Thanks to the evil machinations of FB friend Kelly Kel, supported by dozens of others, I have become a Doctor Who fan. It started with promises of hot gay sex on the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood, and once I saw that, I was hooked into that universe. Or universes as it turns out.

I am still THIS person, the person who wears a tutu on her head for her Princess Son!

“ If women told the truth, the world would crack open,” Audre Lorde

This morning, I got an email that I knew would come. I did not know who would send it, or when [...]]]>

I am still THIS person, the person who wears a tutu on her head for her Princess Son!

“ If women told the truth, the world would crack open,” Audre Lorde

This morning, I got an email that I knew would come. I did not know who would send it, or when it would come, but I was sure of its eventual arrival.

When I first started thinking about losing weight/eating better/etc, I remember being afraid of a backlash. Thinking that people who enjoyed my “fuck you society!” posts about being fat would be disappointed in me. Worried that if I wrote about something so mundane and trivial as weight loss and food, that people would think less of me. That I was “bowing down to the man” or selling out.

Several of my friends thought I was ridiculous to think that this would happen.  All of those friends were thin. My fat friends knew exactly what I was talking about.

So this morning, I basically got the “Heidi, I am glad you are trying to get healthy, but why are you writing about it and posting your weight and focusing on this and I am sad to see you become this. You were an inspiration to me and now I am sad.”

And it hurt, but like most things, it hurt because it was true.

I AM writing about weight loss, and posting my numbers, and any petty thoughts I may have. I AM writing about being hungry and how it feels to wear smaller clothes, and the battle that goes on in my heart in regards to my love of being mobile and there for my children that sometimes seems at odds with my love of my curves.

But this is the price I pay for living “publicly” – when you put your thoughts and actions out in the public arena, people are free to comment on them. And I understand that.

But the focus on my weight is only the flip side of what was a false confidence about my weight. I have never thought I was ugly – NEVER! This is not about that. But part of the reason I focused so hard on building my identity into that of the “happy fat girl” or the “outrageous fat girl” was so that I would not have to deal with REAL ASPECTS of myself.

I am vain, just like thin women. I worry about my looks, just like thin women. But I am not losing weight just for a looks issue. In fact, I am still adamantly into not only my own curves, but the curves of other women.

And I want my identity to revolve around the whole of who I am, and not just one piece.

I started losing weight as a side effect of a drug. I then decided to continue it to increase my health, and decrease pain in my knees and my herniated disc. Both feel much, much better.

I am making all of this public is because  I benefit from working my issues out online. I always have. But in doing so, I expressed fears that people would react in just this way – that I would be seen as giving up something huge in my identity to fit in better.

But here is the thing – I still have ALL the same values, ideas, opinions, faults, strengths, and weaknesses I did before. I am the same person, albeit one who is in a headspace about losing weight.

Is this ok? Am I allowed to do this? Am I allowed a moment to be human where I worry about the health consequences of high blood pressure and pre-diabetes – especially in the same year that my father died at 61 years old due to congestive heart failure.

I know that many people considered me a role model in “fat positive” issues, and loved my sassy fat self and the way I seemed to be above the trivial issues I am now writing about.

But I am not above it. A very dear friend told me that my persona was a huge suit of armor I was wearing, and he was right. I am human, I am weak, but above all, I am a work in progress.

Part of me wants to explain that MY weight loss is different because it is based in self-love not in self-hate, but then I realized, by saying that I am judging everyone else who is not like me.

My journey now allows me to focus on the food issues I have hidden and suppressed for so long. If you need to hide me because it triggers you, bores you , saddens you, infuriates you, or simply makes you go “meh – bring back the anal sex!” then certainly hide me.

But I am not a movement. I am not a symbol. I am a woman who wants to feel good, look good, and live long enough to see her great grandchildren become as goofy as their ancestors.

And I am still Heidi Marie Anderson.

And when I get to where my body wants to stop losing weight, I will make and wear this t-shirt:

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This post, Cracking Open My World*, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on November 12, 2010.

It started off similar to what I was saying:

I remember my first encounters with the sex positivity/sex positive movement, especially through the internet. I remember loving [...]]]> After my most recent post on sex positivity, blog friend/mentor/hero aag tweeted the link to a post on madame thursday called “sex positivity and other lies”.

It started off similar to what I was saying:

I remember my first encounters with the sex positivity/sex positive movement, especially through the internet. I remember loving the basic principle of the thing: “Sex is awesome! No one should be ashamed of their sexuality or wanting sex! Let’s bring it out into the open so we can all enjoy a healthy, happy relationship with sex!”

Yeah! Rock on.  Sex positive is awesome!!!! And then . . .

But there was this lie in the whole thing, and the lie was told by blog after blog, webpage after webpage that talked a great game about how we can be open about sex, but seemed to equate sex with the nude bodies of thin, conventionally attractive, blonde white women in male-gaze centric pornography, as though if I really pushed myself to enjoy such titles as Biker Bitches 5 and clinically lit photoshoots of a woman with her legs in improbably acrobatic positions, I’d be making the world a better place.

Oh yeah. That part.

People have been celebrating the sexualities of attractive white people for centuries. In fact, I’d say if there were ever a time when people’s discomfort towards sex dissipates and they’re willing to accept, tolerate, and engage with sexual content is WHEN it comes in the form of these bodies, these pre-approved forms.

But what about the queer porn?

Worse yet, so many queer oriented blogs are so white, able, and cis that it hurts. I’m a pansexual/cisgender/cissexual person, and when I see these blogs I see the white, Western version of queerdom splattered across the screen.

Oh god. She is right. Jesus.

If you’re sex positive and you’re not making an active effort to include and celebrate all kinds of sexuality from all kinds of people? You’re a fucking liar. There it is. You’re a liar.

Because sex positivity and body positivity and anti-racism and fat acceptance and the disability movement and queer positivity and womanism are part of the same thing.

So I say FUCK sex positivity. I want sex inclusivity.

I think we just got schooled. I know I’m taking notes.

Thank you madame thursday.



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This post, Sex Positive? Or Sex INCLUSIVE??, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on August 16, 2010.

When I was a little girl, I told my mother I wanted to be a firefighter and ballerina. Despite showing a clear path to my later sexuality, that career plan was abandoned when I discovered that both required me to get off the couch.

Now, after 15 years in the sexual assault/domestic violence [...]]]>

When I was a little girl, I told my mother I wanted to be a firefighter and ballerina. Despite showing a clear path to my later sexuality, that career plan was abandoned when I discovered that both required me to get off the couch.

Now, after 15 years in the sexual assault/domestic violence victim services field, and almost 8 years of doing a mediocre job as a human growth and development facilitator to the Wild Boys of Borneo, my mind is looking onward of what I want to be when I grow up.

How can you help? You can spend 5 minutes and take this survey. How can you hurt? You can spend 5 minutes and take this survey and answer each question in an ironic hipster fashion.

So if you want to help me, or fuck with my life in a cruel fashion, here you go:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PZ53832

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This post, What Color is My Parachute?, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on May 11, 2010.

I just received a lovely email from Kennedy Goodkey, who enjoyed Kylie Sturgess's interview with me on the Skeptic Zone Podcast. The interview was about the different types of activism within the skeptical movement. Kennedy has a blog called "Confessions of An Asshole Skeptic" and has placed me on the Asshole [...]]]> *oppositional defiant disorder

I just received a lovely email from Kennedy Goodkey, who enjoyed Kylie Sturgess's interview with me on the Skeptic Zone Podcast. The interview was about the different types of activism within the skeptical movement. Kennedy has a blog called "Confessions of An Asshole Skeptic" and has placed me on the Asshole Skeptic Honour Roll. I feel as if I have been training for that placement my whole life :)

The Skeptic movement has so many wonderful, nice, highly intelligent and ever polite people in it (Richard Saunders, DJ Grothe, Daniel Loxton, Derek and Swoopy, Dr. Rachie, Evan Bernstein, The Iwan's, Jeff Wagg, Ginger Campbell, and plenty more that I as an asshole have forgotten). These are the people who need to act as spokespersons for skepticism.

There are also the skeptics that are generally nice and professional, but do not suffer fools lightly (James Randi, Phil Plait, Steve Novella, Kylie Sturgess, Tim Farley, Maria Walters, Ben Radford, Joe Nickell (swoon), Shermer, Dunning, and again, probably a few others). Watching Joe Nickell switch from his uber professional demeanor to his equally professional but clearly righteous tone when calling out the ghost hunters at Dragon Con this year was a highly "stimulating" experience for me. Ben Radford did the same thing last year when he told a priest that "unlike the Bible, at least science updates its books when it learns it is wrong."  These are the folk who need to represent us whenever there is any type of public debate with believers, anti-vaxxers, and woo mongers.

Finally, you have your assholes. I am hesitant to place anyone in this category other than myself and the self-described Asshole Skeptic, but I may be willing to make an exception for certain tall magicians, only because he has called himself an asshole as well. The assholes are the ones you need to engage the opposite side's assholes.

In terms of skeptical outreach, I like to imagine that Daniel Loxton, Dr. Rachie, and Richard Saunders will get us in the door, Randi, Nickell, Radford and Novella will lay down the law, and assholes such as myself can be hidden from view until we need to rally the troops with inflammatory remarks or get into ridiculous yet funny screaming matches (real OR online) with the asshole believers.

So why are assholes such assholes?

My son had some difficulty with authority at school last year
(genetics much?) and the school psychologist wanted to label him with
oppositional defiant disorder. Upon hearing this, I went to EVERY therapist/psychologist/psychiatrist friend I had, described his
symptoms, got their opinion, and systematically used the DSM IV (diagnostic guidelines for mental
illness) to completely demolish the school psychologist's report and diagnosis, not to mention her competence. Bottom line, he had adjustment disorder and anxiety, not oppositional defiant disorder. This was later confirmed by a several practitioners at the doctoral level who spent more than two hours on his case.

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This post, You Down with ODD*? Yeah, You Know Me!, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on October 3, 2009.

Our family got a dog about two weeks ago. I called a local no-kill shelter (funny, considering we took our bad dog to the yes-kill shelter four years ago) and asked if they had any dogs that were good with kids. They told me about a four year-old, male poodle/bichon mix they had, [...]]]>

Our family got a dog about two weeks ago. I called a local no-kill shelter (funny, considering we took our bad dog to the yes-kill shelter four years ago) and asked if they had any dogs that were good with kids. They told me about a four year-old, male poodle/bichon mix they had, and my son and I went to visit him.

He was absolutely adorable, we adopted him (although I think we could have gotten a chinese baby girl for less money) and I have once again become a dog person. The same woman who can not sleep with her husband now shares a bed with a warm pile of fluff that loves her unconditionally, never slaps her and screams for juice, never punches kids at Montessori, and never talks. Ever. About anything, but especially not about Lego Star Wars.

So what is a white, liberal/bordering on socialist woman with an extremely high IQ(email me – I will tell you!) and sense of social justice to name her dog? Well at the shelter his name was Kiko. I did not like that, so I changed it to Biko. You do know who Biko is right? Stephen Biko, the South African anti-apartheid martyr that Peter Gabriel immortalized in his mid 1980′s song of the same name?? Of course you don’t because I am not only smarter than you, I’m better.

Only this week has it occurred to me that perhaps it is, oh I don’t know, slightly douchebaggy to name your dog, an all white dog no less, after the hero whose death mobilized the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. I bet his children and grandchildren would think, “Thank you, oh beautiful nice white lady. It is only through you naming your dog after our father do we feel his memory truly lives on. Thank you for carrying the torch of freedom throughout the neighborhood of Fernwood, in the magical land of tolerance, Spartanburg, South Carolina.”

If I die tomorrow, please have the dog carry my ashes in a pouch on his body, while Peter Gabriel’s Biko plays throughout whatever secular meeting hall you can reserve. I think that Stephen Biko, who died in the custody of the South African police who were not held accountable and claimed it was suicide (he beat HIMSELF to death) would approve and say that we are indeed brothers in the fight against evil.

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This post, I Am Not Only Smarter Than You, I'm BETTER!!, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on January 29, 2009.

1. I created a Star Trek fan club when I was in 6th grade in 1985. [...]]]> Ok, I never do these things, NEVER, but so many cool people seemed to want to know about me that I had to do it. I must give the public what they want. This was originally on Facebook.

1. I created a Star Trek fan club when I was in 6th grade in 1985. I created flyers and everything, including a club song. I have attached the flyer on Facebook.

2. My husband and I were on the front page of the Greenville News in January 2004 because we were willing to talk about being Democrats. Seriously! I was most angry at the reporter when he referred to the setting of our interview in our downtown bungalow (under renovation at the time) as "a makeshift table in a half-remodeled home." It pissed me off.

3. As a child I wanted Princess Diana and Prince Charles to adopt me. I cried like a baby from the time I found out she was dead until the week later at her funeral. I watched the funeral while crying into Peggy Hamrick's dog Frodo's fur.

4. I once tried to fly a homemade kite made from a trash bag and a coat hanger. The Canadian neighbors next door bought me a kite for my next birthday.

5. Although I have always been jealous of my sister in many ways, and we fought like, well, sisters as children, I now consider her one of my best friends and would kill for her. Or at least maim.

6. My husband broke up with me in 10th grade because I was ready to have sex and he was not.

7. When I finally did have sex at 17 (ahem, not with him) for the first time, I planned the event for about 4 months ahead of time. And it was perfect, absolutely perfect. I feel like it set the standard for my expectations of sex for the rest of my single life. I believe teens are responsible enough to choose when to have sex.

8. Although I am ardently pro-choice, I believe technology will change enough where fetuses can be transplanted. That WILL change things, in my eyes.

9. I have never understood what people's looks have to do with their sex appeal. I have found many "unattractive" people very sexy, and many "hot" guys unappealing.

10. I weigh 251 pounds, and have not weighed under 200 in about 15 years. And I am mostly ok with that! Dr. Miles can suck it!

11. I once dreamed that a man would look past my frumpy appearance, my oppositional demeanor, and my constant sobriety to find me a fascinating, sexy, minx of a woman. About two years ago, I realized that one had – my husband.

12. Although I am not an alcoholic, I don't drink at all. The last time I drank was in 1997, before my friend Laura McGeorge's wedding, and I ended the night throwing up on myself in my bushes. I never got buzzed when I did drink, I went straight from sober to fucked up beyond belief. With the family history of alcoholism, I decided not to mess with it.

13. I am secretly judgemental of all those who drink and/or use drugs. I feel superior to them.

14. I have never had sex drunk.

15. I spend about 5 hours per week 80 hours per week on my actual job, and still manage to get everything done.

16. Although I am fat and funny, I am not jolly at all. I am one of the most angry people you will ever meet. If I am not pissed off, just talk to me about Dr. Sears, John Rosemond, or Joel Osteen. You will then see the anger.

17. I am bisexual – but have never even kissed a girl. This does not make me a poser, it makes me monogamous. I knew this the first time I saw Catherine Deneauve and Susan Sarandon in the Hunger.

18. I have had a massive crush on Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller for about three years now, and I don't really like magic at all. His NPR This I Believe was literally life changing for me, and helped me come to grips with my atheism. I  am terrified of meeting him.

19. If I could afford it, I would hire a housekeeper/cook in a heartbeat. I hate the majority of traditional female roles, other than pregnancy and breastfeeding. I often resent my husband for the freedoms our society gives men in regards to parenting.

20.  Even before I worked in my current field of domestic violence/sexual assault, people have always disclosed their abuse to me. I once had a woman disclose her sexual abuse to me while I was being interviewed by a group for a job. She had never told her co-workers until the interview.

21. I wrote awful, awful, awful, vampire porn when I was in high school, and I used some of the "popular" guys by name in the story. To top it off, the high school girl who was the main character vampire lost tons of weight after becoming a vampire. Mary Sue much???? And yet it was probably still better than Twilight.

22. I love Bollywood movies and their soundtracks.

23. I fall down alot – about two or three times per month.

24. I have my own bedroom. It has been hard for me to sleep in the room with anyone else for about 20 years.

25. My female friendships have caused me more heartache, betrayal, and drama in my life than anything with men ever has.

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This post, Blog Post Cheating and Double Dipping, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on January 25, 2009.

However, this morning my husband gets onto Amazon and [...]]]> I have been very upfront with my husband about a crush/fascination I have with a certain minor celebrity. He knows about it and tolerates it, even to the point of knowing that I have emailed back and forth a couple of times with this person.

However, this morning my husband gets onto Amazon and tries to order something from my account. All emails/internet accounts are open with him, so this was normal. However, he then says "Why are you sending $25 kids books on evolution to a millionare?"

Busted!

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This post, Most Embarassing Moments – Part 6, originally appeared on The Fat One in the Middle on January 10, 2009.