Dating with an Othered Body/Online Dating

"... by the way, I don't think you're fat..."
"No, I am fat. What I think you mean is that I'm not one of those fat people, the dumb, lazy, smelly ones..."
"...I'm not usually interested in fat chicks, you should take it as a compliment..."

"pretty, for a fat girl"
"but you've got such a pretty face"

Gee, thanks, douches. I'm so happy that you've overcome the horror of my fat body to grace me with your attention. Finally, some fucking validation, amiright?.

One of this week's reading that I found interesting and slightly mind-blowing was Alan Han's I Think You’re the Smartest Race I've Ever Met: Racialised Economies of Queer Male Desire’. I'm not sure I can do their ideas justice, but I'll try anyway as the article I've just linked to is quite mind bending. Han argues that desire circulates in an economy of queer male desire, and that this economy is racialised through the cultural capital that whiteness possesses. Cultural capital can be broadly defined as attributes that people have (education, knowledge, appearance, style of dress) that provide them with power, upward social mobility and status. Han draws upon other critical race and whiteness studies writers to inform their argument, which I will try to summarise:

• the Australian national identity (which values 'a fair go', mate-ship and egalitarianism) serves to concurrently dispossess Aboriginal Australians of their own history and sovereignty and unifying and masking the heterogeneity of white (Anglo-Saxon, Scottish, Welsh, Anglo-Celt) history. This serves to claim Australia as a white possession. Aileen Moreton-Robertson, 2005  
• Whiteness is itself a possession that is inherited, as part of a system of privilege, that affords control of public/social spaces. Ghassan Hage, 1998
• White skin, along with other visible aspects of whiteness, has become a defining characteristic of free human-beings through the practices and effects of colonialism. Whiteness is itself valuable property and inalienable ie whiteness is always, and can not be other than, on top of the hierarchy in any situation. Cheryl Harris, 1993

Han argues that when queer white men say "I think you're the smartest race I've ever met" to Asian men, put "no Asians" on their online dating/fucking profiles, and claim "there are only a few white men
interested in the small Asian dick", they are masking their own whiteness-as-capital, claiming desire as a possession and dispossessing queer Asian men of desire and agency. They are claiming queer white men as both the object of desire and the only desiring subject.

I would (and am) arguing that the same cultural capital as a possession; dispossessing, inalienable property, is at play when non-fat people express sentiments like the ones at the top of this post. Here are some other, equally uplifting examples:

• Six reasons why you should date a fat girl
• plain-slim-girl-v-pretty-fat-girl

Some actually uplifting examples of the response:

• if he could get a hot girl why would he want a fat girl?
• ive heard stories of ugly ducklings

Being not-fat has cultural capital, and discourse around fat sexuality shows this. These comments dispossess fat people of desire, or agency, of being both the subject and object of desire. Non-fat bodies are claimed as the only desiring/desirable bodies that exist, let alone matter.
And now, a word from our tumblr sponsors:

queensassyofthefatties:

chickenleggz:

overly confident fat girls are extremely annoying  

It’s a good thing I’m not here for your acceptance or approval.

http://queensassyofthefatties.tumblr.com/post/46958549176/chickenleggz-overly-confident-fat-girls-are