The Democratic Character

The concept of the democratic character is new to me. Rather than the ideal or most legitimate person to participate in democracy, the term democratic character refers to the type of person or groups that democracy produces. Surprisingly, the philosophers assigned for readings (Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Mill) gave a rather negative account off the democratic character. Plato and Nietzsche seem to suggest that democracy produces a People without any values; a striving for banality for the former and an indulgent, directionless apathy for the latter. Mill lays out a framework for societal intervention into an individual's autonomous life precisely because democracy tends towards might equalling right and the imposition of a universal morality upon the varied individual.

Regarding fat acceptance, i don't have much to say this time (or rather, too much to say and not enough space or coherence or directness to say it). I would like to share an interesting take on the person that democracy produces. Basing his argument on the writing of Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America ('the tyranny of the majority' from week 3) Eric Sutter suggests that democracy lends itself to a mindset that produces obesity. "Democracy, Tocqueville argued, conditions men to love equality more than freedom" which Sutter equates to loving the equality of the instant positive effects of food over the immediately negative effects of freedom as health habits (ie gyms, restricting food intake). It was an interesting take on the democratic character, although Sutter thinks that democracy and obesity is a uniquely American problem: "parallels between Tocqueville’s discussion of equality and freedom and the typical American mindset toward food. These parallels offered a partial explanation as to why there is an obesity problem in America and not, for example, in England".

Sutter, E 2013 "Is Democracy the Cause of Obesity", in Res Publicas, Ashbrook Centre viewed April 20 2014 < http://ashbrook.org/publications/respub-2013-sutter2/>

("The Ashbrook Center, an independent center at Ashland University, restores and strengthens the capacities of the American people for constitutional self-government. The Center teaches students and teachers across our country what America is and what America represents in the long history of the world.  Ashbrook creates informed patriots." http://ashbrook.org/about/ )

Readings this week:

J. S. Mill “On Liberty’ in D. Ravitch and A. Thernstrom (eds) The Democracy Reader: Classic and Modern Speeches, Essay, Poems, Declarations and Documents on Freedom and Human Rigths Worldwide, New York, Harper Perennial, 1992, pp. 65-70.

Plato, excerpt from The Republic in D. Ravitch and A. Thernstrom (eds) The Democracy Reader: Classic and Modern Speeches, Essay, Poems, Declarations and Documents on Freedom and Human Rights Worldwide, New York, Harper Perennial, 1992,pp. 5-8.

Aristotle, excerpt from The Politics in D. Ravitch and A. Thernstrom (eds) The Democracy Reader: Classic and Modern Speeches, Essay, Poems, Declarations and Documents on Freedom and Human Rigths Worldwide, New York, Harper Perennial, 1992, pp. 9-12.

F. Nietzsche, from Beyond Good and Evil, in D. Ravitch and A. Thernstrom (eds) The Democracy Reader: Classic and Modern Speeches, Essay, Poems, Declarations and Documents on Freedom and Human Rights Worldwide, New York, Harper Perennial, 1992, pp. 77-79.

W. Brown, “Wounded Attachments” in States of Injury, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 52-76.

The Public Screen

Jurgen Habermas’s deploring of the demise of the public sphere, as he saw it, is one we see echoed in, well, the public sphere. How often have we heard the cries of despair and exasperation: technology has ruined communication and human connections! no-one cares anymore, all they do is click to sign petitions and share on Facebook!

The public screen of DeLuca and Peeples is fantastic for showcasing online and alternative media activism. Fat acceptance,  while not a new phenomenon (its roots are in the new social movements of the 60's and 70's - the National (American) Association to Advance Fat Acceptance being founded in 1969) it is largely organised and disseminated online, particularly via tumblr, personal blogs, and even the online Fat Studies Journal . Face to face participation, such as fat clothing swaps, academic conventions, and activities focused on public embodiment (Aquaporko, fat synchronised swimming; fat dance flash mobs; and Chunky Dunks, group beach- or pool- going) are mediated through the Internet or other forms of the public screen eg. Flyers, fat zines, films (side note: Aquaporko the documentary has been doing to rounds of queer short film festivals and cleaning up the awards section).

The difference between the public sphere of Habermas and the public sphere of Hannah Arendt provides frisson and a way of articulating the dissemination (as opposed to dialogue) of Derrida and the public screen of DeLuca and Peeples. The rational, deliberative public sphere of Habermas requires the bracketing of social inequalities, a focus on consensus and civility become normative in a way that Arendt's sphere does not, with its appreciation of social location and partial perspectives. I think this is important in the concept of the public screen: that dialogue is really dissemination; that 'appropriate political activity' is bollocks and inaccessible;  that anger and privileging of marginalised voices is valid. Recent examples include the 'controversy' of projects and hashtags like thisisthinpriviledge and fuckcispeople. A lot of backlash occurred, arguing that anger and antagonism (of the systems that are oppressive and supposed allies) is counter-productive and outside the bounds of acceptable political activity and rationality and civility. To that end, I leave you with a poem:

I once told a joke about a straight person.

They came after me in droves.

Each one singing the same:

Don’t fight fire with fire.

*

What they mean is: Don’t fight fire with anything.

Do not fight fire with water.

Do not fight fire with foam.

Do not evacuate the people.

Do not sound the alarms.

Do not crawl coughing and choking and spluttering to safety.

Do not barricade the door with damp towels.

Do not wave a white flag out of the window.

Do not take the plunge from several storeys up.

Do not shed a tear for your lover trapped behind a wall of flame.

Do not curse the combination of fuel, heat, and oxygen.

Do not ask why the fire fighters are not coming.

*

When they say: Don’t fight fire with fire.

What they mean is: Stand and burn.

Stand and Burn by Claudia Boleyn.

Sources:

K. M. DeLuca and J. Peeples, “From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the ‘Violence’ of Seattle” in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2002, pp. 123-151.

H. Arendt, ‘The Public Realm” from the Human condition in B. R. Barber and R. M. Battistoni (eds) Education for Democracy: A Sourcebook for Students and Teachers, Iowa, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 2007, pp. 67-73.

Bodily Constructs

Embodiment is, hands down, my favourite talking point in GSDS, because it fucks with so many of the "common sense" assumptions and knowledges that float around in the socio-cultural ether and find their way into our thoughts, minds and understandings. Your understanding of the body, your body, and others bodies is constructed. Dominant understandings of the body are rooted in naturalistic, essentialist theories that presuppose the body as innate, known and unchangeable. This is one of the problems of the sex/gender distinction; even people who understand that gender is a social construct struggle to entertain the idea that "sex" is not biologically grounded and immutable, but also constructed. I came across this disagreement in the comments section of an Autostraddle article at the start of semester that illuminates my point wonderfully despite my disagreements with the article itself and provides an excellent example of discourses around bodies (yes, Autostraddle. I know, shut up, it's not that bad). Here's another one discussing how notions of gender embodiment plays out on queer fat bodies.

Micheal Foucalt and Judith Butler are the obvious writers when it comes to bodily constructs, but this last week's topic was centred around surgical interventions and the discourses surrounding the bodies/people that have them (in fact, I think the essay question I'm doing [funnily enough, the essay on bodily constructs] is straight out of Foucalt's ideas on disciplinary- and bio-power) and I chose to read Nicki Sullivan's (who is my current academic crush, along with Sam Murray) article on Genital modification and the somatechnologies of cultural (in)difference (soma = cell/body). 

I'm currently reading Somatechnics, which is edited by Sullivan and Murray, so I may be biased, but thought the article was brilliant (some people didn't, and expressed this with blinkered impassioned vitriol in the tute). Illustrating their point, Sullivan used Australian legislation on what is deemed "female genital mutilation" (again, a term that is constructed) to reveal the way in which the specific (yet generalised) bodies that access genital modification technologies are racialised, stigmatised, valorised, gendered, empowered, disempowered, victimised and sexualised through the discourse that surrounds them. Specifically, the dualism of surgical  modification of female genitalia (labia, hymen, vagina, clitoris) as a barbaric folk custom that must be stamped out (hello colonialism!) and a cosmetic surgery that is empowering and/or health driven (but also much derided and morally panicked about). 

I think people get too caught up on children, age, gender and consent when it comes to FGM to think academically on the topic. 

Guess what? Along with gender, our notions of childhood, proper bodies, life cycle and consent are also socially constructed and incredibly Western and White! Everything is socially constructed, but before you fall into an existential fuck funk: nothing matters, so relax, have a culturally relevant beverage of your choice, and discursively analyse it/party like it's 1999/enjoy the K-hole.

Sincerely,
SJ

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