Cat Pausé | |
---|---|
![]() Pausé in 2016 | |
Born | Caitlin Clare Pausé May 29, 1979 Midland, Texas, U.S. |
Died | March 25, 2022 42) Palmerston North, New Zealand | (aged
Alma mater | Texas State University (BA) Texas Tech University (MA, PhD) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Fat studies, public health |
Institutions | Massey University |
Thesis | |
Doctoral advisor | Gwendolyn T. Sorell |
Caitlin Clare "Cat" Pausé ( /pɔːˈzeɪ/ paw-ZEI) [1] (May 29, 1979 – March 25, 2022) was an American academic specialising in fat studies and a fat activist. From 2008 until her death in 2022 she was a senior lecturer at Massey University in New Zealand.
Caitlin Clare Pausé was born in Midland, Texas on 29 May 1979. [2] [3] [4] She completed a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at Southwest Texas State University in 1999. She attained her Master of Arts at Texas Tech University in 2002, and completed her Doctorate of Philosophy in Human Development at Texas Tech University in 2007. [5] Pausé's doctoral work was done under Gwendolyn T. Sorell and included work on the Adult Identity Development Project. Her dissertation explored weight identity in women who were categorized by health systems as "morbidly obese." [5]
Pausé's scholarship focused on the impact of "fat stigma" on the health and well-being of fat people. She published on "coming out as fat", [6] the barriers to health for fat people, [7] [8] and the role of social media in fat activism and scholarship. [9] [10] [11] She was also interested in "fat pedagogies" [12] and fat ethics.
Pausé was the lead editor of Queering Fat Embodiment (2014). This volume brought together scholarship from various disciplines in order to examine experiences of fat people and intersectionality. [13]
Pausé hosted two international Fat Studies conferences. The first, took place in 2012 and covered topics such as "fat pride", "obesity panic", and teaching children about fatness and fitness. [14] Pausé guest-edited a special issue of the Fat Studies journal on Reflective Intersections. The second conference took place in 2016. and topics covered included "fat embodiment" and public health, the intersections between race and fatness, and how food corporations marketed themselves as addressing childhood obesity. [15]
Pausé was recognised as a public intellectual in the area of fat studies within New Zealand and abroad. Her work was featured in The Huffington Post , [16] Jezebel , [17] and the New Zealand programme 20/20 , among others. She was regularly invited to comment on stories related to fatness by national [18] and international media outlets, including ones in Italy, [19] the United Kingdom, [20] and the United States. [21] Across New Zealand, she spoke to Rotary clubs, district health boards, secondary schools, and other groups. She also spoke to Permian Basin Mensa in the United States. [22] She was the keynote speaker at the Women's Health Action Trust Suffrage Breakfast in 2012 in Auckland. [23]
Pausé believed that disseminating scholarship through social media provided for opportunities to broaden academic spaces, enable the participation of different voices, and address the academy's commitment to social justice. [24] [11] To this end, she maintained a blog, Tumblr, and Twitter account, all named Friend of Marilyn. Pause contributed to other online outlets, such as The Conversation (an online journal that provides information, analysis, and commentary; prepared by scholars for a lay audience), [25] [26] [27] Inside Higher Education, [28] Conditionally Accepted, [29] and the Health at Every Size blog. [30] She also wrote two op-eds for national New Zealand media outlets. [31] [32]
Pausé's research and activism has garnered controversy. Shortly before her death, Steven Crowder, an American conservative comedian, uploaded a video on YouTube of himself infiltrating a 2020 online fat studies conference in which Pausé was involved at Massey University. Crowder, under a made-up name, portrayed himself as a gender-queer fat studies activist and scholar, and presented a fake academic paper that was accepted by the conference. Crowder claimed being accepted without question to the conference showed the "idiocy" of the fat studies field. Comments on the video were critical of Pausé. In response, Pausé's friend and former Tertiary Education Union representative Heather Warren said: "A lot of Cat's research is around how fat bodies and fat people are dehumanised in our society, and the comments online further go to validate that even in death fat people are dehumanised by society and discriminated against by our society." [33] [34]
The Friend of Marilyn podcast began in 2011, hosted by 999AM Access Manawatu. [35] [36] Friend of Marilyn had over 500 regular listeners from across the world. [35] [36] Pausé undertook a world tour in 2015 and 2016 interviewing people from across the world for the show. [35]
Pausé advocated for fat people and claimed that they were discriminated against and deserved the "same rights and dignity" as non-fat people. [37] Her work included speaking about what she perceived as discrimination against fat people in numerous areas of life, including the workplace, [38] [39] what she claimed was a lack of legal protections that fat people were afforded, [40] "fat shaming" in the medical community, [41] and what she called the erasure of fat people's sexuality. [42] [43]
Fuck, Yeah! Fat PhDs was a Tumblr created by Pausé. [44] [16] The Tumblr was created in response to Professor Geoffrey Miller having tweeted that fat people did not have the willpower to complete a PhD program. [45] [17] The tweet prompted backlash, and many individuals wrote to him or his employer to protest his comment. Pausé created Fuck Yeah! Fat PhDs in response.
She explained: [46]
I’m not interested in responding to Dr. Miller. While I appreciate those who want to call him out, and yes he deserves it, I’m more interested in addressing the social narratives in which individual comments like Dr. Miller’s are encouraged. I’m also interested in the structural aspects of fat oppression. I decided that what I wanted to do was to highlight all the amazing fat individuals who are in graduate school, or have completed graduate school – to provide a visual repository for anyone who doubts that fat individuals lack the abilities or qualities to succeed in academia.
Pausé was involved with the Tertiary Education Union at a national level, sitting on the national council as Women’s Vice-President for six years and also academic representative. [47] [48]
At the age of 42, Pausé died suddenly in her sleep at her home in Palmerston North on 25 March 2022. [2] In May 2023, Massey University announced the establishment of a scholarship fund in her memory, endowed by her parents. [49]
Victoria University of Wellington is a public research university in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a constituent college of the University of New Zealand.
The fat acceptance movement is a social movement which seeks to eliminate the social stigma of obesity. Areas of contention include the aesthetic, legal, and medical approaches to fat people.
Massey University is a university based in New Zealand, with significant campuses in Auckland, Palmerston North, and Wellington. Massey University has approximately 27,533 students, 18,358 of whom study either partly or fully by distance. Research is undertaken on all three campuses and people from over 130 countries study at the university. Data from the 2017 annual report shows that 42% of the domestic students are based in Auckland, 38% in Palmerston North and 20% in Wellington.
Maurice Donald Williamson is a New Zealand politician and former diplomat.
Fat feminism, often associated with "body-positivity", is a social movement that incorporates feminist themes of equality, social justice, and cultural analysis based on the weight of a woman or a non-binary feminine person. This branch of feminism intersects misogyny and sexism with anti-fat bias. Fat feminists advocate body-positive acceptance for all bodies, regardless of their weight, as well as eliminating biases experienced directly or indirectly by fat people. Fat feminists originated during third-wave feminism and is aligned with the fat acceptance movement. A significant portion of body positivity in the third-wave focused on embracing and reclaiming femininity, such as wearing makeup and high heels, even though the second-wave fought against these things. Contemporary western fat feminism works to dismantle oppressive power structures which disproportionately affect fat, queer, non-white, disabled, and other non-hegemonic bodies. It covers a wide range of topics such as diet culture, fat-phobia, representation in media, ableism, and employment discrimination.
Charlotte Cooper is a London-based British writer and outspoken advocate for gay rights and fat acceptance.
New Zealand society is generally accepting of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) peoples. The LGBTQ-friendly environment is epitomised by the fact that there are several members of Parliament who belong to the LGBTQ community, LGBTQ rights are protected by the Human Rights Act, and same-sex couples are able to marry as of 2013. Sex between men was decriminalised in 1986. New Zealand has an active LGBTQ community, with well-attended annual gay pride festivals in most cities.
Cathrine Tuivaiti is a netball international who has played for Samoa, New Zealand and Tonga. She represented Samoa at the 2006 Commonwealth Games and the 2007 World Netball Championships, New Zealand at the 2014 Commonwealth Games and Tonga at the 2023 Netball World Cup. During the National Bank Cup era, she played for Northern Force. During the ANZ Championship era, she played for Northern Mystics. She subsequently played for Central Pulse, Adelaide Thunderbirds, Strathclyde Sirens and Severn Stars. In 2022, she was included on a list of the 25 best players to feature in netball leagues in New Zealand since 1998.
Pretty Porky & Pissed Off(PPPO) was a Canadian fat activist and performance art collective based in Toronto, Ontario from 1996 to 2005. They used their bodies as modes of resistance against discriminatory language, cultural, social practices, and policies. Their feminist, queer, and LGBT politics were part of the DIY ethics of punk rock and the Riot Grrrl movement, and feminist activism. PPPO was a Canadian trailblazer in the international fat liberation movement.
Dame Alcyion Cynthia Kiro is a New Zealand public-health academic, administrator, and advocate, who has been serving as the 22nd governor-general of New Zealand since 21 October 2021. Kiro is the first Māori woman and the third person of Māori descent to hold the office.
Sarah Hirini is a New Zealand women's rugby union player. She has played fifteen-a-side and seven-a-side rugby union, as a member of the New Zealand women's national rugby sevens team and New Zealand women's national rugby union team. Hirini was captain of the New Zealand Women's Sevens team that won a silver medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and back-to-back gold medals at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. During her time with the team they won the World Rugby Women's Sevens Series in 2012–13, 2013–14, 2014–15, 2016–17, 2018–19, 2019–20 and 2022–23 as well as the Sevens league title for the 2023-24 season. She was a member of the fifteen-a-side 2017 and 2021 Black Ferns Rugby World Cup winning squads.
In the United States, LGBT youth of colour are marginalized adolescents in the LGBT community. Social issues include homelessness; cyberbullying; physical, verbal and sexual abuse; suicide; drug addiction; street violence; immigration surveillance; engagement in high-risk sexual activity; self-harm, and depression. The rights of LGBT youth of colour are reportedly not addressed in discussions of sexuality and race in the larger context of LGBT rights.
Maia Wilson is a New Zealand netball international. She was a member of the New Zealand teams that won the 2017 Netball World Youth Cup and the 2021 Constellation Cup. She also represented New Zealand at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Wilson made her senior league debut with Central Pulse during the 2016 ANZ Championship season. Since 2017, she has played for Northern Stars in the ANZ Premiership. In both 2018 and 2019, she was the ANZ Premiership top goal scorer. Wilson was a prominent member of the 2019 and 2022 Northern Stars teams that were ANZ Premiership grand finalists. Ahead of the 2021 season, she was appointed Stars captain. Wilson is also a former New Zealand women's basketball international.
Elizabeth Anne Kerekere is a New Zealand politician and LGBTQ activist and scholar. She was elected a member of parliament for the Green Party in 2020, but resigned from the Greens on 5 May 2023, following allegations of bullying within the party. Kerekere remained in parliament as an independent until the 2023 election.
Ayesha Jennifer Verrall is a New Zealand politician, infectious-diseases physician and researcher with expertise in tuberculosis and international health. Since 2020 she has been a Member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for the Labour Party.
Helen Aspasia Petousis-Harris is a New Zealand vaccinologist and associate professor in the Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care at the University of Auckland. She has been involved in research related to vaccination in New Zealand since 1998, with her main areas of focus being vaccine safety and effectiveness. Petousis-Harris has had a variety of lead roles in New Zealand and international organisations that focus on vaccination and is a regular media spokesperson in this field, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shaneel Shavneel Lal is a Fijian-New Zealand LGBT rights activist, columnist and political commentator. Lal is best known for advocating for the ban of conversion therapy in New Zealand.
Rodney Thornton Jackson is a New Zealand medically trained epidemiologist who has had lead roles in publicly funded research focussing on systems to effectively identify risk factors in the epidemiology of chronic diseases, in particular cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). This involved linking large cohort studies to regional and national electronic health databases and enabling the generation of new risk-prevention equations using web-based tools, such as the PREDICT model, to implement, monitor and improve risk assessment and management guidelines. Research on asthma in which Jackson participated influenced decisions made by the New Zealand Ministry of Health, and he has contributed to public debate on dietary risk factors for heart attacks and strokes. Following an evidence-based approach to identification of disparities in medical outcomes for different groups within the New Zealand population, Jackson took a position on racism in the medical sector. In 2020, he became a frequent commentator in the media on the approach of the New Zealand government to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 1999, Jackson has been professor of epidemiology at the University of Auckland.
David Hayman is a New Zealand-based epizootic epidemiologist and disease ecologist whose general multi-disciplinary work focuses on the maintenance of infectious diseases within their hosts and the process of emergence and transmission to humans specifically related to bats. He has gathered data on the relationship between ecological degradation due to anthropogenic actions, and increased pathogen emergence in humans and animals. During COVID-19 he was involved as an expert in several international collaborations, some convened by the World Health Organization, and was a regular commentator in the New Zealand media about the country's response to the pandemic. He has had lead roles in research organisations at Massey University and Te Pūnaha Matatini and was the recipient of the 2017 Rutherford Discovery Fellowship Award. Since 2014 Hayman has been a professor at Massey University.
Gina Annette Cole is a New Zealand writer and lawyer. Her writing is inspired by her experiences as a queer Fijian woman. Her short story collection Black Ice Matter received the award for best first book of fiction at the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. Her first novel Na Viro was published in July 2022.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)