Story. Vision. Values.

Our Story

FEDUP, formerly TFFED, arose from the senior thesis research of former Program and Policy Coordinator Dagan VanDemark. VanDemark, a trans/genderqueer person, had long suspected that their experience struggling with both gender identity and an eating disorder (ED) was far from rare. They sought to find data and resources on the interplay of body dysphoria and dysmorphia, and were confronted with a total lack of information. To assess the gender literacy/trans cultural competency levels of ED care providers, VanDemark called different therapists and facilities on behalf of a hypothetical trans woman friend (knowing trans women face the greatest amount of stigma). They were horrified to find that not one intake professional even knew if their institution accepted or treated transgender people, and they were met with a barrage of invasive, inappropriate and ignorant questions, including asking about VanDemark's “friend's'“ genitalia, sexual orientation, documentation, surgeries and hormones, ability to pass, etc. One therapist even concluded that this woman's “male brain and female brain are at odds, creating an eating disorder.”

This pervasive ignorance is symptomatic of an ED landscape that only caters to the privileged few who can pay for (often cost-prohibitive) treatment, with research generally reifying these ED archetypes of youth, whiteness, cisgender identity, ability, and middle/high-income status; eclipsing the gigantic population of marginalized folx with EDs who don't fit these stereotypes and often fail to seek treatment because of accessibility/affordability issues, a lack of representation in the ED research canon/media, and a lack of cultural competency amongst healthcare professionals. VanDemark founded TFFED to provide accessible, gender-literate community-led healing spaces for trans and gender non-conforming folx, to amplify marginalized voices and experiences, and to develop a standard for trans cultural competency in the ED recovery field.

 

Our Vision

We aim to spearhead the movement of marginalized communities by organizing and advocating for more accessible, affordable and culturally competent ED treatment. We envision representative research, media visibility, intersectionally-educated and gender-literate ED professionals, and financially viable treatment options that speak to our diverse experiences.

 

Our Values

We are committed to the following values and goals; they shape our purpose, our programming and our organizational structure:

  • Firmly situating eating disorders in a social justice context that emphasizes how EDs are caused (genetic pre-disposition aside) by intersectional oppressions of historical and personal trauma produced by a cis-heteropatriarchal, ableist, racist and classist society.

  • Increasing the number of gender-literate/culturally competent ED care providers and treatment facilities, as well as making pathways to traditional treatment more accessible and affordable.

  • Transparency and accountability as well as collective, consensus-based decision making and a non-hierarchical/non-oppressive organizational structure.

  • Harm/behavior reduction and support for individual recovery processes; recovery is a journey and it looks different for everyone. We are not a treatment facility nor a therapeutic practice; we come together to heal ourselves and our community, and we commit to meeting people where they are in their own recovery.

  • De-stigmatizing eating disorders in both queer/trans communities and society at large; promoting visibility and awareness of EDs in our communities and increasing the number of trans/gender-diverse narratives in ED media.

  • Encouraging intersectional, holistic treatment approaches and challenging the medical community to prioritize trans/marginalized leadership.

  • Constantly improving and reforming our internal processes; continuing to learn and listen and centering the experiences and leadership of marginalized folx whose experiences are less frequently heard or represented.