Gratitudes: Confessions of a Feminist Nutritionist

From the incomparable Dr. Krista Scott-Dixon, trans-positive feminist, scholar and the web’s leading proponent of women and weightlifting at stumptuous.com:

Today I want to talk about change and transition. I want to talk about the lived realities of our bodies. I want to talk about pain.

I want to talk about the ways in which self-transformation and working towards deep health are social justice projects.

I’d like to ask three questions today:

1. How we can incorporate scientific knowledge — particularly in the fields of physiology or biology (or in my case, nutrition, fitness, and health) — into social justice work?

2. How can we look at the project of physical self-transformation as a site for social justice intervention?

3. And finally I want to ask: Why does it matter? Aren’t these just personal vanity projects and beneath our notice as serious scholars”?

…..

[I]ndeed one of the points I’m going to argue today is that our body is our interface to the world.”

From taking feminists to task for their simplistic understandings of science to advocating that bodily transformations are valid social justice work, please, read the entire article.

She puts into words things I’ve been saying for some time as a transsexual man. Her words ring loud and true for me, and for me, I’m grateful for her words and her work.