Business first
Thank you for having me, it's such an honour to be here. I'm scared! What are you going to make of me? But I'm excited too! Really excited!

Hang on a sec. I've got a bit of business to go through before I start.

Yes, I am not from round these parts. I am from London. There, I've said it. You all know where I'm from now, I don't need to go over that again and if anyone asks me again, I shall lie. I will tell you a brazen lie right to your face. So you've been warned.

Because I'm not from the US, some of you will think that I have a funny accent and maybe you'll have trouble understanding me. The answer to this problem is that you're going to have to concentrate a little bit harder than usual. I know you can do it.

By the way, I'll post the notes I've written for this address on my website when I get home in a couple of weeks, so you can all go and read them if you want to and email me about it if you like. I hope that helps cross the cultural divide.

Oh, and I will probably swear a little bit. If this offends you, please shut your ears. If there are kids present, this might not be the best place for them.

This is a keynote in which I'm going to:
• Talk about the global obesity epidemic
• Encourage everybody to become fat activists
• Pester you all into taking risks and leaving your comfort zones
• Tell you something very lovely

Each of these four section will take about ten minutes. Just so you know. Lastly, I'll be speaking here for about 40 minutes, and I'll try not to bore you so get yourselves comfy, relax, try not to nod off. There'll be time afterwards for questions and comments.

Okay Deep breath

Let's Go!

But first of all, I imagine that some of you are going "who the hell is this woman?" so I'm going to talk about me

My name is Charlotte Cooper. I am a motherfucker. Say it again, in case you missed it: I am a motherfucker. I just thought I'd mention that because it's important. Motherfucker.

I'm a busy gal, and I have my fingers in a lot of pies, as they say, but the reason I'm here today is probably because I'm a writer, I'm fat, I'm a dyke, I'm an activist and I have a lot of things to say about it.

In 1998 I wrote a book called Fat and Proud, which talked about fat liberation as a new civil rights movement, comparable to the disability rights movement.

In 2002 I wrote a dyke porn novel called Cherry, which was seized by Canada Customs for obscenity. Woo hoo! It won an award. Woo hoo! People seem to like it. It did okay.

I've written regularly for On Our Backs, Diva, G3, RainbowNetwork.com, plus tons of articles for other books and magazines, and zines, such as Fat Girl - woo hoo! - (which was one of the first places I had work published), GirlFrenzy and the like. I'm one of the editors of Cheap Date magazine. I also maintain my own website, CharlotteCooper.net

So, I make my living as a writer but I also do part time drudge work on the websites of an oil multinational - boo! They pay me a lot of money and that evil, stinking, murderous oil money is one of the reasons that I've been able to come here.

My story is probably the same as everybody else's here today. You know the script: fat kid, diet madness, self hatred and bullying, nightmare experiences with medics, shame, and then, somehow, a miraculous, tenuous acceptance of my body, growing into a feeling of liberation.

Today I feel as though I am beyond that acceptance stage - far, far beyond! I don't know why I'm fat and at this stage of the game I don't care, but I'm obsessed with fat, what it means to be fat in a world where fat is devalued. Obsessed!

Here are some things I believe:
It's okay to be fat. Do I need to say this?
Fat people are as valuable as anybody
Fat is not necessarily unhealthy - and even if it is, it doesn't matter
Fat people are as beautiful as anybody else
Fat is part of humanity
Fat people have been around forever.

Earlier this year I took a trip to Vienna. In the Natural History Museum I saw the Venus of Willendorf, a six inch high 25,000 year-old statue of a fat woman. She has tits and a belly and an arse and she looks like some of you here in the crowd today (Simon's joke: "But with a weirder haircut"). She's so old that no one really knows what she is or why she exists. But there she is. 25,000 years ago people knew what a fat woman looked like, and there are other similar relics, she's not the only one. This suggests to me that fat people have been around since the dawn of time, that we're part of the fabric of human life, that we are worth something.

So that's me. I'm a motherfucker and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

So here's part one of this talk: The Global Obesity Epidemic

How many people here are American?
The USA? Canada?
How many are not?
Yay, good for you for coming here today.

Being foreign
You know I said I was from London? Well, in terms of what I'm going to talk about today, this is important. Not the London stuff, but that fact that I'm from another part of the world to most of the people sitting here today. The fact that I'm a foreigner amongst you is important because I want to remind you that fat liberation is a global issue.

Harsh talk's a-coming, hold tight.

Although most of the people here are American, I want us all to remember that:
• America is not the world
• America and Canada and Puerto Rico are not the world
• The state, the city, the neighbourhood where you live is not the world
• The world is bigger than that
• Just because things happen in the US does not mean that they happen in the rest of the world
• Just because several million Americans see some things a certain way, it does not mean that the rest of the world also sees things in that same, American way.
• Just because your experience of life is reflected by a lot of people you know, it doesn't mean that that experience is universal

I'm sorry this is tough. It'll get easier.

The reason I'm pointing this out is because: There's currently a threat to fat people that crosses national boundaries and in order to address that threat, we need to think in terms that are bigger than those national boundaries.

I'm talking about: The Global Obesity Epidemic

• Hands up who reads a newspaper regularly
• Hands up if you watch news on TV
• Any documentary fans in the crowd today?
• Anyone here seen Super Size Me?

Okay, so you might already know this
There's a Global Obesity Epidemic going down, that you and me, and you and you and everyone here is a part of.

Threat
• You think getting picked last for a team is bad? Wait until you hear about the Global Obesity Epidemic!
• Does narrow seating get on your nerves? The Global Obesity Epidemic will make that seem like a walk in the park.
• Still bothered by clothes that don't fit? Wait until you get hammered by the Global Obesity Epidemic.
I'm not saying that these trials are insignificant, I just want to bring home the point that this Global Obesity Epidemic is serious shit.

Anyone know what the Global Obesity Epidemic is about?
• You sure there's not a cloud of obesity circling the earth, waiting to zap innocent people?
• You sure it's not about having a fat person sneeze on you and then you getting fat too?

What the GOE is about
The Global Obesity Epidemic is an idea that's been floating around in the media, within government agencies and in certain strata of academia for the past few years.

The idea is that:
• Poor levels of nutrition, plus an increasingly sedentary population is leading to an explosion in obesity.
• This will cause untold health problems in the future, putting national budgets at risk because of the burden of trying to care for all these sick, obese people.
• The proposed solution is to reduce global levels of obesity by introducing initiatives to help people lose weight.
• The people who believe in the Global Obesity Epidemic are particularly concerned with the existence of fat children and, whilst its hard to get a picture on which policy proposals are real and which are conjecture, there has been talk in the media, for example, of introducing weigh-ins at school, policing fat kid's food, enforced physical exercise, etc.

Why is this bad?
• Promoting the same old mythology about fat being one of the worst possible things for a human to be.
• I don't need to spell this out for you, we all know the lies about health, or beauty, or the value in our bodies.
• Ignores all the evidence about how weight loss methods are largely ineffective and usually health-depleting.
• Ignoring the fact that fat is part of human fabric, and the value of fat - what's the value?

Who's behind it
A number of agencies, the most prominent and powerful of which is The International Obesity Task Force. I've heard that they're a bit like The A Team.

This is a group of self-appointed experts, mostly university professors working within health and nutrition fields around the world. The International Obesity Task Force and their associated committees and affiliates are a fantastically efficient propaganda machine and a great example of how power works. Do a Google search on Global Obesity Epidemic it's the International Obesity Task Force's press releases that will come up. Look a bit further and you'll also see that these press releases are being published without critical comment within the world's media. These reports, funded and backed up by our governments, become a kind of truth, which then trickles down into the most unlikely areas.

For example, where I live The London Cycling Campaign has a statute in their constitution about promoting cycling in London as a means of tackling the global obesity epidemic, as do other local organisations. God knows how the global obesity rhetoric will impact on my fellow Londoners now that the city is to host an Olympics. Anyway, it just goes to show how this kind of anti-fat propaganda takes a hold on people.

Why the International Obesity Task Force are bad bad news for fat people
• The Task Force focuses on fat as a health problem. Whilst there may be some health issues related to being fat, as fat rights activists we understand that these have been grossly overestimated (indeed, the Centres for Disease Control here in the States recently issued a statement to this effect).
• By treating fat as a health problem, the proponents of the global obesity epidemic ignore all the other aspects that impact on life as a fat person, things such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, disability, economics, feminism, politics, community, nationality and the rest of the shebang.
• The Task Force is not made up of people who are part of a fat community, they are "experts" who believe they know better than us what's good for us, even though they are not us.
• The Task Force, and their supporters, are not proponents of the fat liberation movement.
• They completely and deliberately ignore the work of grassroots fat activist organisations, who criticise their approach, in order to perpetuate myths and lies about what it is to be fat.
• Their aim is not to enable fat people to determine the way we want to live for ourselves.
• They see no value in fatness at all.
• Their aim is, in effect, to wipe us of the face of the earth completely.

Let's have a round of boos for those fuckers!

You think this is bad? It gets much much worse.
The International Obesity Task Force
• Sounds kind of neutral, right?
• With all their government influence, their global reach, their links to universities, you'd expect them to be a neutral, non-profit agency
• They're misguided, but they're still dedicated to a social good, and they're only promoting what a lot of people already believe, so what?

Hello!
• Presenting individual weight loss as the solution to this perceived global health problem, means that proponents of the international obesity epidemic are the perfect champions of the diet industry.
• You won't find links to nolose on their website, but you will find links to Roche, Pfizer, Wellcome and many more.
• These drugs multinationals are developing anti-obesity drugs, and have been for some time. These are products that have been shown to have considerable health-depleting side-effects. Some of the manufacturers are currently being sued by people who have taken their drugs, who are now suffering because of them.

Why?

Money, honey.

Think about it, the mythological magic pill that makes you thin - they could charge what they liked for it and it would still sell sell sell sell sell. Everyone would want it. People hate fat so much that everyone would take it. I bet a good proportion of people sitting here would go for it, people who are part of the most radical fat liberation community in the world.

Moreover, anti-obesity research is so potentially lucrative that it doesn't happen in a bubble of academia on its own, it is usually well funded and well controlled by the companies who want to profit from it.

So this is what is happening: groups like the International Obesity Task Force are pally with the drug companies, maybe they're even being funded by them. The Task Force legitimises the weight loss drug business who are using the rhetoric of Global Obesity Epidemic to develop and legitimise new markets.

What's missing in this equation? Maybe what you and I want for ourselves? Fat people's self-determination? Fat liberation? Being comfortable with who you are? Right.

Do you think I'm being overly paranoid?

Take something I found when I was flicking through my National Union of Journalists' magazine recently:
• a call for entries for the Roche International Award for Obesity Journalism.
•They have categories for print & internet, film & radio, with a prize offered of 7,500 euros (that's nearly US$10,000 or £5,000).
• Roche manufactures Xenical, a popular weight loss drug that's not particularly good for you and is pretty ineffective.
• Roche is developing its business by offering a hunk of money to a load of journalists as a carrot on a stick
• Are these journalists going to write about fat acceptance? Fat liberation? The uselessness of diet drugs? The concept of Obesity Journalism itself?
• No, they're going to write about the threat of obesity and the necessity for a drug like Xenical, and Roche have a nice little advert for their drugs parading as a piece of neutral journalism
• And there it is, in the paper, and everyone's reading it and rubbing their chins and believing it too.

Are you freaked out yet?

The future
I hate to break the news but if you think it's bad now, it's going to get much worse in the future.

The real explosion of recent years, the real global obesity epidemic, is in weight loss surgery, which has become a cash cow for many health professionals. Although weight loss surgery literally knocks years off your life, is not necessarily permanent, and has significant negative health implications, it's relatively easy for fat people to get a referral. And we are getting referrals, in droves. Why diet when you can get your stomach stapled? I don't have time to go into this in detail today, suffice to say that I find the availability and increasing ubiquity of weight loss surgery very troubling indeed.

The other stuff that we should start to address is the possible impact of biotechnology on fat people. This is not science fiction any more, the attempt to permanently eradicate fatness through genetic engineering is a real possibility, one which is already being controlled by multinationals, including those same drugs companies that are currently peddling Fen-phen, Xenical and the like.

Are you freaked out yet?

And doesn't it break your heart to see so much wrong-headedness going on in the world? Such massive, wasted resources. I'd like to grab those International Obesity Epidemic goons and shake them and tell them about what they really should be doing if they want people to live longer, happier, healthier lives:
• Develop healthy lifestyle choices for all, focus on wellness, not exercise as punishment, or solely as a means of losing weight
• An end to dieting, possibly the real reason that there are more fat people around today is not because of an over-indulgence in food and a propensity for laziness, it's because of the epidemic of dieting, a practice that fucks with your metabolism, destroys your health and, yes, makes you fatter.
• Access to good, fresh, affordable, non-exploitative food for all. I was in Detroit last year and I came across the Cass Corridor Food Co-op, whose organisers told me that people living in the inner city had no access to fresh fruit and vegetables, or other nutritious foods. You probably know that the mostly black population of inner-city Detroit live in one of the most deprived areas in America. It's an outrage that they don't have local places to get decent food.
• Pure, clean, realistic information about health and weight, not over-hyped moralising about the burden of obesity
• They should be working with fat liberation groups, not against us. They should listen to voices outside the medical establishment

Susan Stinson told me that: "for the past forty years, the pharmaceutical industry has had consistently higher returns on investments than any other industrial group. (in the US)" She suggests that if those companies put some of their profits towards addressing the real reasons for poor health, such a low income, pollution, crap housing etc, the results on human health would be WAY better than the decades and decades of obesity obsession have produced.

By the way, it costs $15 for individuals to join the International Obesity Task Force. Maybe we should all join and stage a takeover.

Think about this the next time you see headless fat bodies on a TV report used to illustrate the horrors of obesity. I often wonder what those missing heads wuld say if they were ever asked for an opinion, probably something like: "Fuck you! How dare you use my body like that! I'm going to sue you!"

I would like everyone to stop worrying about the size of their arses and start doing something about the lies being generated by the proponents of the global obesity epidemic. This is about corporate power, the way it works with medical power to disempower us. It's about being able to maintain the basic human need to self-determine what is right for our own bodies.

It's like the fucking Matrix, man.

Now it's time for part two of this keynote: Fat rights activism in the face of the global obesity epidemic, or: "What are you going to do about it?"

I feel like the crank of the century for even caring about this stuff. I know that in many people's eyes I am laughable. But I still care. Fat is important, it's trivialised but actually it could potentially change the world - fatphobia ties in with so many power systems and fat liberation is so revolutionary that a world without fat hatred is currently unthinkable.

Living fat means living with a thousand daily put-downs that slowly chip away at your spirit, from the lies of the global obesity epidemic, to the inner voices that tell us we're ugly, no-good, ridiculous.

How do we respond? By going shopping? Eating some chocolate? Crying in a corner? Yeah, but there's a better way and it's called activism. I want to talk about fat activism for a bit

• How I became an activist
• Moving on from personal liberation
• What activism can be
• Pitfalls
• My activism today, The Chubsters

How I became an activist
I don't know about you but I came to fat activism in a very personal way and I think this is a common experience.

After my mum died when I was 18, I went on the biggest dieting jaunt of my life. I thought that if I lost weight and became "healthy" and thin, then the breast cancer that had killed her in such a horrible way wouldn't touch me. It took me years to work out that my insane dieting and compulsive exercising frenzy was bound up with the grief I was experiencing, but even at the time, I knew that there was something weird about my behaviour. That was the last diet I ever went on. It took me a little bit longer to stop insisting that I liked diet drinks more than regular ones, or to stop worrying about food, but eventually those anxieties dried up too.

Another little story. After my brother died I had a disastrous relationship with a guy called Keith. Keith Richards! Keith thought nothing of pestering me to lose weight. He'd blame my body for the reason that he didn't want to be involved with me, but that didn't stop him from wanting to fuck me. Eventually, after a year of this, he dumped me. I was incredibly angry, disgusted with myself for letting this little shit push me around emotionally, and I raged at his idiocy. Some tiny lightbulb went off in my head and I told him where to stick his sickening attitude towards my body. That's the first time I ever stood up for myself as a fat woman.

Around this time I was also becoming interested in feminism. I think my emerging fat confidence was linked to that. I've since become somewhat critical of mainstream feminist responses to fat - I don't think they're nearly strong enough - but feminism did introduce me to books and ideas that helped develop my thinking.

Hanging out at the feminist bookstore was where I found the incredible anthology Shadow on a Tightrope, which really did change my life. I went on to do a masters degree in which I wrote about fat, then came my first book, and all this time I was building networks with other fat activists, mostly in the US. I started using the internet around this time too, so that helped.

Moving on from personal liberation
I guess by telling you this, the point I want to make is that although many of us come to fat liberation from a personal place, I think its necessary that our activism moves beyond that.

To me, although they are linked, fat liberation is a bigger experience than personal liberation. Coming out as queer, coming out as fat, both are vital and useful ways of embracing a positive identity. But that's only the beginning. I'm interested in how we as a community can develop our culture and develop our activism and ultimately change the world into a better place. What with the global obesity epidemic and all, I believe that there's no time to sit around. No one's going to speak up for us, we have to do it ourselves.

So many of us seem stuck in our bodies and unable to move on. I want to give everybody reassurance and permission. It's okay to be fat. We need to believe this in our bones so that we can get on with the work that needs to be done.

So here we go:
Your arse looks fine
You look fine
You are fine the way you are
You will not die early of a terrible obesity-related disease
You can eat whatever you want
You can stop worrying now
There's work to be done

I think we all need to hear this again. Look at the person sitting next to you and repeat after me:
Your arse looks fine
You look fine
You are fine the way you are
You will not die early of a terrible obesity-related disease
You can eat whatever you want
You can stop worrying now
There's work to be done

What activism can be
What's activism? Any ideas? There are some Grade A activists in this room.
• It's involvement in action to bring about change
• Speaking up for yourself
• Showing the world your reality
• Building a community

• If you write a letter you are an activist
• If you speak up at a meeting, you are an activist
• If you organise that meeting, you are an activist
• By choosing not to diet, you are an activist
• The people who organised and attended the Fat Girl Flea are activists
• The people who attended and organised Fat Girl Speaks are activists
• If you talk to your friends about why the global obesity epidemic is a pack of made up lies, you are an activist
• If you go dancing and flaunt your fat body, you are an activist
• Everyone here today is an activist, your presence marks you out as one

Pitfalls
Strangely enough, it's taken me a while to be comfortable with the idea of being a fat dyke activist. I know I wrote that book and everything, but I didn't get off to a very good start.

I began organising and doing public work around fat in the early 90s.A few years previously I'd heard of a Fat Women's Group in London. This had fizzled out, but I harboured hopes that it would return. When it was clear that it wasn't going to come back from the dead, I decided to organise the Fat Women's Group part two.

The Fat Women's Group involved monthly meetings at a women's centre, during which we'd sit around and try and decide what the point of the group was. Although I was the organiser, I wanted the group to take responsibility for its own actions. No one wanted to take responsibility at all. Amazingly, we struggled on for a couple of years, we produced a newsletter, but that was about it. I left the group when someone made a power play and decided that they wanted to be the leader. Their version of the group struggled on for a bit, and then that ended too.

The Fat Women's Group was a dismal experience! Boring, humourless, stressful, pointless. It involved women policing each other in a nasty way. It was a fucking drag and, by the end of it, I felt burned out. It was a lesson in how not to be an activist.

My activism today
I've grown up a bit since then and I've worked out what it is that I like about activism. The stuff that inspires me is
• empowering
• shit-kicking
• fearless
• funny
• smart
• edgy
Hee hee, there ought to be an acronym for that, maybe something like WOMONPOWER, but I can't think of one.

You probably have your own ideas about what makes great activism. Here's an example of what I mean:

The Chubsters
These days my activism is focused on writing and on The Chubsters.

The Chubsters is a bit of a joke, it isn't going to change the world by itself, but it's what I have the energy to do now, it's a small thing that's fun to do and which ripples out and touches other, bigger things. It's also fierce and real.

I love girl gang iconography, the toughness, the shared identity, the daftness of it all. A few years ago I watched Gang Girls 2000, an incredible film made by the photographer Katrina Del Mar. I love that film, but I found myself wishing that it had a few fatties in it.

I was talking to my friend Kira, who edits a magazine. I said: "I'd love to have a girl gang." She suggested that I assemble such a gang for her magazine, make a photostory out of it, so I did. That was the first outing of The Chubsters.

• We're a fake but real and very vicious girl gang, with initiates from all over the world
• Open to all, fat, thin, inbetween, all genders, all sexualities, all backgrounds
• Creating a persona
• Tapping into that part of being fat, of being dykes, that offends and frightens the mainstream, making it glorious.
• Playing with the idea of being fatties who take no shit, imagining a world in which fatties take no shit, encouraging us all to have a bad bad attitude.
• You don't have to be a fat girl, you don't have to be a homo, to be a Chubster - although it helps. It's more about showing solidarity across the board, allies and all
• Website at the moment, it's small and low key, but lives within the realms of potential.
• Having a Chubsters workshop tomorrow morning:
Meet the gang
Practical demonstrations:
• Perfecting the blank stare
• How to pick a fight
• Your body is a weapon
• Actin' crazy
• The Chubster Strut
• Initiation
• It's at 9.30 tomorrow morning - ow! - but it'll be worth it.
• Please come

That Stonewall moment
In an interview with Big Fat Blog recently Marilyn Wann - let's have a round of applause for Marilyn, she's amazing - said that fat liberation was in a pre-Stonewall moment.

Unlike the queers who fought back against police brutality in 1969 and established themselves as a community of resistance, "Fat people are not yet that angry or that cohesive, as a community. We are hiding out in our semi-safe places and we don't organise to resist when Dr. Phil or the Surgeon General beat us up."

Marilyn goes on to say that whilst queer people have developed a strong and positive view of themselves, fat people have not and that the majority of us would still choose to be thin if we could.

It's hard to move on from self-hatred and shame, but it's not impossible. People - what is it going to take? I've been talking today about the Global Obesity Epidemic, this huge threat that could wipe fat people off the face of the world altogether. Is that scary enough to get you to take action? If not, what is?

I remember reading about the Fat Underground, feeling so inspired by their fierceness. I've often wondered why there are no Fat Panthers, or no Fat Liberation Army. Why is our activism so timid? So based on the personal? Where is our righteous anger? Where's the energy?

I know that it's not ladylike to be angry, and I suspect that it might be against the law to be angry in some parts of California, but still...

Here we are in the USA, the birthplace of the civil rights movement (and rock n roll too), but the civil rights movement!

What does it take for us to say: Up against the wall motherfuckers

Back to reality
There are some people, many people, to whom I can't bring myself to say the name of my book. It's awkward when I meet people and my fat radar tells me that they're not going to get what I do, and maybe I don't have the energy that day to talk it all through with them. I say "Oh, it's about body image," and then see them switch off when I mention the title. I feel like an alien. To be a fat activist is to invite ridicule, we are already a stereotype in the eyes of some people. But I still do this work, think about this stuff, try and work out new ways of resistance that don't burn me out. I still believe that small acts of activism can address global issues. I still care about living my life as a fat person, I still see the value of fat. It's important.

Part three of this keynote starts here. Activism means taking risks and leaving your comfort zones

You know how we just agreed that our arses are fine and that we don't have to worry about that stuff any more? And you know how I just talked about trying to move fat liberation on from a personal struggle, to try and look at the wider implications of what it is to be fat? Well, moving on, living fat, developing a global activism means taking risks and leaving your comfort zones from time to time. That's what I'm going to talk about now

• how fat activists around the world are isolated from one another
• about how travel can help activists develop a more global movement

Hands up who has a passport
Hands up if you've used it within the last year.
A round of applause for you.

There are people in the world who are creating new ways of thinking about fat.
• In London we have the Chubsters and Unskinny Bop, and also a rich history of fat liberation activism dating back over 20 years.
• I am in regular contact with fat activists organising and working in Norway, Finland, France and Australia, and that's with hardly any effort on my part. I'm pretty sure that I would be able to make contact with more of them if I looked harder.
• But if I hosted a conference in London, how many of you would bother to come?
• If my friend Sam Murray organised an event in Melbourne, where she lives, would you go? Would you support it? Would you even know that it existed?
• How do you think that feels for fat activists working in the rest of the world?
• Isolated?
• Ignored?
• Feeling that our work isn't important enough? Any other suggestions?

If you truly care about making the world a better place for fat people, fat dykes, you're going to have to break out of your isolationism here in America. It's time to make contact with the rest of the world. It's time you Americans rubbed up close to people who are different to you. You must surely know by now that the fat American is, to the rest of the world, the dread symbol of the horrors of obesity. I urge you to show them the truth of who you are. Don't allow yourselves to become a cliché.

• You have resources
• You have an incredible community
• The rest of the world needs them, it needs to be involved
• The rest of the world has resources that you need too
• That's what changes the world, that's what makes a movement that changes lives

I want to encourage all of you to travel. Travel is a metaphor for expanding your horizons and making a bigger life for yourself, but I also want to focus on the practical meaning of it too. By travel I don't mean merely seeing the sights and taking in a show, or staying insulated in a hotel, I mean meeting local people, talking to people who are different to you, being challenged by things that are different to the stuff that you're used to, finding out what's going on, opening your eyes. Coming to Unskinny Bop in London's east end and dancing until the sweat makes your eyes sting. Going to Vienna to see the Venus of Willendorf, resting your eyes on her body and knowing that fat women have been around for at least 25,000 years. That's travel.

Travel isn't easy if you're a fat dyke
• The seat might be tight
• Someone might yell some fat-trashing crap after you
• Maybe you won't be able to speak the language
• You might have to slum it
• You're afraid of homophobia
• You won't know anyone
• It won't be comfortable.

Life isn't always comfortable

You think I like flying? No way! You think I wasn't pissed off when none of the grant-making organisations I applied to offered to help me with money to come to this conference? You think I didn't grind my teeth when I had to put in extra hours at the oil company to pay for my way over here? You think I don't hate jetlag? Or that a keynote address comes winging its way out of my arse without me having to work on it during every spare moment I have? But none of that would have ever stopped me coming here today. Those discomforts are miniscule compared to the pleasure of standing here right now.

There's another big one: You can't afford it, travel is a luxury

I truly believe that where there is a will, there's a way. I understand the limitations of money, I know that fat people, fat women, fat queers, generally inhabit the poorest strata of society. I am not rich. I lived on the dole, on welfare, for over eight years. I know poverty. But I still travelled. I wrote Fat and Proud whilst I was on the dole. I saved some money so that I could come to San Francisco and meet the women who were making Fat Girl. It took me most of a year to save the money but the trip was that important to me, in fact it changed my life.

I understand the limitations of poverty and if you can't afford something, you can't afford it, and that's a tragedy. But listen poor people, don't allow life to beat you down, don't accept second best, don't give up and dismiss the idea out of hand before you've tried. There are ways. In spite of the barriers preventing fat dykes from travelling, it's still a possibility. The world is negotiable, often in ways that will surprise you, and the rewards are...amazing.

Thank you for listening to the hard talk. Let's change the pace a little. The haranguing part is over and the gentle part, the last part of my keynote, is about to begin.

I'm going to tell you something very lovely.

In a lot of ways, the situation is worse than ever for fat people, and it's going to get tougher. In order to tackle the scaremongers behind the global obesity epidemic I think we're going to have to leave our comfort zones and develop new ways of thinking, new ways of being activists. We need new alliances, we need to make the movement big! And for what? Why are we doing this? So that fat people can determine who we want to be for ourselves? So that we can destroy the diet industry? So that we can grow up without debilitating fear and anxiety of our own bodies? Yes, all this and more.

I have found throughout my life that writing will always make me feel better. When things are very grim, and even if they aren't, writing can help focus your thoughts and help you concentrate on fixing the things that are wrong. Writing has other purposes too, but the act of trying to imagine a better world is the one that I want to stick with today. I think it's a survival technique that can be especially useful for misfits, for queers, for fat people, for fat dykes.

So listen to this, I wrote this, it's how I imagine that things could be, it's got a bit of me singing in it too:

On this day
On this day it'll be sunny but not too hot, not hot enough to make a fat girl sweat, unless she wanted to.

I'll be in my house, in a neighbourhood that's neither rich nor poor, where my neighbours are not crazy, or fucked with drugs and poverty.

I'll be getting ready to go out on this day, putting on some clothes that fit, that make me look and feel good, that weren't made in a sweatshop or sold by a multinational corporation. My clothes will reflect some aspect of my personality, getting dressed will be a creative and pleasurable event. What will I wear today? Whatever the hell I want: some knee boots, a bikini, a halterneck dress, something vintage and fitted, some really hott denim. Maybe I'll dig through my irony wardrobe and pull out something horrendous from the old days: a tent dress, a sludge-coloured top with a neck bow to detract attention away from the fat, something elasticated. Maybe not.

I'll look at my reflection in the mirror and it'll be a fairly neutral emotional affair, I'll pat myself down, although I'll feel quietly proud of my body, and what it's survived.

I'll walk through my house and make myself something to eat, pulling out mango slices, and good bread, Faygo pop and vegetarian corn dogs. I eat without guilt, eat for pleasure and sustenance, it's all good.

The radio in my kitchen announces the ongoing court cases against Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers and a whole slew of other diet companies, who are being forced to make financial reparations for the damage they caused. Hmm, I'll wonder to myself, what will my ex-dieting friends do with their compensation? I've heard that the payouts are going to be massive.

On this day/on this day
On this day/on this day

So I'll leave the house and walk down the street and nobody gives me any grief about the way I look, or the way I take up space in the world, and neither do I expect those harsh words. There's no need to check myself, or keep my head down, or practise emotional tricks to keep myself feeling okay because everything is okay and I'm not a potential target for anyone.

I walk past a playground in which a bunch of kids choose team members for a game of rounders and the fattest and most popular kid is chosen first, with cheers all around. Over by the bench there's another kid reading a book about the history of the fat rights movement, she probably got it from her high school library, all this information is freely available.

I've got to nip into the doctor's for a minor complaint and he sorts me out without any fuss. He's got some diet sheets from the olden days up on his wall, in frames, and we laugh at their ridiculous claims. "I'm glad those days are over," he says, "but I keep these sheets to remind me how arrogant and ignorant we doctors used to be about weight. The trouble we caused, and what a waste of time all that weight loss stuff was. Never again."

On this day/on this day
On this day/on this day

So I'll be going to meet my friend at the airport. She's flying on one of these new low-pollution planes, the ones that have big, wide bench seats.

I'll flip through some magazines in a shop whilst I'm waiting. On Our Backs has a fat centrefold who covers four - four! - fold out pages! And look how well Size Queen is doing, it's a national bestseller. Nomy Lamm's on the cover of Vogue, I'm reading here about Allyson Mitchell's Whitney retrospective, the Pam Savage curated Meltdown festival and oh my, the inaugural Susan Stinson Prize for Literature has just been announced.

Ah, I see in the National Enquirer that that super-skinny actress has had a tummy implant to make herself look a bit chubbier, and that hunky actor has had a double chin job. Poor things! And Oprah's renounced dieting, she says: "I'm fat and that's fine, baby!" Oh look, Ricki Lake is doing the same, and Carnie Wilson is making a public apology for the time she was a proponent for weight loss surgery, whatever that is. Weight loss surgery, what the hell is that? I'll have to look it up in the fat rights history database sometime, which reminds me that I must also look up 'Diet Coke,' 'aspartame,' 'meal replacement drink' and 'thigh chafe' too.

I'll see on the front page of the papers that our Worldwide Ambassador for Fat Rights is giving a presentation to the government today. Even though they're deifying Mama Cass this afternoon with an international holiday the whole thing makes my eyes roll. I guess it's good that we have a world authority looking after the rights of fat people everywhere, in the past groups like the International Obesity Task Force were just stooges for the diet industry. Still, even though I voted for her, as an anarchist I can't help disapproving of the whole way that power is organised in the world, governments, national borders and the like seem wrong to me. Oh well, that's a fight for another time.

On this day/on this day
On this day/on this day

So I pick up my pal and we head on home for a party, a wonderful party. All our friends show up, a fabulous mixture of people, all dancing, eating, flirting and splashing around in my pink, heart-shaped swimming pool. And we talk the fat dyke talk freely and the thinner ones get it, the straight ones get it and, oh my, we get them too.

We've got the best music going, Ruth and Tamsin are DJing! and we all work some belly-shaking moves. And anyone who's ever been hurt by fat hatred is magically restored to their pre-hate selves. Nobody knows what confusion feels like, nobody worries about how they look, nobody's scared of fulfilling a stereotype because fat stereotypes no longer exist. Everyone feels good, we're healthy in our own way, we do what we want with our lives, we are who we want to be, there are no restrictions. So we're all there together, shaking our bodies and having a good time.

And the ghost of my mum appears and tells me that she's so proud of me and that she's sorry for fucking up my early life with diets and crap. And my friend Andy is alive again and plays his electric guitar and sings to us. And then the MC5 come and play a rockin' set in my front room that's so loud it blasts us away, and maybe Jonathon Richman is there too, and I play my recorder badly, and we all sing something good together, we're all together, being good and strong together, and then maybe there's some sex, and then maybe we're all asleep in a big, soft, snoring pile, all warm, and happy and fine.

On this day/on this day
On this day/on this now

That's it. I'm done, you can breathe out.

Thanks
Thank you
Thank you
Thank you

And thank you to
Mama Cass
Divine and Edie Massey
Hattie Jacques

And some people you'll know, and some you won't, but thank you
La Saraghina
Alice Ansfield
Livin' Large
Pretty Porky and Pissed Off
NAAFA
Hilary Russian
Kira Jolliffe
Deb Burgard
Pat Lyons
Hanne Blank
Melissa Moffitt
Thia Jennings
The Gossip

Thank you:
Mandy Bailey
Annette Weathers
Jason Barker
Kim Griffiths
BJ
Serena Nixon
Murray Hill
Susan Stinson
Paul Ernsberger
Big Fat Blog
LiveJournal
Allyson Mitchell

Thanks!
Hannele Harjunen
Karen Stimson
Judy Freespirit
Erica Smith
Katie LeBesco
Deb Malkin
Bertha Markowicz
Nomy Lamm
Sondra Solovay
Hillel Schwartz
Fat Girl Flea
Fat Girl Speaks

Fat thanks to:
Shadow on a Tightrope
Marilyn Wann
Size Queen
The Fat Underground
Jenny Corbett
Birgitta Szanday-Bøhn
Tamsin Bookey and Ruth Russell
Bill and Flamingo Savage

Love thanks love thanks
Unskinny Bop
The Chubsters
Everyone who ever worked on or supported Fat Girl

So many people are part of this, forgive me if I've forgotten some names.

And special thanks:
Nolose
All the RADICAL performers and workers!
Robin Fradkin
Liz Gewirtz
Leah Strock
Diana Lee

The board!
Shira Stone
Cristy Cardinal
Danielle Terry
Holly Hessinger
Zoe Meleo-Erwin
Amanda Piasecki
Max Airborne

And very special grateful thanks especially:
• Devra Polack - whose foul mouth and shining heart inspire me so much
• My beautiful boyfriend Simon Murphy, who knows as much about fat dyke liberation as anybody here
• My incredible girlfriend Kay Hyatt, she loves the fatties! She loves puppies too! She helped me so much with this speech
• To those who raised money for me to be here - I'm grateful! I'm going to spend it on sweets! And skag!

And you. Thank you. Thank you.