Does having an eating disorder justify being >!fatphobic!

TW fatphobia

This is a question I’ve recently had to think about a lot. My whole life I’ve never been fatphobic and I really don’t understand people who are. Even once I developed an eating disorder and consider being extremely underweight as the ideal body type, I still never am and never would be fatphobic. Maybe this is because I know what it’s like to be overweight, but even at my lowest weight I still couldn’t understand people who bully people just for their weight?

However, recently I found out a close friend of mine is extremely fatphobic. They follow a lot of fatspo accounts where all they do is post normal people going about their lives and say HORRIBLE things about them, just because they are overweight (these are all edtwt accounts too so I am assuming this friend also has an eating disorder and is not just fatphobic for fun 💀).

I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt at first, thinking maybe they followed these accounts for a different reason, but over time they just kept following more and more of these accounts so I can’t really defend them at this point.

So I’ve been questioning, is this something I can say isn’t their fault because they are disordered? Is it something they can’t control just like many other aspects of having an ed? If it is a symptom of their ed and they can’t control it, do I have the right to judge them for it?

But I still can’t understand how it can be justified to think someone doesn’t deserve to live just because they are at a weight you dislike. In my opinion, not wanting to be a high weight is fine as long as you keep that part of your disorder to YOURSELF, and not bully and say horrible things to other people. The way I see it is, these people have nothing to do with your disorder so why bring them into it??

I’m going to be honest, I took this discovery kind of personally, because like I said I’ve been overweight most of my life, so I know first hand what it’s like to live in a body society deems disgusting. It’s what led me to develop an ed (which is just another form of suffering). My friend meanwhile, has never been overweight so for them to do this feels even more awful, how can they say these horrible things about these people when they themselves have never known how isolating and hard it is to live in that kind of body? It also makes me think that they’re thinking these horrible things about me as well.

But I am always curious about other people’s ideas and perspectives so I want to know—could it be that fatphobia when in the context of ed’s is justified and I shouldn’t hold it against this friend?