Abundant Bodies: Envisioning a Fat Liberation Future

As we enter 50 years after the publication of the Fat Liberation Manifesto, Abundant Bodies is coming to terms with where Fat Liberation started and where it needs to go to be more intersectional and accessible. The Abundant Bodies Network Gathering will share seminal texts that were written during the Civil Rights Movement and ways in which we as a collective can come together, in a post-COVID world, to make these texts more inclusive, accessible and intersectional. Participants will leave our network gathering with the tools to create change in their own communities through a call for legislative change around anti-discrimination laws to include weight as a protected category and by contributing to a database of stigma free medical professionals. It is our hope that through this Network Gathering we are able to create change for Fat Liberation both on a personal and institutional level.

Call for participation:

Calling All Abundant, Fat, Plus Sized, Succulent, and Thick Peoples From All Over!

50 years after the publication of the Fat Liberation Manifesto, Abundant Bodies – Envisioning a Fat Liberation Future is seeking session proposals that challenge and contend with the current realities of being fat in 2022. How can we work together to deconstruct fat stigma and other forms of marginalization while building a stronger and more inclusive fat community? How can we challenge ourselves to decenter whiteness, capitalism, ableism, cissexism, heterosexism and classism while we explore what it means to be fat? We will explore these questions and create media and practical strategies for resistance, healing and community building.

We are looking for a variety of session proposals that may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Fat Liberation History
  • Building a more inclusive fat liberation movement
  • Storytelling and important fat liberation moments
  • History of indigenous / people of color / Black / trans / dis/ability / supersize fat activism
  • Tools for young fat folks
  • Ally building for thin folks and privileged fat folks
  • Anti-racist fat activism

• Weight Bias and Discrimination
  • Fat Liberation Manifesto
  • Fat Liberation x Carcerality
  • Fat Liberation x Disability Activism
  • Fat Liberation x Medical Bias
  • Fat Liberation x other movements

• Medical Stigma 
  • Improving doctor / patient relationships
  • Navigating weight stigma at the doctor
  • Doctor accountability
  • Challenging medical bias in general (ableism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, etc)

ADDITIONALLY during AMC 2022, Abundant Bodies will be kick starting our long term project to create an app to provide recommendations and resources for finding a stigma-free doctor. Submit using the proposal link below if you want to collaborate with us on this project. Our goal is to create an app that provides the following:

• Crowdsourced app to submit doctors that are weight neutral, etc
  • Updating: http://www.fatfriendlydocs.com/usa/us_mi.html
  • Can submit doctors and reviews
  • We will create guiding principles to make sure they’re approved
  • What are the standards that need to be upheld/what are the expectations?
  • What is the process to get good care?
  • Creating guides for how people get access to care

Submit a proposal for the gathering here.

Everyone at the Abundant Bodies team hopes to see you there on June 14th to kick off another amazing AMC weekend.

**The deadline for proposals is April 1st.**