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with Jay Botsford and Davey Shlasko
Friday, May 22, 11am-1pm Central
Sliding scale $0-$45
This workshop is for anyone who is motivated to build their capacity to create a more just and accessible world for all bodies.
Even before COVID-19, our social media was full of people trying to lose weight or avoid gaining weight. With home isolation orders in place around the world, this has increased exponentially. We hear about the COVID 15 (referring to gaining 15 pounds), and businesses bombard us with healthy recipes and tips for staying fit while working from home.
Meanwhile, people being diagnosed with COVID-19 face social and medical criticism about their bodies. Authorities argue, against all evidence, that high BMI contributes to poor outcomes, and even try to explain away racial inequities with arguments about weight. Its more obvious than ever that the way we are taught to think about fatness, rather than fatness itself, is really really bad for our health. But these messages about fatness and health are not easy to unlearn.
Maybe youre uneasy with some of the messages youre seeing, but cant totally articulate why. Maybe youre seeing counterarguments from friends and community members, trying to stop anti-fat bias in who gets access to healthcare. Maybe being home 24/7 is reconnecting you with your own body in ways that feel challenging, or youre just sick of the constant barrage of memes, stories, helpful hints and weight-focused advice.
Whatever the reason, we welcome you to learn and practice with us.
Fat people face intense stigma, violence, and barriers to fully participating in all parts of life. Although the fat acceptance movement and body positivity efforts have grown immensely over the last few decades, anti-fatness is often ignored as a system of oppression, with fat people shamed for existing at all and accused of harming the public health. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to shine a light on how anti-fatness, ableism, racism and eugenics are embedded in healthcare, capitalism, and our own understandings of who has a life worth living and a valuable body.
Through a lively combination of short presentations, discussions, self-reflection, and collaborative problem-solving, participants will:
- Gain understanding of the medical, social, and liberation models of fatness
- Examine their own internalized beliefs about size and health, including how these relate to race, gender, class, disability and more
- Consider how these beliefs impact them and how they have impacted others
- Evaluate what they believe is possible/impossible in moving towards an accessible world and liberation for all bodies
**If you like this workshop, you might also like our Disability Justice workshop: https://disablity-justice.brownpapertickets.com/
Accessibility notes:
To access this workshop you will need a stable internet connection and a device with a camera and microphone. If you're not used to this kind of online environment, don't worry - we'll help you figure it out!
We aim to keep the sessions accessible to the widest possible range of people. For example, almost all lecture content and all activity instructions will be presented both verbally and in writing, and all visual content will be described. If you need simultaneous captions for the discussions, let us know in advance and we can make it happen. If you have any other access needs that we haven't covered here, please contact us so we can figure it out together: davey@thinkagaintraining.com, 845-417-6518.
The sliding-scale registration fee operates on the "honor system," to keep the workshop accessible to people with a range of means. We trust you to select the price category that's fair for you.
About the trainers:
Davey Shlasko, managing consultant of Think Again Training & Consulting, is an educator, author and consultant whose passion is facilitating adult learning about, and in the context of, social justice movements. Daveys favorite consulting projects live in the overlap between individual growth and organizational transformation. In addition to managing Think Again, Davey has authored several chapters in the Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice and Readings for Diversity and Social Justice series including curricula on classism, ableism, and cissexism (transgender oppression), and also teaches as a lecturer in Gender & Womens Studies at University of Wisconsin Madison and in social theory and trans studies at Smith College School for Social Work. Davey has an M.Ed. in Social Justice Education from UMass, Amherst, and has been writing and teaching about social justice issues since 2000.
Jay Botsford is an educator and activist who has been working on LGBTQ+ and health justice issues since 2002, providing training/consulting services, supporting youth to make change in their communities, and organizing for justice and liberation. Working on equity issues in higher education since 2016 at UW Madison, Jay previously spent more than 15 years working in social service nonprofit organizations. Ze has also been a sexuality educator for 16 years and co-hosts the Queer Sex Ed podcast. Jay is passionate about community care/mutual aid, building accomplices (not just allies), and centering health, healing, and pleasure in justice work.
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LocationZoom - online video conference (View)
Zoom link and password will be emailed to all registrants
Madison, WI 53704
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: Yes! |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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Contact
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