Compassionately fat: An autotheoretical exploration of queer bodies

Abstract

ABSTRACT The concept that queer scholars hold a shared responsibility for all queer people forms the driving inspiration for this exploration at the juncture of queerness and fatness. We advocate that cultivating compassion can be a way for queer fat people to engage in new relations with their embodiment that reflect the tenets of fat social justice. Drawing from fat activists of color and fat studies scholars, our relationships with our bodies are political. Within queer men’s communities, hegemonic constructs of queer men’s bodies privilege muscular bodies that are lean with very little fat. In this article, we advocate for compassion as an approach to queer fat activism. Compassion is a social construction and social beliefs, values, and knowledge shape not only how compassion is practiced and enacted but also who is able to receive compassion. We cannot ignore how cis-heteronormativity and fatphobia influences the way compassion is understood and practiced. In this dual autotheoretical work, we will explore the meanings of compassion within the context of fat activism as queer men. Our approach combines practices of self-narration with critical theory, and thus unites the authors’ bodily experiences through creative means with philosophy. We relate, through storytelling, our experiences of queerness and (non)compassion with fat studies scholarship for the purpose of advocacy and social transformation.