CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

 [Cheerful theme music begins] 
 
This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 
 

Fat Black people in the United States are subject to socio-politically sanctioned discrimination, abuse, condescension, and trauma. In their writing and work, Da’Shaun Harrison—a fat, Black, disabled, trans writer and community organizer—offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. In this episode, Afro-Caribbean photographer, herbalist, and multidisciplinary artist KaliMa Amilak joins Da’Shaun for a conversation about their latest book, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, their life and work, and how we can all work to dismantle our cultural programming to create real change. 

 
This episode was recorded during a live online event on August 19th, 2021. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 

[Theme music concludes] 
 

Da’Shaun: Hello. 

KaliMa: Hello. 

Da’Shaun: I'm so, so excited about this. 

KaliMa: Yes, yeah! 

Da’Shaun: I’m ready to hop into it! 

KaliMa: I know right?! Me too. My hands are just like [laughs] -once again, you know, I want to thank you so much for coming out with this book and with your words and with your truths. And like I told you yesterday, I feel like it's such a provocative book that really shows that it's just you're just really showing the elephant in the room because this is something that, you know, I feel like this is not really talked about. If anything, it’s always swept under the rug. [Da’Shaun: Yeah.] So, I just I really appreciate you, and I really appreciate this moment.Okay. Well, let's get- let's get into it.  

I wanted to start off our conversation with the first chapter in your book, ‘Beyond Self Love’, where you discussed the concept of body positivity and how it's considered violent against the Black fat body. And honestly, it immediately made me think about, you know, the fashion industry and fat influencers and models and how that's trending right now because they're advocates of fat people when really it's promoting brands that are not really size inclusive. [Da’Shaun: Mhm.] And, you know, I want you to talk about more about the concept of body positivity against Black fat bodies and how it is considered violent and anti-Black. 

Da’Shaun: Yeah. So, one thanks you KaliMa like, just for agreeing to be in conversation with me and bringing your brilliance and beauty and boldness to the conversation. I'm, like, really grateful. And in terms of the question, yes, we've been in this era, this moment of body positivity as a liberatory practice, so much so that we have gotten books and articles and YouTube videos and Instagram accounts and Twitter accounts that are designed around body positivity. But the idea is that there is something that the individual can do to make their experience in the world better. 

And the reality is that that's not true. Right. And I think that it's hard for people to sit with the fact that an individual cannot change something that's not individualistic. Right. We are being harmed by a systemic, structural, metaphysical violence that cannot be undone with loving ourselves. That cannot be undone with having a bit of confidence one day. That's fleeting, right. Because we all know that confidence is fleeting for everyone, and it isn't something that all of us walk around with every single day at all times of the day. 

And so, if our liberation is predicated on our ability to perform confidence, then we have already failed. Right. Because, again, we're not always living in this moment of confidence or this idea of confidence, nor is it possible to fully embody confidence always and already. [KaliMa: Yes.] And so, I think that body positivity sort of does this really irreprehensible thing where it sort of pushes us to decontextualize the harm and the violence that we're experiencing, that we're navigating. And it doesn't ask us to contend with or to wrestle with the ways that the violence that we experience is sort of seated within a larger harm, a larger violence that cannot be done away with by a pseudo or a faux love for oneself and one body. 

And I think that the request the body positivity often makes is for us to- if we love ourselves, then we don't have to worry about- I'll rephrase that. I think that what body positivity requires of us is to place the onus on fat folks to wrestle with and to dismantle a violence that not only did we not create, but that we also don't have the power to dismantle. And it says you have to show up in this world. And despite how much the world asks you every day to kill yourself, or despite how much the world attempts to kill you daily, like, you have to be the one who chooses to still find love and confidence and beauty inside of a thing that was written as that was always understood to be ugly and unlovable and something that should not be confident, which isn’t to say that we can't exclude confidence. Right. I think so many of us are often very confident. And it is to say that whether or not you are confident does not matter, because confidence is not something that brings you to a liberated future, and I'm using that word kind of lightly. Nor is it something that helps you or does anything to shift the way that this violence shows up in your daily life. 

KaliMa: Definitely so. And I think, as you were saying that I was thinking about again, like, you know, how now that fatness to me, I feel like and I hope I'm saying this clearly, that fatness is now, like, constructed on a spectrum where there is now smaller fats and larger fats. And depending on where you are, it's either you're the one that is visible, whether you are a small fat or if someone that is, you know, like passing through the skin a they teeth, if you may. You know what I mean when it comes to visibility and also inclusivity. [Da’Shaun: Mhm, right.] 

And it wasn't until I read this chapter where, you know, and also, you know, you know, there has been, like, this argument between two influencers, if you may, that was having that discussion on social media and, you know, and it raised such a in a way, it's kind of like a boycott for inclusivity within plus size brand. And I feel like just overall, because of the fact that there's a spectrum that's even constructed, it's still adheres to whiteness and white patriarchy. You know what I mean? 

Da’Shaun: Yeah. I think that there is something like that is happening now that has always happened I think, but that's, like a lot more visible now in the way that fatness is dichotomized where or dichotomized and hierarchized, where people are situating a particular type of fat body over another, where they are able to at least locate or find the locale of desire within a particular fat body that they cannot find and are unwilling to find in larger fat bodies. And so, I think that what that looks like, particularly in terms of fashion brands, and not that this is something that, like, my work is necessarily on, but it's also unavoidable. 

You can’t escape what's right in front of your face and what's happening right now in fashion brands is that there is a push for brands to be more size inclusive, quote, unquote. But the demand is not necessarily to be concerned with the way that folks are perceiving fat folks or are engaging fat folks. And so, because of that, you're allowed to bring in people who are existing on the smaller end of the spectrum, who are read as, are referred to as thick, or who are read as referred to as, I think for some men, it would be a husky or bigger bone and things like that, and not as people who would be more immediately referred to as fat, as obese, as overweight.  

And so, because of that, I think that there is- it's just a continuation in the long line of the way that fatness has been dichotomized. And I think that what we're witnessing in terms of, like, fat influencers right now is that there are a lot of folks who are navigating that space, who have been able to build platforms of their own because there are more people than not who are interested in developing this politic, but that still are seated on the surface of a fat analysis that actually draws them into understanding who is or why someone is or is not gaining access to this ability to be able to be part of a branch campaign, to be a part of the sort of reimagining of what beauty is. 

And I think Lizzo said something the other day that I thought was just so brilliant, and I'm paraphrasing because I do not know her exact words, but where she essentially named that there is a difference between, you know, shifting culture and shifting the structures that help to maintain the oppressive nature that we're navigating. And by that, it's cool to have fat folks in your brand to have fat folks who are gaining platforms and things of that nature. To Lizzo’s point, what I'm really saying is that we can put particular desired fat bodies in front of screens all day long, and we can say that that is progression, or we can say that there is something admirable about that or something that's changing the tides of the violence that we've been experiencing. But as long as there is a desirability to place fat folks in or outside of, there will always be a violence that fat folks are having to navigate because of our bodies, and that’s maintained through the structures that helped to build these brands that use, quote, unquote inclusive language, and by which I mean, co-op, the language that we have developed and fleshed out on our own to be able to bring in diversity quotas and therefore diversity checks. 

KaliMa: Mhm, mhm. Yes, definitely so. And if body positivity is set to eradicate fatness, I'm curious to know in your perspective, like, how should body positivity overall be eradicated?  

Da’Shaun: I think there are a number of answers to this, but I think that will always be an iteration of body positivity, even if not by name, for as long as anti-fatness as anti-Blackness exists. Right. Which is to say that there will always be a way for people to try to devalue the fat, body, the fat Black body, and place thinness, light, kindness, whiteness, and able-bodiedness over that of fat, dark-skinned, Black, disabled bodies. And it may not be referred to as body positivity, it may be referred to as something else. But for as long as there is an anti-fatness to exhibit, or as long as there is an anti-fat sort of mode of violence for people to enact, there will always be this desire to dichotomize fatness and fat bodies. 

And so, I think that the only answer to that is that to rid the world of body positivity means to rid the world of anti-Blackness news, and to rid the world of anti-Blackness means to destroy the world. And if that is not the end goal, that's not what we arrive to. If that's not the conclusion we arrive to, then there is no way for us to ever necessarily, I'm going to use this word, but I'm using it loosely. There's no way for us to recover from the violence of body positivity and the ways that it seeks to ignore and erase the Black fat in our bodies. 

And I think that, you know, that's clear. We have continued to see the ways that folks have sat online thin folks thin and or white folks in and or white and or able body folks, or non-disabled folks who have sat online and used body positivity as sort of a way to gain a bit of attention or affirmation around their bodies, but who have in turn turned around and shit on like fat Black folks, right, in fat, Black bodies, who believe in this idea that people should be able to exist as they are, but they are actively trying in many ways to eradicate the fatness in other people's lives and in their lives, too, who don't build relationship to fat folks who don't build relationship to fatness and who still, despite what their words say, move with an understanding that fatness is harmful, that fatness is bad, that fatness must be eradicated. And I think that that will always be true for as long as anti-Blackness exists. 

KaliMa: Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with what you're saying. And, you know, I also I feel like that goes into the concept of or the idea of insecurity and how you explained it in the book. And honestly, I felt really liberated when you spoke about it, because you said it in a way where we should take insecurity as an adjective in how we as Black, Indigenous fat disabled people should gravitate it as a truth and not like a self-indictment. And I just yeah, I've never heard it spoken in that way. And I would love for you to explain this more, because I know in the audience right now there's a lot of Black, fat people. And yeah, I just feel like it hasn't been explained in this way. 

Da’Shaun: Yeah. I think that people have for a long time sought to punish fat Black folks for daring to internalize the way that they tell us that our bodies should die. Right. I think there's this weird sort of oxymoronic cognitive dissonance that happens with the ways that people choose to, day in and day out, berate fat folks, harm fat folks, like particularly be violent towards us in our bodies and then demand that we walk around with no insecurities with the confidence of the size of the world in our hearts. Right. And I think that it is just another manifestation of anti-fat violence that says that we do not have the right to feel, that we don't have the right to feelings, even though we are always and already positioned outside of the right to care. 

And I think that that is the sort of, I keep saying the violence of the cognitive dissonance that happens in the way that we are engaged in the way that we're expected to exist. And so, what I'm really offering in that part of the chapter, is that I don't think that there's anything wrong with us acknowledging our insecurities and standing on them, not as a practice. Right. Not as a politic. I think it's very dangerous to use your insecurities as your politic. But I do think that there's something important about acknowledging the ways that your insecurities are a response to the way that your body and your being are politicized and therefore the way that you respond to the violence that you are always living through, right. I think it's impossible for people to live in a world where every day people seek to destroy their bodies and tell them that they must still wake up every day and love who they are and be happy about who they are and be excited about who they are and be confident in who they are. And I think that that's only a demand of us because of anti-Blackness in the very same way that folks demand that Black folks show up every day as resilient, as powerful as people who seek to save others, as people who seek to destroy the world on the behalf of others, as people who are mamified and made into mules to carry other people's burdens and still expect us then to be happy and supportive and discerning and all of these things that people expect of Black folks as we're navigating a world that continuously politicizes our body as a way to destroy our bodies. 

And so, I think what that means is that we have a right. We have the right, the ability and should have I think, the desire to acknowledge the insecurities for what they are, acknowledge them as a response to the harm that you've experienced and allow them to be what leads you to a further development of your politic, or a further fleshing out of your politic that helps you to sort of situate yourself within the center of, the nucleus of, the heart of the violence that you have experienced and what it means to destroy that. And I think that insecurities are sort of like a battery in some ways of doing that to help us to lead us to that reality. 

KaliMa: Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. [sighs] It also and also in that part of insecurity and also, like a little bit of the concept of desire, it made me think about this particular part where I had this conversation with a friend and, you know, this person who was very close to me had, like, a conversation where they were processing fat people and who was attractive and, you know, it it's very I find it just very it's hard to know that anti-fatness is also, like, existing within Black people, especially because of the fact that this is because of the fact that this is something that we're taught. You know, I've not only had this conversation with a friend, you know, I've also had this, like within my family. [Da’Shaun: Right.] And, you know, I also feel like what's not also talked about is, you know, how anti-fatness is also and also like diet culture and all the things that what we're also going to talk about is as a means of survival. 

Da’Shaun: Right. 

KaliMa: And, you know, because in a way of where we're at right now that this is how we have to live. One question I do have is can you talk about more about destroying desire and beauty and thinness?  

Da’Shaun: Yes. [pauses] I love what you just said about sort of internalizing these things as a means of survival. And I think we can get back to that in a moment. That's why it took me a minute to respond because I was sitting with that. But in terms of destroying desire and beauty and prettiness, I think that that is in line with what I said about body positivity. Right. [KaliMa: Mhm.] But in particular with desire, beauty prettiness. These are things that are created with the intent to subjugate folks who are politically ugly. Right. And by that, I mean, these are structures that are created as a response to, or as a product of anti-Blackness, with the desire to with the desire and the ability to objectify our being and subjugate our bodies and force us into, you know, what some would like to call indentured servitude, otherwise known as slavery that would force us to exist as beings who are who are supposed to fight for the right to be human and always as well be excluded from the ability as people who are, you know, in particular, for fat folks who are always supposed to again perform this sort of confidence and love for ourselves and our bodies while also being removed from being positioned outside of the ability to be confident, to be loved, to exude love, to embody love for oneself. And I'm using love as something that is that is and has always been taught as violence.  

And so, I think that what that really comes down to is that there is again, a need for us to undo anti-Blackness, to destroy anti-Blackness and anti-Black violence, because at the heart, and this is what the book is, really, what the book is really saying is that anti-fatness is as anti-Blackness, meaning that there is no anti-fatness without anti-Black violence. And as such, there is no beauty and desire and prettiness in the way that it has been structured without anti-Black violence. 

There is no other way then to not experience these forms of violence, these forms of harm if we're not also committed to the undoing of anti-Blackness. And I think that that's a very broad and vague statement to make, but I think that it's only broad and vague to people who are unwilling to sit with what it really looks like and what it really means to analyze destruction. Right. What does it really mean to actually choose to destroy a world in which one's body and people's bodies are unable to be seen as deserving of or worthy of the very same things that are associated with humanness and humanity? 

And as that is the case, if that is something that we acknowledge as real or something that we are experiencing, then there is no way for any of this to be salvaged or reformed or changed. It can only be destroyed. And so, to me, that's not vague, it’s very specific. It is naming that there is no other way to experience whatever liberation is supposed to look like or feel like or be if we are not committed to destroying anti-Blackness. 

KaliMa: Yeah. What I also found interesting was how you explained, like, the diet culture complex and how it assimilates in a way, at least, how I understood it is like it assimilates itself to the gender binary and whiteness, but it's also an aspect of policing and imprisonment. And what also made me think about this was that, you know, the closet, the closet is still not a place that is not safe, even though if you're fat, you're Black or you're gay or a combination of the three, and can you tell me in terms of just, like, how… how would I say this? 

Matter of fact. Okay, let me reword. So can you explain how also, like in the medical industrial complex and like, the history behind it, and how you also talk about, like, the idea of health or actually, like, when because of the fact that the industrial complex is set up as a way to misdiagnose Black people and also basing it off of the idea that or basing it off of illnesses or diagnoses that Africans could not withstand. Can you talk more about how that relates to insecurity? Because I feel like that's how I took it. 

Da’Shaun: Don't think that it was intended to- [KaliMa: Or-] go ahead. I'm sorry. 

KaliMa: Okay. So, the reason why I say that I feel like it kind of relates to insecurities is because of the fact that this is still happening today. Right. This is still happening as Black people, or even as Black fat people that, you know, there's no sense of security when it comes to the medical industry. [Da’Shaun: Right.] Because of the fact that we're always being misdiagnosed, right? [Da’Shaun: Right.] We're always having some sort of hypothesis rather of what the issue could be, but it's never always that. And usually, it's whatever the diagnosis is it’s because you're fat. 

You know what I mean? [Da’Shaun: Right.] Like, for example, you know, I don't know. One part of your leg hurts, and you get a diagnosis. It's arthritis because you're fat, so you got to lose weight. You know what I mean? [Da’Shaun: Right.]  

Da’Shaun: That's no, absolutely. I think not only is the Black fat often misdiagnosed, but I think that the Black fat is always and already undiagnosed, which is to say that I think that even if we irrespective of what the diagnosis is, I don't think that it can ever necessarily be one that is separated from the way that our Black fatness exists in the world, especially because and I think it cannot be divorced from the way that the medical industry was built, which is off of anti-Black violence. right. It's through the ways that white anthropologists and scientists sort of create these entire conditions and supposed diseases as a way to control the slave.And so, I think that the Black fat is always and already undiagnosed in that regard.  

And so, yeah, I think that is exactly how it pours into or how it shows up and the way that Black folks are oftentimes insecure about what it means to go see a doctor or go to the ER or have surgeries and whatnot. I think that a lot of Black folks are living with, especially Black fat folks are living with and through this very I think some would describe it as peculiar interaction with the medical industry and how difficult it is for us to believe or have confidence in the fact that these people will not read our bodies either as deserving of death because we're fat or choose to misdiagnose, by which I mean, undiagnose our actual condition or illness because of the way that death is read on to the Black fat in parentheses body. 

And so, I think that you are absolutely right that the two go hand in hand in that, you know, I think insecurity sort of produces, or is produced by the long, long history that is sort of mapped out in chapter three of the book, the way that the medical industry is produced through anti-Blackness. 

KaliMa: Truly. Yeah. So, there was in the part where you talk about Black fat and police, and, you know, you talk about all those that have that have been murdered by police. And you also talk about the Black fat being policed because it's meant to be caged. And for you just saying that, it just also I feel like it also just affirms how much body autonomy does not exist with the person that is Black and fat and how much a body does not belong to us from a societal or like a world perspective again, like even through the medical industrial complex and the police we’re nothing but subjects. [Da’Shaun: Right.] And we're not even considered human. [Da’Shaun: Right.] Can you talk about the idea of, like, anti-fatness with Black fat men or boys, especially, like when it comes to the belief about their bodies, when it comes to the police? 

Da’Shaun: Yeah. So, chapter- so one, yes. I think that what you are fleshing out with regards to autonomy and the Black body is really, really important. I think the Black fat are always removed from autonomy. I see that that brings up a lot of larger questions around what that means for our bodies and our relationship to the body. But I think that's a larger conversation. But, yeah. In terms of, like, the Black fat and policing, chapter four is all about the ways that the Black fat body is or really the way that anti-fatness and anti-Blackness are constructed is to view the Black fat body always as violent, as animalistic, as something to be put down, as something to be caged, as the beast. And because of that, and because of the violent nature and the inherent violence of policing, and I don't use the word inherent often. But because of the inherent violence of policing, there is a very particular way that the that the Black fat must be engaged by police. And I think what I'm trying to do with the fourth chapter, especially in the first few pages, is make that clear by mapping out the deaths that we have seen over the last few years, from 2014 through 2020. These are not, of course, the only deaths that we've ever seen across our channel. But I think it's very important to sit with the fact that the deaths that have been hyper visible are the ones who are fat, right. The ones who are that much more removed from the ability to be cared for or the right to care.  

And so, because of that, you know, having our deaths play on repeat doesn’t matter, because what has happened is that you're showing a zookeeper putting down a beast or a violent animal that was always meant to be caged. Right. I think that the violence they're in, or the violence of policing and the way that it interacts with our body is that it is positioned, or we are positioned as beings, as things who are created to be servants for who are created to do work for our work on the behalf of and when that becomes something that is tested, or when that becomes something that is no longer possible, or when our bodies are seen then as a threat which is always and already then we have to be put down. We have to be euthanized. There is no reckoning with that. There is no desire to see us as anything that's worth sort of negotiating with or working with. The desire or the way that we're read through a policing lens is as things as animals, as beasts who have stepped out of line, who have become too violent, the alligator who has chomped down on the arm of their trainer. Right. Or the bear who has decided to destroy an entire family by wandering into the lake. Right. Or as a deer who has chose to stumble onto the highway and therefore got what it deserves. Right. Not as people, but as things who are becoming human but are not human or cannot be human. Word to [inaudible] Jackson and therefore must always be euthanized, must always be put down, must always be engaged as animalistic. And that's why you'll get people who like Darren Wilson, who will describe Mike Brown as Hulk Hogan, or a beast who was able to run through bullets. That's why you'll get people who will describe Tamir Rice as a grown man or a 20-year-old man when he was only a teenager. Right. And really at the earliest ages of his teen years. That's why you'll get people who will describe Austen Sterling as someone who deserves to be shot more than the three times he was shot, because even though he was already on the ground, there was no way for him to not survive those bullets, because he was not human. Right. Or because he was a beast and so really, that chapter is what's constructing the entire book by laying out, by laying the foundation for the ways that we are engaged as beasts and beast-like, and as beings who cannot be anything other than that. Right. And therefore, must be put down either by police or by the medical industry or by the media or by the government, or by science or by the world, or by desire or by beauty. Right. All these different things that are created to euthanize the beast, to put the beast in check, or to kill the beast. There's no other way around it. There are only two options, and those are the two options. And the moment you choose to step outside of that, or the moment that that it's chosen on your behalf that no longer matters, you no longer get the right to exist even as a beast. 

KaliMa: Yeah, that is that is yeah. Yeah. I think I think you made that so, I think you made that so profound in that chapter and really put things into perspective for me. And also, like in one particular part, I don't remember what chapter, but it also made me think about Sarah Bartman. And I think, you know, not just comparing Sarah Bartman to, you know, what the type of murder that has been endured to Black men, but I think it just stands as a place where it's a way of, like, capturing. 

I don't necessarily know how to explain it, but it's just like it's like a game. It's kind of like a mental thing. Yes. It's kind of like a mental game in terms of just like how the world sees Black bodies and how it's captured. And yeah, I think towards the end of the book, where you talk about gender and you have those interviews with those Black fat and trans folk, I felt- I really enjoyed reading those interviews, and I felt like I connected with some of them. 

And, you know, for me, it was not it was not until, like, two years ago that I identified as nonbinary, but I've also realized that I was playing I was in a way, like, as someone who was assigned female at birth, I was playing a role, right. I was playing a role that was taught, like, from my mom and in terms of just like, you know, being feminine, but also knowing who I was and who I was becoming was not anything that was categorized as feminine. And although I'm someone that is MASC-presenting somewhat now, I've realized that I’ve found myself in these Black queer trans spaces. 

But I also feel like there was a lack of desire from people, whether it was to be friends or to hook up or to dance at a party or whatever, you know, just socializing because I was fat, you know, and even as a FEM, I was still undesirable with a capital D because I was fat, and what I realized in some spaces is that I am fat and Black, so I will always be intimidating. I will always be body checked because, you know, all of the other reasons and isms right. 

Da’Shaun: Right. 

KaliMa: Can you explain how gender and this cis heterosexism connects to anti-fatness? And also, would you say that these concepts relate to body dysmorphia to the Black fat trans body too? 

Da’Shaun: So, one, I think you just explained it for me. [Both laugh] There are a couple of scholars I site in that chapter. I believe that's chapter six, but the two that I always have to go back to because I just think that what they offer, which is so profound, is Hortense Spillers and Judith Butler. What Judith offers is that gender is only as real as our performance, which is to say that for as long as we continue to perform gender, gender will always exist. And what Spillers says is that the Black is always positioned as monstrous, always removed from kinship, and as such, is always removed from an ability to perform gender or to be gender while also being gendered. Right. And so, what she names is that we are engendered, and I agree with her, and I think that that to take that a step further, I think we are living that.  

And by we, I mean, fat trans folks are living that experience, particularly those who are seeking to have gender affirming surgeries and things of that nature, because you'll go into a doctor’s office and tell them that this is a surgery that you want to have, and they will tell you that you cannot have these surgeries because you are too fat, or your BMI is too high. Or if they do decide to perform those surgeries on you, they charge you thousands of dollars more than they do your thin counterpart for the very same surgery.  

And I think that what this means is that not only is gender performance, but that because we are required to perform gender, even as we are always already removed from the ability to do so. Fatness, then, is required to be eradicated. And when we are fat and Black, we are then not allowed to be affirmed in genders that were never really created to affirm us anyway. Right. Which is why a lot of fat Black trans MASC folks have to continually be engaged as people who are women or people are not men irrespective of what surgeries they have or how they perform, or why a lot of Black trans women have to be engaged, particularly dark skin Black trans women have to be engaged as people who are not women, as people who are men or masculinized because of their dark skin and their fat body. Or why people who are non-binary and Black, and again, particularly those who are dark skin are engaged as people who are supposedly showing up as the people that or the person they were assigned at birth, the gender they were assigned at birth and not as the being that they are naming themselves at the moment. 

And the reason for that is because use of the monstrosity assigned to our bodies that then forces us into fugitivity, or forces us to be fugitives on the run, because of how that is assigned to us and our bodies in the way that we show up. The request or the demand is that you then are not allowed to be this being you're not allowed to be affirmed in your body, because, not only is the world designed to make sure that you are not affirmed in your body, but that gender in particular is designed to make sure you are not affirmed in your body. 

And I think with regards to body dysphoria and how that shows up. Right. I think the very reason why so many of us feel outside of our body or feel like dysphoric about our bodies is exactly because of the creation of gender itself, which is to say that there would be no reason for fatness to have to be something that we have to punish to feel comfortable in our bodies if there was no gender for us to feel affirmed in in the first place. And I think that that so often is something that people don't want to sit with or don't want to reckon with. But the very reason why people feel harmed by or don't feel comfortable with having a larger chest or don't feel comfortable with having a larger stomach or don't feel comfortable with having larger thighs or wider hips or et cetera, et cetera, is because of the way that gender is constructed in the way that we have assigned characteristics and things to a particular gender. And so long as your body exists under that very same category, or for as long as your body shows up in that very same way, you are then positioned outside of what you what you believe is the most affirming gender for you. [KaliMa: Right.]  

And that is to say, that people have a right to be affirmed in their bodies for as long as gender exists. Because if gender is going to exist, trans folks have the right to be able to feel comfortable in the way that the rest of the world forces us to show up. What it also means, though, is that we have to arrive at a place that takes us further than that. That says that we have to destroy gender if we are going to ever actually be comfortable in our bodies, because the only way to exist as affirmed or as comfortable in your body is to destroy the very thing that necessitates your discomfort. And that is gender. And so if gender does not end, if we're not calling for gender to end, we are calling for us to continue to be at the behest at the heart of the transphobic violence that we are continuously facing and the harm that comes along with existing in bodies that again, that the world is predicated on destroying and is predicated on always seeing as, what's the word I want to use, as deserving of being comfortable.  

I think that the way that fatness sort of, or the way that gender disrupts fatness is through that very means is by the way that it requires that we show up in bodies that are thin or thin adjacent for us to be affirmed in the bodies that we have. But it's solely because of the way that gender seeks to destroy fatness and seeks to disrupt fatness and seeks to make us uncomfortable with our bodies, not necessarily because of our fatness, but because of the way that we have assigned particular aspects of our bodies to gender and gender performance. And so, I think that that is, you know, just generally how sort of these things work together and how they harm us in an anti-Black way of living in this anti-Black mode of violence. 

KaliMa: Yeah. Yeah. I know that, you know, the concept of ending gender is one that exists. But I also don't think that it was explained in a way that that also connects to Black fat bodies. And I think it's because of the fact that the Black fat or the is already ungendered. So, for the fact that that notion alone already exists, like, there is no- yeah, I feel yeah. [laughs] It actually just brought me to a point where I'm just like, okay, if the Black fat body is ungendered, of course, that would mean and especially in the world that we live in, it's like we now have to in order to fit in, we have to put ourselves in these boxes, aka gender, in order to live, to just live alone. Wow. I didn’t even think about that until right now. I'm also curious to know, in those same questions that you asked the folks in your book, can you also talk about your experience as a Black fat, queer, non-binary person entering in these spaces?  

Da’Shaun: Oof! [Both laugh] I was about to say- you know, we don’t have time for it!  
 

KaliMa: You know, we don't- but in a nutshell- [both laugh] 
 

Da’Shaun: Yes, I have publicly identified as non-binary now for maybe four or five years, give or take, maybe a little bit more than that. And it has been a journey. It has been a journey. And- [sighs] I think that people have a really hard time with conceptualizing what it means to desire to exist in a body that is not gendered, even as we are always being ungendered. I think people have a very hard time with that because we have been forced and told that gender must be. That gender must exist, and that we must adhere to gender’s rules and gender’s performances. And when we choose not to, when we choose to play with the performance of gender, when we choose to play with the presentation of gender, when we choose to play with the way that we've been taught to perform gender, then we are stepping outside of the very concept of gender itself. 

And I think that people have a really hard time with dealing with that because we don't know what that means or what it looks like. What do you mean you're not binary? What do you mean you don't have a gender? What do you mean you want to show up in one way, one day, in another way or the other day? What do you mean you don't want to exist in this way that, as we understand, it, can only be man or a woman? And I think that people struggle with that. They struggle with what that means and what that looks like in the long run.  

And so, I've actually sort of stepped I still use it for legibility purposes, but I've sort of stepped away from non-binary as an identity, because the way that it's been co-opted by liberals and liberalism is that it sort of positions it as a third gender and not as something that's outside of gender itself. And I am always trying to show up as somebody who is not gendered, who does not desire to be gendered, and who will tell you that I have no interest in gender itself at all. 

And that has been my experience over the last few years, and it's been a hard thing to navigate, both in cis spaces and in trans spaces that are created, particularly for folks who identify as, I guess, quote, unquote binary, trans people. And I'm saying, quote, unquote, because I think the very idea of transness exists outside of the binary itself. But I think that's a different conversation. But my reality has been hard in either space because people have a really hard time conceptualizing or sort of holding what it means to be someone who has zero interest in being read as a man or a woman. Who has zero interest in showing up as a man or a woman, and who in fact desires to not only not show up as a man or a woman, but has no desire to show up as any gender at all.  

I think that's such a hard thing for people, especially as we are entering further into this liberal moment of gender and gendered analysis and LGBQ analysis and the way that people are sort of like, you know, pushing this co-opted white, or pink washed experience under this rainbow capitalism that we're experiencing around LGBTQ identities. And so, I think that I always show up as somebody who says I am queer, and I am ungendered. And more than anything, I am Black, right? Which is to say that I am queer, and I am ungendered, [KaliMa: Yes!] and I don't do the whole my gender is Black. My sexuality is Black because I, that's not my role per se. But it is to say that how I am showing up is as a Black subject. And because of that, I am always removed from the ability to perform as something other than being ungendered, irrespective of how you read me and how you read my performance. And so that is to say that my experience has been all over the place, but it has also been one full of a lot of love and care and amazingness that I've been able to grab hold to in the last few years with, you know, most of my friends being trans and all of my friends being queer, my partner being a queer trans person. And so, I think that, like it's like a very beautiful experience I've been able to have that has allowed me to build community with like-minded folks who are committed in the very same ways that I am to destroying gender. And that's all that I can hold on to all that I desire to hold on to.  

KaliMa: True. I also feel like that's the only thing that you can hold on to, you know what I mean? [Da’Shaun: Exactly] Because that's the truth in the middle of it, you know? Yeah, that's the absolute truth. And you know, as I was also reading that chapter, it just also made me think about the word queer, right, knowing that it's a verb, but also, you know, it also serves as an adjective. That means that is otherly, that is strange, that is odd, because I am and just using that word as that meaning. Because I am Black, I'm already queer. Because I am fat, I’m already queer. You know, I'm already queer as it is. But you know what I mean? [both laugh] Like, just to having that kind of meaning towards what it means to live in this Black fat body is it is something that is ungendered. It is something that is otherly, and, you know, it will as long as these -isms live. Is that that's what it will always, always be. You know what I mean?  

Da’Shaun: Yeah. We will always have to exist as the other.  

KaliMa: As the other, always. [Da’Shaun: Yes.] Hoo-wee! Yes, that was… [both laugh] That was my last question! Um- Thank you so much, Da’Shaun. I really appreciate this conversation with you. And, you know, I do hope some folks in the audience had some sort of relief that this book is here. [Da’Shaun: Yeah.] Cause yeah, I think this is something that, and I use this for a lack of a better word, liberating, but also just something to getting clarity on. You know? 

DeShaun: Yeah. No, I fully agree. Thank you for creating a space for us to have such an enlightening conversation for me as well. I think this was, you know, one of the more exciting conversations for me thus far. I love that we spent as much time as we did talking about policing and gender in particular, because those are those conversations are my bread and butter. They really are. I'm not saying that I am writing another book, but if I do write another book, there's going to be more to interrogate around gender and fatness and policing because there's so much there to uncover and for work through. [KaliMa: Yeah.] So, thank you for all that you offered and for bringing just such a beautiful energy to the conversation. It has been very good for me. And thank you to everyone who tuned in, in the audience. And thank you to CIIS for having us and hosting me. It means so much. And I am, like, really, really, really grateful. So, thank you, everyone.  

KaliMa: Yes. Thank you so much.  

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
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