Wherein the Gainer Talks Religion, Philosophy, & Shit
I started this post in 2015. I've been working through some stuff that bothers me that I haven't been able to express until now, and I think it's time to try to figure out what's going on in my brain.
Many gay people don't want to live as outsiders. Think of the endless requests (or demands) to be treated the same as straight people. Being the exception can become tiresome.
This concept applies to the fat acceptance movement as well. Consider the comedian who insisted we need a fat Disney princess. The idea of being marginalized forms the backbone of postmodern thought with its obsession with colonialism, the patriarchy, and systemic privilege.
We try to comfort ourselves saying we're normal enough. Gay guys should like men of a wider variety of body types. Society should be less judgmental. Doctors should help me maintain my health without pressuring me to lose weight.
Well, maybe so. But in the end, we are not (statistically) normal, and that presents difficulties. What are you going to do about it? Whine on the internet and expect others to accommodate you? Shrink into a corner and hope it all goes away?
I've argued that gaining isn't an identity. Maybe gaining can be a community, but there's one thing it most certainly must not become: a religion. That's absurd, you might say, but I don't mean an organized religion. I mean a replacement for the part of the human consciousness that craves meaning and purpose - the religious or spiritual experience.
In exchange for my time and talents, the fundamentalist church I used to attend gave me a set of rules by which to interpret life. This version of Christianity was essentially self-sealing, making it impossible to pin adherents down on anything. The ideology just shifted every time new facts presented themselves. Male homosexuality is a relatable example:
1. Men choose to be gay. (No, they don't.)
2. Men are made gay by parental behavior. (There's not enough evidence to prove that.)
3. Men don't choose to be gay, but they should strive against their proclivities and marry a woman. (That's an untenable solution and it's unfair to the woman.)
4. Men don't choose to be gay, but they should be celibate. (Why should anyone be denied fundamentally healthy aspects of humanity on principle?)
And so it goes. The narrative morphs to seem more palatable without surrendering the underlying ideological conviction that men should not express romantic or sexual interest in other men. That is the unyielding rule they perform all manner of mental gymnastics to protect. It's not that they came to that conclusion. It was given to them, as well as the interpretive tools to protect the conclusion regardless of facts, logic, or experience.
What does this have to do with gaining? Well, I don't want to see an ideological orthodoxy bind our ability to improve ourselves. Many times I've seen a guy describe how difficult gaining is making his life, only to be met with "supportive" comments that he should head to the buffet or gain another 50 lbs. (Thankfully, this is not universal.)
Do not enshrine gaining the way fundamentalists enshrine their convictions. Don't let gaining run your life. You're an incredibly complicated creature that could spend his entire life trying to understand himself without landing on anything absolutely concrete. You don't need to fit into any consciously or subconsciously perceived image of a gainer "should" be. In fact, it's probably best that you don't.
Does gaining help you live up to your potential? In what ways does it enrich your life? In what ways does it harm it? The bigger you get, the harder it is to physically live, so you have to stop somewhere. You can get bitter at life for giving you an inconvenient fetish, or you can sack up and find a workable compromise.
Make no mistake, we are full of demons and the capacity to ruin our lives. If you make the wrong decision, you could shave years off your life, ruin relationships, or deny yourself love or happiness. This isn't unique to gainers, but it sure is true. You have control over whether you ruin yourself.
Life (God and Satan in the story) threw every manner of shit at the Biblical figure Job, but he refused to curse life (God) and die. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ended up in the gulag, but he still asked himself what he had done to worsen his life. These men experienced great misery, but they didn't ruin themselves - they did everything in their power to vie against tragedy and evil. Job (real or fictional) has been an inspiration for thousands of years, and Solzhenitsyn's writings helped expose the horrors the USSR committed against the Russian people.
These examples are perhaps melodramatic, but I want to get the point across: you are not a victim of your desires, nor of the cruel world that every human has had to contend with since the dawn of time. You're stronger and have more potential than you think. If you don't believe me, read some history books. You're made of as stern a stuff as they who came before us.
Understanding self is more important than understanding the gaining community. Let go of your skinny self. Let go of your fat self. What good is cherishing conflicting images of yourself in your mind?
There are plenty of people that try gaining and find out it's not their cup of tea. There are many more who love it. But you should never go into it blind, which you've probably realized is a refrain of mine. It might be sexy to think of yourself putting on 100 lbs quickly without even realizing it, but fantasy is not reality. Enjoy your fantasies for what they are, but don't let them corrupt your conception of what is possible, let alone beneficial.
Exercise. Experiment with different diets and pay close attention to how you feel physiologically and psychologically. Don't let the feelings of progress become addictive. Being out of control is hot until you're facing surgery or disease that you could have prevented. Grab life by the throat. Give it hell. Don't drift around until a problem happens. Problems will arise, so you might as well anticipate them and make yourself stronger.
If you hadn't noticed, this is "Projection: The Blog Post." I can't accept a plan for gaining imposed on me by a group or by another individual. Why do you think so many of us ask for someone to make him fat? Why has that become so sexy to us? Ceding agency is easier than accepting full responsibility for something as complex and mysterious as existence.
I want to accept responsibility. I want to be sufficient in my plan for my body. I want to wage every argument against gaining and still be left with a compelling reason to grow.
I'll go into those reasons again at some point. Until then, take care of yourselves. You have potential and no matter how useless you feel at any given time, you can work at realizing your potential. You have something to offer no matter how thin or how fat you are. Offer it to yourself. Offer it to the world.
Being an Outlier is Difficult
Many gay people don't want to live as outsiders. Think of the endless requests (or demands) to be treated the same as straight people. Being the exception can become tiresome.
This concept applies to the fat acceptance movement as well. Consider the comedian who insisted we need a fat Disney princess. The idea of being marginalized forms the backbone of postmodern thought with its obsession with colonialism, the patriarchy, and systemic privilege.
We try to comfort ourselves saying we're normal enough. Gay guys should like men of a wider variety of body types. Society should be less judgmental. Doctors should help me maintain my health without pressuring me to lose weight.
Well, maybe so. But in the end, we are not (statistically) normal, and that presents difficulties. What are you going to do about it? Whine on the internet and expect others to accommodate you? Shrink into a corner and hope it all goes away?
Gaining is Not a Religion
I've argued that gaining isn't an identity. Maybe gaining can be a community, but there's one thing it most certainly must not become: a religion. That's absurd, you might say, but I don't mean an organized religion. I mean a replacement for the part of the human consciousness that craves meaning and purpose - the religious or spiritual experience.
In exchange for my time and talents, the fundamentalist church I used to attend gave me a set of rules by which to interpret life. This version of Christianity was essentially self-sealing, making it impossible to pin adherents down on anything. The ideology just shifted every time new facts presented themselves. Male homosexuality is a relatable example:
1. Men choose to be gay. (No, they don't.)
2. Men are made gay by parental behavior. (There's not enough evidence to prove that.)
3. Men don't choose to be gay, but they should strive against their proclivities and marry a woman. (That's an untenable solution and it's unfair to the woman.)
4. Men don't choose to be gay, but they should be celibate. (Why should anyone be denied fundamentally healthy aspects of humanity on principle?)
And so it goes. The narrative morphs to seem more palatable without surrendering the underlying ideological conviction that men should not express romantic or sexual interest in other men. That is the unyielding rule they perform all manner of mental gymnastics to protect. It's not that they came to that conclusion. It was given to them, as well as the interpretive tools to protect the conclusion regardless of facts, logic, or experience.
What does this have to do with gaining? Well, I don't want to see an ideological orthodoxy bind our ability to improve ourselves. Many times I've seen a guy describe how difficult gaining is making his life, only to be met with "supportive" comments that he should head to the buffet or gain another 50 lbs. (Thankfully, this is not universal.)
Do not enshrine gaining the way fundamentalists enshrine their convictions. Don't let gaining run your life. You're an incredibly complicated creature that could spend his entire life trying to understand himself without landing on anything absolutely concrete. You don't need to fit into any consciously or subconsciously perceived image of a gainer "should" be. In fact, it's probably best that you don't.
Does gaining help you live up to your potential? In what ways does it enrich your life? In what ways does it harm it? The bigger you get, the harder it is to physically live, so you have to stop somewhere. You can get bitter at life for giving you an inconvenient fetish, or you can sack up and find a workable compromise.
Make no mistake, we are full of demons and the capacity to ruin our lives. If you make the wrong decision, you could shave years off your life, ruin relationships, or deny yourself love or happiness. This isn't unique to gainers, but it sure is true. You have control over whether you ruin yourself.
Life (God and Satan in the story) threw every manner of shit at the Biblical figure Job, but he refused to curse life (God) and die. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ended up in the gulag, but he still asked himself what he had done to worsen his life. These men experienced great misery, but they didn't ruin themselves - they did everything in their power to vie against tragedy and evil. Job (real or fictional) has been an inspiration for thousands of years, and Solzhenitsyn's writings helped expose the horrors the USSR committed against the Russian people.
These examples are perhaps melodramatic, but I want to get the point across: you are not a victim of your desires, nor of the cruel world that every human has had to contend with since the dawn of time. You're stronger and have more potential than you think. If you don't believe me, read some history books. You're made of as stern a stuff as they who came before us.
Finding Sufficiency
Understanding self is more important than understanding the gaining community. Let go of your skinny self. Let go of your fat self. What good is cherishing conflicting images of yourself in your mind?
There are plenty of people that try gaining and find out it's not their cup of tea. There are many more who love it. But you should never go into it blind, which you've probably realized is a refrain of mine. It might be sexy to think of yourself putting on 100 lbs quickly without even realizing it, but fantasy is not reality. Enjoy your fantasies for what they are, but don't let them corrupt your conception of what is possible, let alone beneficial.
Exercise. Experiment with different diets and pay close attention to how you feel physiologically and psychologically. Don't let the feelings of progress become addictive. Being out of control is hot until you're facing surgery or disease that you could have prevented. Grab life by the throat. Give it hell. Don't drift around until a problem happens. Problems will arise, so you might as well anticipate them and make yourself stronger.
If you hadn't noticed, this is "Projection: The Blog Post." I can't accept a plan for gaining imposed on me by a group or by another individual. Why do you think so many of us ask for someone to make him fat? Why has that become so sexy to us? Ceding agency is easier than accepting full responsibility for something as complex and mysterious as existence.
I want to accept responsibility. I want to be sufficient in my plan for my body. I want to wage every argument against gaining and still be left with a compelling reason to grow.
I'll go into those reasons again at some point. Until then, take care of yourselves. You have potential and no matter how useless you feel at any given time, you can work at realizing your potential. You have something to offer no matter how thin or how fat you are. Offer it to yourself. Offer it to the world.
Comments
Post a Comment