/animal rights activists agree with their positions and actions. It’s so damaging. I hope yours and Ida’s blog entries will help get the word out that veganism, at its core, is about anti-oppression.

By: harryhebert

harryhebert — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:36:50 +0000

I find that overcoming fatness involved overcoming a lifetime of wrong eating habits. I was raised on fried chicken, gravy, roasts, and cakes. This was back when the public was unware of cholesterol, relations of fat to heart conditions, etc. Peta is not unlike other large organizations. The head officers probably make over $100,000 a year each. They lose sensitivity to the core values which actually constitute Veganism. If such organizations persist is such sophmoric behavor, they only weaken the plausibility in the eyes of the public of our credence.

By: jenna

jenna — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:26:41 +0000

thanks so much for your continued analysis, ida. i really appreciate the suggestion that overeating and obesity may not — gasp! — be caused by our inability to just quit shoveling it in. i wish that newkirk would read kessler’s book or anything that might provide an alternative opinion than the hateful, fat-phobic one that her corporation posits. then again, it seems like nothing will stop her quest to eliminate everyone who isn’t stick thin, though; i recall reading that in one activist’s confrontation with newkirk, she stated bluntly, “i am not supportive of the fat-positive movement.”

what also irked me about her article in the huffington post was her implication that “no one” is writing about animal issues, while we all had just oodles of time to write angry blogs and make phone calls about the jacksonville billboard. sorry, ingrid, wrong again: there are a lot of us writing and calling and acting out about animals and veganism. we just don’t all do it with as much vitriol or oppression as she does.

By: Ida

Ida — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:31:52 +0000

I just read Newkirk’s sizeist rant, and she really hates fat people. I’m currently reading David Kessler’s book The End of Over Eating which talks about how to help people who eat more than they need or want. And according to this book Newkirk couldn’t be more wrong on how to address this. Here’s an excerpt that I just read earlier today:

“A few essential principles lie at the foundation of Food Rehab:

Conditioned hypereating is a biological challenge, not a character flaw. Recovery is impossible until we stop viewing overeating as an absence of willpower.

Treating conditioned hypereating means recognizing it as a chronic problem that needs to be managed, not one that can be completely cured.

Every time act on our desire for sugar, fat, and salt, and earn a reward as a result, it becomes harder for us to act differently the next time. Effective treatment breaks the cue-urge-reward-habit cycle at the core of conditioned hypereating.

The loss of control that characterizes conditioned hypereating is magnified by diets that leave us feeling deprived.

New learning con stick only when it generates a feeling of satisfaction. We can’s sustain a change in behavior if it leaves us hungry, unhappy, angry, or resentful.

Restoring control over eating requires us to take a comprehensive approach, one that has many interlocking steps. To gain the upper hand, we need strategies that address multiple behavioral, cognitive, and nutritional elements of conditioned hypereating.

Lapses are to be expected. Most of us are never fully cured of conditioned hypereating. We remain vulnerable to the pull of old habits, although with time and the rewards that accompany success, they do lose their power. With practice, we can find ways to use “slips” to our advantage, as tools for recognizing where we might stumble and reminders of the need to develop new learning.

Eventually, we can begin to think differently about food, recognizing its value to sustain us and protect us from hunger, and denying it the authority to govern our lives.