Bodies
QWOCMAP acts to honor bodies of all shapes, sizes, and abilities. Bodies that deserve respect as they are.
QWOCMAP strives to end body policing based on race, ethnicity, gender presentation, ability, and size. We want to make fantastic and fun spaces that everyone can enjoy, that honor our bodies, that honor our community.
Why It Matters
It is clear that we are currently in a fight for body autonomy - in terms of gender affirmation, healthcare, reproductive justice, eugenics, and fatphobia - and the human right to make decisions about our own bodies as deserving of loving, compassionate care.
QWOCMAP challenges the medicalization, pathologization, and criminalization of our bodies. We do not accept stereotypes and oppression, especially those found in science, that impact self-determination. Instead, we focus on our communities’ collective health, healing, and well being.
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
- UCSF Lesbian Health & Research Center and the World Health Organization
Healthy At Every Size
Size Oppression & Fat Phobia
Size oppression and fat phobia impact us all. By alienating us from our bodies, by making us hate our shapes, by encouraging dangerous, and disordered ways that we force our bodies to be smaller.
Beyond body image, fatphobia affects our relationships with each other, our sexuality and desirability, and our very family dynamics. It leads to self-hatred, pre-occupation with control, the monitoring of food and other people’s bodies.
Everyone, whether they love their bodies or not, or not matter their size, we are all affected. It means that none of us can be at peace with our bodies. And that fat people bear the brunt of everyone’s (self) hatred and bias.
Fatphobia is also structural and systemic oppression of fatphobia, that is driven by, and also drives, anti-Blackness. The impact is discrimination in employment, education, and healthcare that have dire and life-threatening consequences. It includes the extra costs that are incurred from clothes that cost far more or are simply unavailable, the extra charges for plane seats, the assumption of being unclean, lazy, or unintelligent, and then there is the physical violence. With so much focus on weight rather than health, fat children are only emotionally abused, bullied, assaulted, all while being deprived of needed nutrition. Their bodies are seen as evidence of bad character and parenting, which increases institutional and state scrutiny of our communities.
It also takes a tremendous toll on our mental and physical health.
How We Do It
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Redefine Wellbeing
For QWOCMAP, wellbeing is more than how well life is going for one individual, or their personal satisfaction with life.
We understand wellbeing as encompassing the physical, mental, emotional, and social health of our community.
That includes the strength of our relationships and connections, purpose & potential, capabilities & capacity, resources, and actualization - our collective ability to turn our dreams into reality.
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Challenge Fatphobia
QWOCMAP believes that the best way to improve the health of our communities is through fat acceptance. We encourage our accomplices in justice to honor the natural diversity of body types, shapes, and sizes through systemic change. We need fat acceptance to lead us to the end of structures that perpetuate harm and oppression. We want loving our bodies to be a part of liberation and justice.
We want fat people, and the rest of our community, to find joy in moving our bodies in the ways that we can, to increase our vitality. We know that bodies can be healthy at every size (HAES). We know that wellbeing happens independent of size. Pleasurable activities, self-acceptance, and eating food that is good to us, is good for us. We support our community in adopting behaviors that support wellbeing, whether that is mindful eating, exercise practices, delicious naps, and peals of laughter.
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Accessibility
In addition to our other practices to create safety, welcome, and belonging, QWOCMAP offers wider and sturdy seating without arms and armrests to accommodate our community.
Need extra support?
If there are other ways that we can make you cozy and develop additional practices that counter size oppression, please share your leadership, needs, and requests. We want to co-create vibrant, multi-faceted, and inclusive programs with you!
Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective teaches us:
“a political strategy to intervene and respond on generational trauma and systemic oppression, and build community/survivor-led responses rooted in southern traditions of resiliency to sustain our emotional/physical/spiritual/psychic and environmental well being. We conceptualize healing justice not as a movement in and of itself, but rather as a framework for movements to address collective harm and trauma.”
More Guides & Links
Resources
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Let Us Explain: Body Fascism
An essay about body fascism, the promotion of an "ideal" body type as a symbol of patriotism—conceived of as the pinnacle of health, discipline, credibility, and worth—in service of a nationalist agenda, while "non-ideal" bodies experience increased violence and erasure.
