Ashleigh Shackelford (via Facebook)

Ashleigh Shackelford says she's owed everything from housing to free Beyoncé tickets.

According to a piece on an “intersectional feminist media” website, “fat, black” women are owed reparations due to the “trauma” that comes with being one.

“The case for reparations for fat Black b****** is: f*** you, pay us,” self-described “queer, agender Black fat femme writer, artist, and cultural producer” Ashleigh Shackelford writes in a piece for Wear Your Voice.


Now, although Shackelford is discussing black women in particular, she also makes sure to clarify that this, unlike the case for slavery reparations, is an issue specifically tied to weight:

“I see thin femmes and women (of all races, actually) who are offered protection and care in ways fat black bitches are never granted,” she writes. “Our dehumanization is used to humanize everyone else in the entire world, but no one wants to protect, save or celebrate us.”

“Everyone just wants to eat off our flesh until we can’t satisfy or provide for them anymore,” she continues.


What kind of reparations? She makes sure to clarify that, too:

Let me be clear, though: when I say, “F*** you, pay me,” I mean, “F*** YOU. PAY ME.” Pay me a check, pay me consistently, provide me safe housing, offer me a job with benefits, run me those Beyonce tickets, finance my clothes and wigs and aesthetics, cultivate accessibility to spaces and provide seats that fit me, see and validate my humanity.


Shackelford insists that these reparations are well-deserved, because “[t]he intellectual, emotional and actual physical labor fat Black b****** provide is actually invaluable to the entire world.”

“Yet here we are and I’m still owed, still taken from, still waiting,” she writes, adding, “F*** you.”

#share#She offers examples of the abuse she’s endured due to the combination of her size and race, including “one particular example of a thin, white girl [who] followed [her] around the club to record [her] dancing.”

“She literally chased me around the club until I grabbed her phone and smashed it on the ground,” Shackelford writes. “And I wish a n***a would tell me I didn’t do the right thing, or say I took it too far.”


(Note: In my opinion, destroying someone’s property is usually a pretty clear sign that you’ve taken it too far.)

#related#It’s important to note that Shackleford is not just some random basement blogger. She is also the creator of an organization called Free Figure Revolution, and a respected feminist activist who speaks at a whole host of progressive conferences and events. In fact, I myself recognized her name, and later realized she had been one of the speakers and moderators at the VA NOW Feminist Conference I attended in Richmond last year.

Now, just how serious she is in this demand for reparations isn’t entirely clear, however, she does provide a link to donate to her PayPal in her bio below the article for anyone who might want to “support [her] emotional and intellectual labor.”