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Who is the pig in this scenario, exactly?
By Rebecca Jane Stokes — Written on Oct 26, 2017
It's pretty hard these days to look around anywhere and not see fat women being mistreated. Just yesterday, in fact, I accidentally bumped up against a man's backpack during a crowded train ride and his response was to call me a "fat b*tch."
Denigrating a woman because of her size? That's something the people of our country do really, really well.
But the perils that come when one committing those two unforgivable crimes of being both fat AND female can be far greater than your run-of-the-mill street harassment from strangers.
Don't believe me?
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to a "fun and creative" sexual practice known as hogging.
What is hogging, you might ask? Here's the definition:
Hogging is a charming little game that involves men heading out to see how many fat women they can have sex with, recording and tracking the results of what they refer to as their "kills", then comparing tallies of overweight and obese women later on with their friends... all in the hope of winning a cash prize.
Yes, that's right ladies, you heard me correctly: a cash prize!
Sarah Fenske wrote a canonical essay on the topic titled "Big Game Hunters" describes the way these men who refer to themselves as "hoggers" justify their undeniably unethical "hobby":
"Many hoggers admit to having few female friends. They see women as alien creatures whose motives are suspect. It's only a small leap to rationalize their piggish behavior by insisting that women are just as bad. The excuses are many: Women are all hunting for a sugar daddy anyway. They mock men for their small size or limited stamina. In a hogger's way of thinking, it's only right that men return the insult."
To find out more directly from the hogger's mouth, I took it upon myself to reach out to a few men who consider themselves loud-and-proud hoggers and asked them for some firsthand insight about their penchant for the game. They agreed on the condition that I keep their identities anonymous, so despite my burning desire to list their full names, addresses and places of employment, I'm going to stick by my journalist's word and simply call them Thing 1 and Thing 2.
Me: "Is there a standardized version of hogging? Like, are there rules everyone has to follow?"
Thing 1: "I mean, I know there are people who have, like, a whole complicated system, but for me and my friends it's simple: isolate, conquer, rate, and report."
Me: "Isolate and conquer, huh?"
Thing 1: "Not in a scary way. In a sexy way. Like, identify a woman of size."
Me: "You can say fat, I have no issue with that word."
Thing 1: "You find one that you want, you start talking to her, buy her a drink, get her away from her friends, and then you make your move."
Me: "Like, in the bar or club or wherever?"
Thing 1: "Yeah, if you're lucky."
Me: "Are you usually lucky?"
Thing 1: "I mean, I do okay!"
Thing 1 and his friends deem the winner of their hogging competition to be any man who manages to have sex with a fat woman that night, whether in public or in private. For Thing 2 and mates (because, fun fact: there happens to be a distinct but similar subculture of hoggers in Australia) the rules are slightly more complicated.
Thing 2: "It took us forever but we have this score sheet we created. It's a points-based system..."
Me: "So, kissing..."
Thing 2: "Kissing does not count as anything."
Me: "Grabbing her breasts?"
Thing 2: "That's one point. Fingering her is also one full point. Having intercourse is two points."
And so on. You get the idea. Every hogger out there has their own way to hog, and none of it gets much more intellectually stimulating or complex than any of the above.
One hogger quoted by Fenske perhaps summed it all up best when he said:
"It's not the way my mom said I should be to women, but it works. I don't make the rules, I just play the game."
See? Being a fat woman is just as difficult as it is to be a thin woman! I mean, at least when it comes to dealing with some of the most deeply disturbing behaviors of men.
The fat woman in me wants to point out how awful this, wants to really rally for the fat acceptance movement! I want to rail on about how these men are treating these women they call just vile names as "hogs" and "kills" as sexual objects to be humiliated for their own amusement as a punishment for their size, because, yes, the male participants in this game have no problem admitting they feel it's okay to have sex with these women under the veil of such deceitful purposes because, hey, they're lucky to be getting laid!
As one charming fellow online put it:
"Man. They can be the best, they don't get it often, so they are ready to roll. That is only true of course if you can acutally (sic) penetrate... I have had problems."
Of course, you have...
But you know what? I don't think this problem is one that is truly specific to fat women. I think it's just one of the myriad problems associated with being a woman and having to contend with the daily specter of men.
Look, please do not get me wrong. I'm not a proponent of writing off entire groups of people with sweeping generalizations, but I can't be the only woman in America right now facing some version of existential despair over the fact that men still have such a ridiculously hard time treating us as what we are: their fellow human beings.
Many men do sh*tty things to thin women they have sex with. Many men do sh*tty things to fat women they have sex with.
The only way in which I can distinguish hogging from say, keeping tabs among your guy friends of how many women from a particular sorority you can sleep with, is that when you "hog", you deliberately con a woman into thinking you find her beautiful and desirable when, in fact, you view her as an embarrassing joke. But even then, you managed to get an erection going for her, right? Shouldn't that at very least make fat women MORE appealing — the fact that we can be both punchline and orgasm-givers? Not as far as hoggers, and far too many men, are concerned.
Women as a gender have a difficult enough time as it is. When you lump fatness into the equation, things become infinitely more challenging.
Because a fat woman's person-hood is essentially removed, she becomes less of a human being, less of someone's daughter, and/or less of someone's mother, at least in the eyes of an abuser or an assailant. And lately, it's feeling more apparent than ever that the way many men treat far too many women is all about removing or ignoring their person-hood.
Who knew that the thing that could bring fat women and thin women together would be the fact that so many men treat us all like garbage? Unity, right?
But man, at what a cost!
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a sex, humor and lifestyle writer living in Brooklyn, New York with her cat, Batman. She hosts the sex, love, and dating advice show, Becca After Dark on YourTango's Facebook Page every Tuesday and Thursday at 10:20 pm Eastern. For more of her work, check out her Tumblr.