Eating Disorders in the Radical Community
Hidden Struggles with Food, Politics and Well-Being
Discussions of eating disorders typically present two images of what a person with an eating disorder looks like. There is the young, overachieving, upper-middle class adolescent, starving her body to perceived perfection while living up to the image of model student and daughter; and there is the overweight, middle-aged housewife, devoted mother and spouse, who cannot control her compulsive eating.
Although these stereotypes represent demographics that suffer heavily from eating disorders, eating disorders affect our population across the board, regardless of class, gender, religious background, sexual orientation or ethnicity. These stereotypes marginalize others with eating disorders, whose painful dealings with these issues are then kept hidden from view.
It is important to recognize that eating disorders are as much a problem in radical, anarchist and feminist circles as in the rest of mainstream society, though there is little dialogue taking place on this topic. It wasn't until recently, when someone in my circle came out to me as a binge-eating bulimic, that I realized I was not alone, that this is a serious problem extending beyond my misconceptions of who is affected by eating disorders.
Before this silence was broken, I thought eating disorders were for girls who shaved their legs, but not their heads; girls who were straight, not queer; girls who were 14, not 28; girls who lived in sorority houses, not anarchist collectives.
Now I am looking with a more critical eye at the community I am in. When someone says she doesn't want her picture taken, is it because she is concerned about who may get their hands on the photo or is it because she has a deep loathing of looking at herself? When someone eats her fifth helping at a vegan potluck, is it really because she's excited to have so many vegan options available, or is it because she is trying to obtain the familiar fullness she uses to numb her reality? When she quietly slips away, is she just tired, or is she needing to purge herself of all that she has consumed? When an activist explains that she is not hungry, is she trying to balance so much in her life that she forgot to eat, doesn't have time, or already ate on the run, or is she more afraid of calories than of the injustices against which she is fighting?
For as long as I can remember, I have been politically active, spending time in various radical communities and subcultures. For just as long, I have struggled with issues of food, body image and disturbed eating patterns. But while I have simultaneously spent most of my time, thoughts, and energy on being an activist and having an eating disorder, I have found no place in which to bridge these two aspects of myself. In this piece, I hope to begin the exploration as to why eating disorders are a problem in these communities, and why this problem has remained largely invisible.
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Just like the rest of the population, activists have mental health problems, die from cancer caused by pollution and have siblings sent off to war. No matter how many gardens we grow, protests we attend or collectives we start, we are not so autonomous as a sub-culture to be unaffected by the dynamics of the larger culture within which we live.
Nonetheless, it often seems that the radical community sees itself as being separate from the rest of the world, as a community fighting injustices that are somehow outside of our own radical spaces. I have had a million conversations on patriarchy and how it affects womyn and the necessity of feminist theory. I have been in countless debates on the objectification of womyn and the possible consequences, yet I have had little dialogue about my own eating disorder, even though this is a very tangible thing, a touchable proof as to why this theory, this work we (I) do, is so important.
It is almost as if by talking about theory and working on issues, we come to believe we are immune to them. But, as the triggers that create eating disorders in the general population are on the rise, eating disorders continue to be a huge problem in our community, as well.
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The number of people in the United States thought to suffer from eating disorders is 8 to 10 million, and is slowly on the rise. Our culture values thinness as can be seen in the projection of what is considered desirable in movies, magazines, television, and advertisements. A super model weighs less than 95% of the female population. Fat discrimination is a serious problem in our culture in areas such as employment, healthcare and housing. There are huge myths connected with being fat, including the idea that fat people inherently eat more or exercise less than the rest of the population. In our society, being fat is synonymous with being stupid or lazy. Our culture is so afraid of fat that it spends 33 billion dollars every year on the diet industry.
Since excessive dieting is a precursor to obesity and the development of an eating disorder, a destructive cycle of constant, ineffective dieting is created. Instead of just being able to live, an individual ends up living in a weight-centered reality.
Immersing oneself in anarchist, radical and feminist circles is not an insulator from messages that create body image issues. Unless raised in the middle of the wilderness without contact from the outside world, we are all affected by societal images of what and who we should be. Being submerged in feminist theory and being radicalized does not change the fact that growing up in this culture, having watched T.V. as a child, going to public schools, seeing billboards, being forced to diet as a child, having parents or family members with eating issues and having partners and lovers criticize figure-size, all affect body image negatively, making an individual more vulnerable to developing an eating disorder later in life.
Another big factor increasing one's chance of developing an eating disorder is whether or not she has been a victim of sexual abuse or rape. There is a direct correlation between those who have been subject to sexual abuse and those who develop eating disorders. Again, unless someone has been raised in an environment where she has had no contact with potential predators, surrounding oneself in a radical community is not a way to be protected from sexual assault. Like eating disorders, there is little discourse about this topic in the radical community, making individuals who have been prey to sexual assault likely to use of self-medication as a means to deal with the reality of their situation.
The desire to confront the injustices of the world creates a mental breeding ground for self-harm related disorders. I am not trying to suggest that all activists have mental illnesses or addictions, but individuals who have a certain sensitivity to the current state of the world are more inclined to need coping mechanisms. Eating disorders are, for some, a natural reaction to trying to survive in an unjust and chaotic world. The feeling of the world spinning out of control and having no ability to slow down or stop the military industrial complex, rapid deforestation or never-ending wars is similar to the lack of control a disturbed eater may feel about her personal boundaries and her body.
Those with eating disorders often have no sense of boundaries. They are unable to respond to normal body sensations such as hunger or fullness. They are unable to say no to others and, as such, put their own personal needs last, often not even knowing what their own needs are.
This is also the personality profile of many activists. Trying to run organizations and projects on little funding or outside help, often to the point of putting their own mental or physical health in jeopardy, taking on every cause, and feeling personally responsible for every injustice that exists, regardless of its size, these activists also do not prioritize having their own needs met.
I believe that the political is personal and those with the tendency to martyr themselves for causes or organizations are likely to do so in their personal relationships, as well. When someone feels as if they are always giving, never taking enough for herself, always feeling hungry, the act of self-medicating often occurs. Drinking, eating, starving and having sex are activities people can do that make them feel as if they are taking time for themselves, and, even if it's fleeting, having their needs met.
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Part of what makes this issue so bizarre is the contradiction that exists between having an eating disorder and having radical politics. In doing research for this piece, I spent some time looking at pro-ana and pro-mia websites. In all of the advice on how to throw up quietly, how to make sure to empty out your system, and how to hide your eating disorder from your family and friends, I found no information on if you have a gray-water system, how to vomit without the backlash of urine hitting your face or, once you throw up, if you should compost your vomit or feed it to the chickens. As ridiculous as it sounds, these are questions that have passed through my head on multiple occasions.
The contradictions between politics and compulsion create a large amount of shame for the person suffering from disturbed eating. For people who have a strong political base established on anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist principles, there is much guilt involved in having a disorder that is about consuming more than an individual needs, especially when purging it and then consuming it again. When spending time in a culture that scorns excess and over-consumption, finding the need to consume to the point of illness is humiliating and difficult to admit.
It is not strange that, statistically, bulimics are more likely to be shoplifters or alcoholics than the general population, and that compulsive eaters are more inclined to be compulsive spenders, as these behaviors also involve indulging in forbidden acts, followed by entering a cycle of guilt. When anorexics, bulimics and compulsive eaters are going on a binge, the fact is they may be going into debt to afford their addiction, buying non-vegan food items to satisfy their hunger, and going to fast food, corporate chains in order to indulge their compulsions. The shame of acting out in ways that play into the system that these individuals are inherently opposed to can compound the existing shame and make it more difficult to get help.
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I have been told by members of my community that issues of gender are not as important as larger things going on in the world, that I am sweet despite my excessive feminism, and that I am often making-up gender issues with the specific intent of creating drama. This is not an environment where I feel comfortable talking about my eating disorder and how my community comes into play with this issue.
It is almost as if we don't have the vocabulary to talk about these things. We all know that the privatization of water, the prison industrial complex, GMO foods, globalization and institutional racism are bad. We have all heard of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Angela Davis and Arundhati Roy; yet how many of us can look each other in the eye and know the internal battles that we are each fighting daily?
I understand that we are all tired. Tired from overextending ourselves with the million and one projects we deem as important. Tired from having a sensitive awareness of how the power structures are destroying the world we live in, and tired from, despite this understanding, still fighting to right these injustices. We are all very tired. Too tired, sometimes, to look into ourselves or each other and make sure the same institutional structures that are demolishing our world are not demolishing us.
But without a community acknowledgement of this problem, it will stay hidden and untreated. Until the infrastructures that trigger eating disorders are eradicated from within our community and ourselves, they will continue to be a serious problem.
Even with an understanding of the prevalence of this issue in our community, solutions to the problem are complex. Therapeutic options that currently exist are expensive and often geared toward a demographic that is fundamentally different than that of anarchist, activist and feminist communities.
Because of this, I feel it is up to those of us living with eating disorders in radical communities, and our allies, to begin breaking the silence and finding ways to support each other. Without a working model of healing, this will be difficult; but, as activists, we are used to tackling problems and creating solutions that empower ourselves and our communities. It will be challenging, but together we will find a way to not always hunger for more; to realize that we are, and that we give, enough.