I really understand the harm which abusive words can carry. I am not attempting to minimise the pain of being on the receiving end of verbal, and associated emotional, abuse.

I don't think women should shrug off the pain of verbal abuse or offensive terms. For me, there could be a qualitative difference between words like b**** and c*** and fat. Words which describe our physical being have no bearing on our soul. B**** and c*** say nothing about our being. Knob ends will use words like fat because they want to take away the material reality of women's bodies. £uck them, they are idiots.

As an aside, I don't like the kind of reclaiming of language I see in the LGB community, such as q*ueer or d*yke. Now that I think about it, this might be a contradictory stance. Maybe.

If we don't describe fat women as fat, what other words would we use? Anything else is medicalised or euphemistic. Fat women exist and we have words for ourselves.