This article was published in the book Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation by Barbara Findlen in 1995. It is the first (and only) article I was ever required to read for a class in college that dealt directly with fat identity and intersectionality.

And it made me cry.

“And I’m living the revolution through my memories and through my pain and through my triumphs. When I think about all the marks I have against me in this society, I am amazed that I haven’t turned into some worthless lump of shit. Fatkikecripplecuntqueer. In a nutshell. But then I have to take into account the fact that I’m an articulate, white, middle-class college kid, and that provides me with a hell of a lot of privilege and opportunity for dealing with my oppression that may not be available to other oppressed people. And since my personality/being isn’t divided up into a privileged part and an oppressed part, I have to deal with the ways that these things interact, counterbalance and sometimes even overshadow each other. For example, I was born with one leg. I guess it’s a big deal, but it’s never worked into my body image in the same way that being fat has. And what does it mean to be a white woman as opposed to a woman of color? A middle-class fat girl as opposed to a poor fat girl? What does it mean to be fat, physically disabled and bisexual? (Or fat, disabled and sexual at all?)”

For more information about Nomy “bad ass, fat ass, Jew, dyke, amputee” Lamm, check out her website here.