Of all the loathsome, fatphobic trolls on the Internet, are there any more repugnant and punchable than those who used to belong to the Fat Acceptance Movement, then betrayed it? I’ve noticed a couple of these people since I arrive on Tumblr, and they seem to follow a bit of a pattern, as far as I can tell through what’s explicitly stated and what I have to infer through subtext: they start off in a (presumably) emotionally vulnerable place, get involved with Fat Acceptance, find their self-confidence, lose some weight… and promptly stab the Movement that nurtured them when they were at their weakest in the back.

I’m always fairly hostile to traitors of any description: something about taking what you need from a person or cause then ditching them/it the moment they/it are no longer convenient. Traitors to the Fat Acceptance Movement, however, have a special place reserved for them in the top-secret torture dungeon I will one day build under a volcano. They always have this weird need to justify their treacherous quizzling bullshit by framing the Movement as some kind of cultish brainwashing machine. Hang on a sec- let me just engage my Sarcasm Engine: “Yes: how dare a group of politically-aware victims of societal prejudice try to “brainwash” people into believing that their bodies are acceptable and that they don’t owe thinness to anyone. Clearly, it’s far more sensible and in-touch with reality to wander around hating ourselves and compulsively dieting until we overdose on appetite suppressants and choke out our last breaths while staring at a poster with some “inspirational” bullshit on it about thigh gaps. ‘Cause that load of culturally-mandated neurotic nonsense isn’t the result of wider societal brainwashing at all, is it?” Sarcasm Engine disengaged. My point is that anyone who’s spent any time around the Fat Acceptance Movement or HAES or anything like that knows that it’s a) not remotely cultish and b) fundamentally about fighting discrimination while giving people back the ability to feel good about themselves, regardless of what kind of body they have. The fatphobes who defected from the Movement are talking bollocks, and I have some idea why: deep down, they know they’ve given into social pressure. They know they’ve been forced to conform. That they’ve been- to use their own term- “brainwashed”. So now they use the language of conformity and brainwashing to describe the Fat Acceptance Movement. They externalise the dark truth about their own miserable condition so that they don’t have to confront it. Or, to put it another way, the pathetic little shits are projecting so hard you could use them to show a slideshow.

They needed the Movement when they entered it, but the moment they no longer needed it- because they lost weight, or because they regained enough of their shattered self-confidence to stand without support- they took the path of least resistance and went back to being fatphobic maggots. Because it was easier, and safer, and non-controversial, and they didn’t need the Movement any more. Their lack of solidarity, the selfishness and their pathetic, capitulating justifications sicken me.

