Let me be abundantly queer: fatphobia is rife in the sapphic community of so-called Australia, and it damages all of us – fat or not.

Gasp! Shock horror! Cue the pearl-clutching!

I can already hear the defence systems of queer sapphics power up and go into overdrive at that statement.

Claims of body type preference, aesthetic orientations, or regurgitated mythologies that attribute fatness to health status will be frantically firing through their brains in response.

So too, people may be feeling deeply entitled to their personal opinions or choices, deploying whatever cognitive gymnastics it requires of them to validate their fatphobic position. 0/10.

If this is you, and you have found yourself triggered – good.

All images: Taylor Neal

Let me say this for the record: people who hold and express fatphobic convictions may identify as queer, but they certainly are not embodying queerness.

They are queer-adjacent, queer-lite, queer-counterfeit, but not legitimately and authentically Queer. They’re simply performing a synthetic ‘oppressor-lite’ version of queerness.

This only continues to validate, support and benefit their (colonial, white-supremacist, misogynist, cisheterosexist, ableist, classist, capitalist) overlords; their deeply problematic fatphobia is a clear signifier of their anti-queer compliance and patriarchal appeasement.

Image: Faetality (they/them), ‘Unraveling Series’ (sponsored by Bonjibon) 2023. 35mm. Photo by Taylor Neal

Fatphobia is not only problematic on an individual level – indicating a whole swathe of internalised, unchecked and unhealed shame – it makes someone a liability to the safety of a flourishing queer community, particularly for their sapphic sisters and non-binary babes.

While clinging to the colonial logics and excuses that justify their prejudice, fatphobes signal to the rest of us that they are a significant risk – that they are not to be trusted.

Through their fatphobia, they tell us that their position in community with us is wholly conditional. They’re choosing the easy comfort of oppressive paradigms (and their embedded violations), over queer solidarity and the liberation of us all.

They demonstrate their allegiance to those who continuously harm us, operating as compliance agents in lock-step with their agenda. ACAB.

Exposing, unpacking, dismantling and eradicating fatphobia in sapphic spaces requires a willingness from each of us to become genuinely self-reflective. It requires us to be prepared to look deeply at our shame.

We each must interrogate how we’ve been indoctrinated, socialised, manipulated and controlled, while acknowledging the inescapable bombardment of violent fatphobic messaging.

The remedy is clear: we all need to get comfortable with discomfort, read books and research on desirability politics, immerse ourselves in community, go to therapy, and commit to healing.

Anti-colonial work is where we will find our peace.

Image: Bri (she/her), Unraveling Series (sponsored by Bonjibon) 2023. 35mm. Photo by Taylor Neal.

Trust me when I say – fatphobia strips us all of our profound queer power, and of the incredible, blessed, rich life we all deserve. 

In my life, I have had the profound pleasure of dating and sharing intimacy with women of many different heights, body expressions and cultural backgrounds.

I’ve experienced and adored the beautiful complexity of each of them. Their bodies, all hot and incredible – fat or not – each held a person that I respected and cherished.

So when I think about fatphobia, my queerness cannot understand the rigid boundaries that so many place on their attraction. Why would one choose to accept a restrained, superficial sapphic life, devoid of the exquisite diversity and unconditional connection that is possible?

To me, Queerness is the antidote to shame. It is the most profound pathway to sapphic tenderness, compassion, connection, community and love.

So… radical sapphics to the front.

Give me a fierce, ferocious, fat, anti-colonial baddie every day of the week – a woman who knows her power, and the magnificence of her existence just as she embodies and expresses it. I want a strong, thick and robust warrior built to destabilise and tear down the colonial structures that keep us all oppressed.

Give me a self-aware, self-actualised, liberated, unruly and uncivil woman, unshackled from the oppressors’ ideas of who is worthy of love, dignity and humanity.

This is the only woman I want to date. The only woman who I want to fuck.

A woman like that is an empowered woman, an intelligent woman, a safe woman, a profoundly sexy, truly Queer woman.

This is the kind of woman I want to be in alliance with, to forge and sustain community with. This is who I want to stand alongside and in solidarity with.

That is the kind of accomplice I need to share a life with, to seed all of existence in rainbows with, to heal a broken humanity with, to transform the world with.

Together, we can seize justice and liberation for everyone.