Jason Whitesel analyzes, through his own personal research, discussed in Fat Gay Men, how society injures big, gay men and, in turn, how they respond to their isolation. In fact, America’s preoccupation with weight as a measure of worth, sexuality, and capability is so pervasive that overweight, gay men created a niche community separate from their skinny gay counterparts in pursuit of much-desired comfort, sexual freedom, resignification, and normalcy.
As Jason Whitesel exposes in Fat Gay Men, the same can be said for homosexual men, facing heteronormative isolation, who are fat, confronting more stigma still within the gay community In this way, those who are both African American and asexual, lower class and lesbian, or Muslim and paraplegic confront ostracism not only from their race, class, and religion, but also from their sexual and disabled peers.
While we expect marginalized peoples to band together towards a common fight for universal liberties as a result of their shared stigmatizations, minorities are often splintered further as people embody multiple “deviant” identities.
