[For/Against] A Case Against cw:food; or, "Food Is Good!"
Please note that this post contains discussion of disordered eating. this is one of a few posts from my cohost blog i'll be porting over here.
Consider, as hellgnoll noted in an excellent chost, the case of entomologists on mastodon being muted or harrassed for not content-warning for bugs. These are scientists who are sharing work important to them AND attempting to sway harmful cultural norms about bugs. And this was not acceptable to some, for the sake of their own comfort.
Consider the famous exchange: "can you trigger tag lesbians please" "no but i can hit you with my car." We all understand that certain things not acceptable to cw or ask others to cw. Politicized matters, identities, ways of life, current events -- we have all encountered the urge to not hide something behind a cw because of its importance, because those things should not be hidden.
Consider the mid-10's spate of non-muslim tumblr users encouraging a #nsfr tag -- not safe for Ramadan -- or to tag food generally for Ramadan. The most familiar takedown of this was by tenfootlongscarf, but i'm sure you can reason through the arguments easily enough. The desire to content-warn something for another person's sake is not necessarily a productive one.
So, all that in mind, here's my case against cw:food.
If seeing food is a risk to your overall mental health, I'm genuinely sorry and I feel for you. I've been there! I have also, like you, had an eating disorder. It was challenging to deal with.
The guiding light for me getting out of the hellish parts of my ED were three words: food is good. Food is good. Food is good! Food is how we survive, how we share with others, how we pass and develop culture. When I was working with teens, I would tell them "food is good" every time we ate. Because it is extremely important to pass along the message that a good relationship with food is always possible. We should give everyone every possible chance to know that it's possible. In fact, that's a political responsibility. It is our political responsibility to tell and teach and sing and shout to all creatures that food is good.
Your recovery does not have to look like mine. You don't even have to be in recovery -- ultimately, what you do with your body is your business, and I wish you well. But how you communicate to people in general, including me, is my business. And cw'ing food is, whatever your intentions, a public political statement about what you believe food is.
As my dear friend put it, content warnings and trigger warnings were developed as tools to engage with something in a safer manner; they were not developed as tools to not engage. We have, as a culture, drifted. I feel the examples at the start of this post demonstrate clearly that requesting or implementing cw isn't just about you. It is, whether you like it or not, a communication to others about what ought to be hidden around you and in general.
Let me put in the clearest possible terms: a space that asks or expects me to cw food is a space asking me to participate in another person's eating disorder.
I do not wish to be asked to participate in others' eating disorders. I do not want to participate in building culture where food is gross, to be hidden, and to be censored. Eating disorders, hard kinks, death, CSA, blood -- these things are not the same as food.
This is about public health. This is about fat liberation. This is about everything.
Eating disorders are taught socially; they're one of those few examples where social contagion is like, real, and a reasonable method of inquiry. Trans women have a huge problem in teaching and spreading this to each other. I think we have a responsibility to teach each other and communicate and sing to each other that food is good, that a good relationship with food is possible. I don't think we do too well at that, generally. I'm so glad this video by MissKay has changed some people's lives. We need more of it.
Look, in your space, it's your rules. If you ask me to cw:food in your discord server or whatever, I will simply not talk about food; unless you explicitly encourage people to discuss food while also cw'ing it, that is what you are asking of me. I will likely spend as little time there as possible. In my own spaces, I will not tag or cw food. If that means you are not going to participate in a space of mine, I feel genuine regret, sadness, and responsibility. Like, that's a way I can't welcome you in, and that's not something I want. But I have a political and moral imperative to talk about food openly, freely, and lightly, to share explicitly and demonstrate implicitly that food is good like breathing is good and air is good and revolution is good and dance is good.
I will not give up on that in my own house.