Today the hashtag #onlyfatpeople trended on Twitter. Tweet after tweet of “only fat people [insert something cruel]”. I guess people think that we haven’t had enough suicides contributed to by cyber bullying and hate speech.

I get a lot of hate mail. I get something every day and I get a death threat about once per week. And it seems like it’s morphing, like a drug who effects wear off the “fix” that people used to get from calling me a landwhale is no longer enough. Suddenly it’s not enough for them to hate me, they want ME to hate me. Then they want me to die. They say horrible, cruel things to me. And I’m not the only one. The fat people I know all deal with some level of this at some time or another.

Let’s be super clear: this isn’t about my health, their tax dollars or anything else. Anybody who says it is – is lying through their teeth. It’s purely about people wanting to hate me, and wanting me to hate me. What the hell is wrong with these people? Who knows – maybe they feel bad about their lives, maybe they think that their value lies in being thin and the fact that I don’t value being thin is a threat to their self-esteem. Maybe they have that “complete and total asshole” gene that the researchers are all talking about.

Really, I’m less interested in what’s wrong with them – and more focused on what our options are for dealing with this crap.

We can try to hide. Maybe if they don’t notice us they won’t hate us out loud. That’s not an option for me – as the Reverend Mother says in Sister Act: “That is not a person you can hide. That is a conspicuous person, designed to stick out.” Even if I could hide I wouldn’t but I understand people who do work to just blend in.

We can try to argue with them. Sometimes I do this but, to borrow a phrase I’ve found that the problem with arguing with a pig is that you both get dirty but the pig is used to it and doesn’t mind. I’m a fan of debate in general but basic human respect and civil rights are not open to debate as far as I’m concerned. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness do not start when we weigh what someone else thinks we should weigh.

We could try to change ourselves to be who they think we should be. Although I’ve found that bullies are pretty good at finding fault.

I think in the end how we deal with bullying depends on the bully, the situation, and how we feel at the time. What’s really important is that we realize that what they are doing is wrong, period. We can choose to excuse it, ignore it, challenge it or whatever, but that doesn’t change the fact that the behavior is wrong. It’s not me, it’s you.

I’ve struggled for a while with how to deal with the hate mail that I get. I don’t want to put it on the blog because I like this to be a safe space. But I do think it’s important for people to be able to see the kind of crazy stuff that people send me for respectfully suggesting that fat people don’t have to hate ourselves.

Then a friend told me about a Mommy blogger who put her hate mail up on a separate page with ads to monetize it. That sounded brilliant to me – the idea that the haters will help me fund my world tour to spread the body love and replace all their hate gives me a lot of glee! So I put up a website with some of my hatemail and filled it with ads for awesome Health at Every Size and Size Acceptance stuff that I love.

So, if you want to read my hate mail (and obvious trigger warning here) you can find it at www.danceswithfat.com/hate