New Year Same Shit- thoughts from the fatosphere

My new years resolution this year was to unfollow people who post about their diets on social media. It is going so well. I feel lighter, happier and less anxious. I don't feel guilty.

Examples
'Look how much weight I've lo-' *UNFOLLOWS*
'Been at the gym since 6am #eatcle-' *UNFOLLOWS*
'Look at this Jamie Oliver article about how poor people are fat and stupi-' *UNFOLLOWS*

Why am I doing this?
-It took me years to unlearn the idea that it's okay to judge other people's bodies. (FYI- you should never criticise people's bodies in the street, especially not around children)
-It took me years to learn that I do not deserve to be judged, ridiculed or bullied for my body. (Because of the normalised aforementioned public shaming I'd witnessed)
-It's an daily fight to treat my fat disabled body with compassion & love rather than hatred and fear.
-Some of us don't have have a middle ground to rest on. Diets lead us to crying over orange segments because we don't know exactly how many calories are in one. They damage our health even whilst making us look thinner.

Unfollowing people who aren't there yet isn't me not liking other people's desire to look or feel a certain way, it's me not being up for reading about how they strain their bodies to get there. Lets be honest, lots of people (even fat people) get feelings of superiority when restricting their food. Judgement becomes second nature and rather than making subjective reasonable decisions about what they feel like eating- they eat a meal that they don't enjoy in order to deprive their body into losing fat. Now sat, unhappy, at a table amongst the people they love, they are preoccupied with their second salad of the day. And of course, when other people begin to tuck into carbohydrates they get annoyed and resentful and judge the choices and bodies of those around them.

I know, I've been there. And I'm not a terrible person so I know it's not just me who falls into that kind of behaviour.

In real life situations this becomes more difficult. The other day I was in a local shop buying food for a night in front of the TV with my partner (don't tell Jamie Oliver guys, we know how much he dislikes working class people having TV's and junk food). The sales assistant separated my items into two piles pushed the first towards me and said
'This is not healthy' then pushed the second towards me and said
'This is healthy'.
I know. Fuck him, right? Anyway so I'm stood there looking at this man and I see my options as
a. Challenge him by trying to convince him I am not an evil fat but a good fat.
b. Challenge him by telling him that he is wrong to lecture fat people he doesn't know about their food.
c. Do nothing.

To my shame, I picked c. He took this as an invitation to explain to me that chocolate is bad for you and whilst I frowned at him, stood in silence and stonewalled him as he patted his flat stomach and said
'Look at me, nice and thin because I don't eat so much chocolate' it struck me.
The reason the social media resolution is so beautiful and simple isn't because I'm in denial. I know who I am, what I look like & what people think. I get told (sometimes literally told) everyday all day in situations where I can't simply walk away or ignore the person telling me.
So accessing a fat shame free social media space is the least I can do to take care of myself.

This isn't selfishness.
It's self preservation.

"I turn a lot of heads, I turn a lot of stomachs" what it's like when you're not the object of desire

A friend on Facebook posted this article by Sarah Einstein and my response to it feels bigger than I could reasonably call 'a status'. In the article Einstein talks about her experience of being an older, less physically attractive wife to a younger, more physically attractive man. The two speak freely about their situation- he is not attracted to her body and she is working through her negative feelings about this. He is however attracted to her mind and she feels good about this. 


Like Sarah Einstein '(...)beautiful has always been beyond me. If people find me so, it’s only after they’ve come to know me. (...) I minded this quite a lot in my teens, when it seemed that only beautiful people mattered, that it was a prerequisite for a good life.' But more than her writing about how she doesn't turn heads or has always been plain, I find I turn plenty of heads. I have always repulsed people (especially men) and can't walk down a street without an extended look. Hardly go a day without comments being made  about me. On my first day of my current job my boss gave me diet advice. I get comments about my unattractiveness online a lot (A LOT). And why is this? Well, it's not because I'm plain, I wish I was plain! Plain would be a godsend.


 By conventional standards I am deeply ugly (in part due to my being a fat person, in part a hairy mixed white/arab woman, I have a heavy brow, a giant chin and a strangely cartoonish look). I also have large disfigurements on my body. I can say these things. I can say them and know that they are true to society's standards but not absolute fact. I spent many years feeling like it wasn't my job to be beautiful, I rebelled against beauty, wore sexy clothes on Wednesday mornings without waxing my eyebrows. I took a few years out to readjust what I expected of my body and myself. 


Somewhere down the line I began to feel my subversion of norms was actually, very attractive. I am not easy on the eyes, my presence requires space and attention & work. It always has, but importantly I stopped trying to make myself smaller & I started occupying space in my own life.



When I was seventeen a (frankly mediocre) man once said to me 'I think about us being together. Usually I go for good looking women but you've got this intellect'. 
but you've got this intellect.
He's married now, to a beautiful woman, a friend actually. And I hope at least for her that he has let go of the abstract standard beauty he had decided it was his job to enforce on women. 

Though this statement stung (stings, even after eight years) I can see where he was coming from.I can see why she is his wife. I can see why I am not. I can see why Sarah Einstein is doing herself a favour by working through her feelings on her desirability.


I'm not Sarah Einstein. I'm a queer, fat, disabled and working class person. I'm also polyamorous. I work really hard to undo the messages society has taught me about myself (in the full knowledge that not everyone I sleep next to has bothered to do the same). I try my best to avoid toxic media messages, I look at myself naked in the mirror even on the days I don't want to. I read books written by other fat people. I shout at men who harass me in the street. I call out abusive behaviours in the queer scene (usually to my own exclusion and suffering). I take myself on decadent dates. I eat in public. I talk about sex. I care more about Janelle Monae than Jeremy Clarkson. I have several sexual and romantic partners. I cut toxic people out my life (where safe and possible to do so). I do most of my online interacting in explicitly queer femme spaces and the people whose opinions I listen to are mainly other fat working class femmes.



But something is rotten in the state of Denmark (my life). On a daily basis I feel my relationships (despite my attempts to work against it) have been/are still highly impacted by the thinking that my body is unsexy, undesirable and that my merit (smash merit tbh) is based purely in how much I can perform the role of funny fatty and clever prole.  I know lots of other people I know feel the same. And I want to tell you- it is not your job to fill in the deficit others consider your body to make with with, intellect or entertainment. Beautiful, thin, young people are allowed to be vapid & so are you.



The other day I was thinking about polyamory and the very real and harmful way in which people stack, hierachalise and demote their romantic/sexual partners. Polyamory is supposed to an alternate method of loving and dating to the typical white heterosexual nuclear family of Western economic creation. It's not a massive surprise that it ends up reinforcing a lot of the really shitty dynamics that already exist. I can't tell you how many times I found myself pushed out of relationships by people who were more conventionally attractive than me. You see in our relationships there's no need to break up, we can just invest more time in the people we think gain us more social capital. And slowly us uglies fade away.



And I'm sorry Sarah, but I'm just not as strong as you, I can't make peace with being the person who is the last resort date (or friend, femmerades, let's not pretend we aren't stuck doing the dishes whilst the cool andro and masculine people gain queer points by misquoting Marx). I can't make peace with my body being a barrier or a hurdle for people to love me. 



Me stating this doesn't mean it isn't something that effects me. If only acknowledging this shit meant it went away. I assure you, I'm well aware that all my relationships are subject to my partners not finding someone more attractive and thinner. And yeah, I spend a lot of my time stuck in scarcity mentality (warning on this link for discussion and take down of dieting).  Reading Einstein's article I felt deeply emotional at the passage 'In our early days, before my husband could articulate the ways in which he both did, and did not, feel desire for me, we sometimes fought about our sex life. I’m tired of always having to be the one who makes the first move, I’d say, and do you think I’m ugly, and of course are you sure you love me? (...) And we’d make love that night because he’d reach for me, and then not again—sometimes for weeks—until I reached for him.' because man, I know those feels. And it's not just about sex because as other people who are reminded daily by the behaviour of partners, friends and family- we all know that it's difficult to feel loved by someone who to all intents and purposes feeds our self-loathing. I feel like we (fat femmes, working class women) wake up every day and exist, fight through family meals and obnoxious men and horrible media messages about ourselves. We are strong. But your oppressive body politics are your issue and something you need to work through to be safe to date us. It's not about education it's about work. Your pseudo sex positive 'preferences' don't exist in an apolitical vacuum. 
 

A while back a friend who was having a difficult time read me this article by Derek Sivers entitled 'No more yes. It's either HELL YEAH! or no' (warning there for overly enthusiastic straight dude). We need to be 100% clear that being fat doesn't make you unsexy and being older doesn't make you undesirable and being attractive in a non-conventional manner isn't an excuse for a lack lustre approach to us or our bodies. Equally, the kyriarchal bullshit that slips out the mouths of your partners and family is no excuse for a half-arsed approach to loving yourself. It will hurt when the person you were filling in time for (shout out at this point to Samantha Peterson for writing this amazing poem) comes along and they are thinner, and funnier(although funnier is unlikely) than you. They are literally you lite. It will hurt and then it won't. It is not evidence. It does not confirm anything other than the person who pushed you aside is a grade A trumpet. You do not have to spend another moment being pushed aside or undesired. I could tell you that I will always find beauty in the piece of you that they recoiled from, and I will, but the most important thing is that we find ourselves worthy. Even when how we feel about ourselves is negated by someone we love. Sarah Einstein's article registered with me in several ways, and I know that what she is saying is important and true and sad and beautiful. But for me, it's not the end of the story. 

If nothing else- it is a lot of work to be the person holding up both (or all) sides of a relationship. Call me an entitled millenial (or whatever bullshit term people are using to describe young women who they disagree with these days) but I'm not willing to hedge my future happiness on an Ann Summer's catalogue & the hope that I find someone who tolerates my powerful, exciting body.


 You cannot validate yourself through other people. And if they leave you in the fruit bowl in hope of finding less bruised fruit, then- fuck them. Or rather, don't. They are not your safety.

Lately I have been writing things down to make sense of them, I have been reading more in order to improve my writing and in my reading I found these words. I repeat them to myself when ever I feel devalued by someone I love, or am invested in

'you can't make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful something not everyone knows how to love.' 
-Warsan Shireh
For women who are difficult to love

This year my birthday present to me...IS ME

I know, I know, that sounds super cheesy and a bit hippie right? But there is definitive proof me and birthdays don’t get on well (*see at bottom of page for self pitying list) and I think I know why. It seems to me that birthdays are another front where my inability to surround myself with loving and respectful people, or (as suggested by my therapist) my inability to consider myself wholly worthy of (and demand) a decent level of respect sees me spending every August and most of September with a low sinking feeling in my stomach. The pressure is on to organise ‘A Thing’ or have ‘A Thing’ organised for me.

Suddenly Facebook events become a rite of passage for validation. Sentimental baby pictures taped up on lampposts are a necessity and ideally you have your own hash-tag. Because of this I am nervous. I am neurotic. I am 100% sure that everybody hates me and I am going to spend my birthday in another family's caravan, resented and alone. People like drinking, but I don't drink. Queers are supposed to be able to smoke weed and drink gin, but I have found myself deeply & unfashionably sober since the age of 21 (and constantly excluded for it). We're supposed to spend our birthdays being showered with gifts by our (presumably wealthy) families. But that's not really how stuff goes for me either. If nothing else we're supposed accept this yearly occurrence with grace and dignity. But I seem to be stuck with grace and dignity's working class cousins- money problems and anxiety. The resonating pressure of those two words 'supposed to' means that by early September I am a mess.I have only ever had one friend who seems to have the organisational skill and reckless determination to tackle me and my birthday phobia, who has listened to me cry from bed after being let down by friends, who has rang me up every year since I was 17 and said ‘So what are we doing for your birthday?', who made sure I was never forgotten never invisible on my birthday (it’s you, Lucy, in case you’re wondering) and whilst I truly love her for it, those aren’t very good odds are they? One person out of hundreds?

Don’t get me wrong when I say me and birthdays don’t get on. I mean there are good elements of all the birthdays listed below (I mean, who wants to speak to humans anyway, goats are way cooler) and I have had good birthdays. When I was little, birthdays were magical. I got to dress up in a BIG POOFY DRESS and wear a ribbon on my head. I got shiny toys and I got to see family. But most of all, the loving attention that was laid upon me made me feel replenished, special and capable. People being happy that you were born is like, a pretty nice indicator.But when you're not living the dream life (not even on instagram), when 'Suddenly I see' by KT Turnstall doesn't play as you walk down the street, when maybe not everyone is overly excited about the fact that you still exist, where does that attention come from?

I am a common, fat, womanish person with holes in my shoes and no postgraduate degree who doesn't take sh*t from people. Societal norms dictate that I am not first in line for loving attention. So what do I do? Well here comes the super cheesy idea- maybe I give myself that attention? (Not in that way, although maybe, I mean, self-love right?) Maybe you could give it to yourself too? After all, for those of us who are pushed out of spaces, spoken over in our social groups and sidelined at work is there really any other option?

Here is my action plan

1. Take it from Akua Naru “self love is the very first romance”
Everyday I am trying my best to remind myself that I am in a life long relationship with myself and that I am a gift that only improves with age. Every year I know more, try new things, meet new people, and achieve new things. Even if it’s getting out of bed, making it to work, writing this blog post. I am reminding myself that the aging process is not negative and that I am a worthy person all year round.

2. Forgiveness is a virtue
Forgiving myself for being imperfect in a world that demands an oppressive standard, forgiving myself for not doing enough work or forgetting to pick up milk. I am doing my best to look upon myself with forgiving eyes because like it or not, I am stuck with myself for the long haul. Forgiveness is difficult when you have no money and limited prospects. Forgiveness is difficult when you are unhappy with your place in the queerosphere, the workplace, the family and society. Forgiveness is a process, and it will probably take me the rest of my life, but guilt will ruin the rest of my life & I know which I'd rather be working towards.

3. Enjoying the ride
Everything I achieved I achieved in this body with this brain. When I am distracted by negative and toxic messages about my self worth I am being drained of my energy. Energy to be an attentive partner, energy to be a supportive colleague, energy to organise politically, energy to confront the trauma in my past. I have started looking at baby photos. I have started making lists of my adventures. I have started spending time with the old friends who I can laugh with at shared memories. But most of all I have started have started celebrating my life in its current state, no apologies. Being at war with myself is not sustainable. If I am working towards living & forgiving (as in points one and two) then this point to say that I must also work towards surviving and thriving. 

Me (far right) running whilst fat

This year I am my own birthday present. I am ensuring that I lavish myself with loving attention, that I feel replenished. This year I am fat, and worthy. Disabled and capable. Anxious and loud. Sober and entertaining. Ugly and beautiful. Serious and hilarious. Working class and yes, probably a little bit more intelligent than you.This year I am imperfect, my own little state of anarchy. It's not all planned out. I'm not looking forward to a holiday or a promotion, and it's highly likely that I'm not going to be 'achieving' things in the way that I'm 'supposed to'. But I'll make do with what I've got and what I've got has a lot of potential. This year I am wearing a BIG POOFY DRESS and a ribbon in my hair. And even if I spend the day on my own, or don't hear from family, or things don't go to plan, this day doesn't define me. It's not a test, not another chance to flaunt my social capital. It's enough to just get a year older and still be alive. I am taking responsibility for myself and that is scary, yeah. But god, the odds of getting through the month are so much better when I’m not at war with the person in the mirror.

*Self Pitying List 1. There was the year when I spent my birthday on a family trip in Wales with some family members, wandering lonely and only comforted by the presence of goats, stranded with a little family I wasn’t really a part of (seriously you wanna see the pictures from the disposable camera taken on that holiday, a picture of me with a dog, a picture of some rabbits, a picture of a pony, some more rabbits, the cloudy Welsh sky, a goat, two goats, three goats). 2. There was the year I spent my birthday in bed crying after being let down by a friend. 3. There was the year a parent forgot how old I was. 4. There was the year a family member forced me to have a ‘tea party’ against my will & when they then proceeded to get drunk and to flail around the house to a soundtrack of Bob Marley and my father saying (louder than he thought) ‘doesn’t she (me) have any friends?’. 5. There was the year I became '& co' at a joint party. 6. There was the year my foster mother forced me to spend my birthday watching her cry in a KFC car park, and gave me a box of chocolates & and old bottle of perfume in the gift bag I gave her some Mother’s Day presents in. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not about the money or the gifts, but she got a bloody grant on my birthday. 7. There was the year all my ‘friends’ at my primary school didn’t come to my birthday sleepover because I was the fat kid with a single mum and we lived in a council house. 8. There was the year when I had the flu & a family member organised a meal in the local Italian restaurant & shouted at me for not dressing up enough so I spent the day half crying. 9. There was the year when I threw myself a party, had a panic attack and thought I was dying. 10. There was the several years I lost out to aggressive, careless, cruel or controlling partners, illness, self loathing. 11. There was the many years where my birthday was just a way to keep the electricity meter going, just a token from people who offered no further support during the rest of the year.

On women only train carriages

I often utilise women only spaces (officially ones or unofficial ones) to avoid harassment in public & at social events (toilets, gyms, kitchens at parties, clothes shops) and, you know what? It works. The issue of public transport is the issue of choice. Now, it would be real simple if you and your buddies could make the honourable choice to stop flexing your metaphorical members in a cat call-off on a Friday night, but my experience has concluded that you can’t. So the idea of women only coaches on trains and tubes (proposed for consultation with women by Jeremy Corbyn) is one simple (by no means 100% solve-all option to give women a choice to be in a carriage with no men in it. Now, whilst there may be problems with this idea (that would be useful  for women to discuss together) men have taken to twitter to air their disgust at this policy idea. 

I have been harassed on public transport since the age of 14. Telling me that this ‘could easily happen to men’ even though it doesn’t is telling me that I, at age 14 on the train from Southport to Appley Bridge deserved to be cornered and & have middle aged men interrogate me about body.

Because the truth of the matter is in the last eleven years I have grown to expect to be sexually harassed and assaulted on public transport with very little support from other passengers. And when that support comes it is usually from other women.

Every time I have been harassed on public transport it has been (to my knowledge) by a man 99.9% of these instances the man has been white 99.9% of instance he has been unchallenged.

-It was a man who repeatedly tried to touch me on an empty platform in Liverpool when I was 21.

-It was a man who harassed me on a weekly basis on the 395 bus from Ormskirk to Skelmersdale, who got annoyed when I refused to speak to him and followed me part of the way home when I was 19.

-It was a man who rubbed his genitals on my hip on the London Underground when I was 18.

-It was a man who intercepted another man who was drunkenly propositioning me at Ormskirk bus station only to then sexually harass me for the entire journey home when I was 22. Imagine that- getting sexually harassed whilst you’re being sexually harassed.

-It was a group of boys (age 12-16) who spat at me, threw food and drinks at me & chanted names at me every morning on the school bus in Shevington when I was 14.

-It was a man who touched my body without my consent on the 143 bus in Manchester when I was 23. And who got the funny looks when I shouted over to my friend  ‘Ew this man is trying to grope me’? Oh yeah, me.

-It was a man who rubbed his thigh against my leg and read over my shoulder on the bus last night.

-It was a group of four men who made comments about my fat body this morning at the coach station.

I am 25.

I have been spat at, cornered, followed, groped, shouted at, whispered to, blocked from moving, stared at, spoken about, had pictures taken of me, been called names, been coerced into conversation, been sexually shamed & had my belongings confiscated.

I have tried ignoring it, challenging, discussing it, reporting it, shouting back, glaring, asking other passengers for help & physical confrontation.

Any whilst it might hurt a few feelings for men who have decided that this is ‘segregation’ (which is not only pretty flagrant use of a racially charged word but just horrifically incorrect) or that ‘all carriages should be harassment free’ (yeah, they should, but erm, they aren’t & I don’t see you looking up from your copy of the Telegraph to challenge other men on their behaviour) I can’t help but feel cheated.

Yet again men’s views are privileged above women’s safety and autonomy. That same privilege that comes into play when a man decides his desire to touch a woman comes before her permission. Your feelings are hurt?  Your FEELINGS are hurt. Fine. That doesn’t make your beliefs correct. This isn’t Dawson’s Creek. This is the real world. And I have a life time of research called ‘Being a Woman on Public Transport’ to support my ideas.

So I’m sorry if the idea that women want to be safe from the daily barrage of crap you throw at us is hurtful. It seems so many of you are moved to tweet, maybe whilst on public transport, maybe whilst ignoring the awkwardness of a woman being harassed three seats down.

I am tired of pretending to be on the phone, pretending to know other women on public transport to defuse harassment situations and most of all I am tired of pretending to care about your feelings. Close your legs,  get your hand off my thigh, log off twitter and shut up.

SPAnswers- gender(queer), fatphobia, abstinence & polyamory.

Q.How do I explain to feminists that I respect that it's oppressive to deny that fatphobia/thin privilege is a thing?

A.The problem here is that feminists come in all different shapes and sizes, and by that I don’t mean they are varying in weight (although they are), but rather that they hold very different values.

The one thing I think most self-defined feminists have in common is their belief in equality and that all people should be treated equally. In detail that means that regardless of gender, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity all people should be treated equally economically, socially and legally. And if it extends to all that, then it should extend to weight & size.

With that in mind a feminist should, in theory, want someone who is ‘fat’ to be equal to someone who is ‘thin’. In our society that unfortunately isn’t true. If I, as a self-defined fat person, could walk into a high street shop and know they had my size, or if I could not worry about fitting into the rides at Alton Towers, or if I could go to the doctors for a flu jab and not come out with a leaflet about weight loss then yeah, sure, I’d agree that people are equal regardless of weight. Anyone who can do all that has thin privilege: the luxury of going a day without thinking about their weight and size.

Fatphobia is the reason I can’t do that stuff – it is the constantly reinforced idea that fat people are lazy, unhealthy slobs and as such clothes manufacturers don’t need to produce clothes in their size and doctors don’t need to understand underlying issues because after all, they’ve brought it on themselves haven’t they? It’s the treatment of overweight people as too stupid to understand ‘move more, eat less’ (even though it’s not always that simple). It’s the treatment of overweight people as sub-human.

No one likes to admit they have privilege, or that privilege even exists. It makes most of us feel a bit dirty. So I would reassure whomever you’re trying to talk to about this issue that it’s okay to feel like that, and that we all have some privilege. I would then try to open a dialogue about why they deny fatphobia and thin privilege, or why they think it’s not oppressive to do that. Perhaps ask them what they think the reason they don’t stock a size 18 in every shop is. Because there’s not enough shelf space to have all those sizes? Because there’s not enough demand for size 18s? Because size 18 people *want* their own shop where they can pay twice the price for specialist clothes? If they can see there is no reason for this except to make certain people feel unequal then the next step is to accept the inequality exists and accept that denying it, as denying any inequality, is oppressive.

Q. I've never felt especially attached to my gender identity (outside of the ascriptive shit that I get from most of society); I'm wondering what does it feel like to be gender queer (or how did you know you were GQ)?

A. I’d like to preface this by saying there is no one, common genderqueer experience, nor is there a “right” way to be genderqueer. That being said, this is my experience of it:

I'm AFAB (assigned female at birth) and still identify fairly closely with that; I use female pronouns, I identify as a woman - though a genderqueer one - and my presentation is decidedly femme (gender identity and gender presentation are different things, of course, but for me they are linked).

I started exploring my gender identity when I was around 17, after I discovered feminism and queer theory and began to question the gender binary. I went through a range of identities, trying to find where I fit – bigender, agender, genderfluid… but none of them felt right. I eventually found that what I feel most comfortable with is the broadness and freedom that I feel ‘genderqueer’ gives me. For me, being genderqueer is part of my radical and political queerness, and it affords me absolute freedom in my self-expression and identity.

Q. pip- how can you do abstinence and polyamoury, surely those are two conflicting lifestyles

A. Although I practised abstinence at a time in my life i didn't self define as polyamorous, I don't feel like they're conflicting. Abstinence was a decision (seperate from my experience of asexuality) to take some time away from erotic behaviour so that I could rebuild and reaccess my relationship to my sex. This allowed me to develop a healthier relationship with sex.
Polyamory as a relationship orientation doesn't mean sex with many people (although it doesn't rule that out) it means multiple relationships (relationships can be formed on sex, kink, romantic attraction or a mixture).
My ability to be a 'good' sexual partner (e.g. understanding, patient, relaxed, unexpectant) comes from my ability to maintain a healthy personal relationship with sex which I personally used abstinence as a tool to allow myself room to develop.
I'm certain that should I decide to become abstinent for a period of time (to allow myself space to learn to be understanding, patient, relaxed and unexpectant with myself) now, anyone I'm sexually involved in would support my decision to do so.

Got a question about this post or about gender, sexuality or relationships? Ask it anonymously at- http://ask.fm/SPAnswersquestions and have it reviewed and answered by a team of fabulous people.