The human race faces many dire threats. War, famine, disease, terrorism, giant asteroids, Donald Trump. But the ever-alert readers of the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit know that all these threats pale in comparison to the greatest threat of all. I am speaking, of course, of fat chicks.
In a post with the thoughtful title “Dear obese women I f*king hate you,” a Reddit MGTOW calling himself iamlikethewindbaby outlines his case against these horrible monsters. Speaking fluent SARCASM, he addresses fat chicks directly.
“Thanks for turning average chicks into supermodels and ugly chicks into average chicks,” he declares.
Thanks for filling up my newsfeed with memes about how beautiful fat chicks are. Do you even know how attractiveness is determined? The more healthy and fertile a woman is the more attractive she is. Being obese makes you unattractive, period. F*ck you.
Er, I’m pretty sure attractiveness is determined by whatever the hell people happen to think is attractive. Some people find skinny people attractive; some find fat people attractive; some people don’t pay much attention to weight. There are even a few perverse souls who find Donald Trump attractive, if you can believe that.
Thanks for making a generation of men feel bad about themselves because a fat chick is the best they can do, it’s not their fault 70% of you are overweight.
That’s actually not quite right. According to the most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, the percentage of American women classified as overweight or obese isn’t 70%; it’s 64%. The percentage of men classified as overweight or obese? 74%.
That’s right, fellas; there are more fat dudes than fat chicks in the US.
The percentage of American adults classified as obese? 36% — exactly the same for men and women.
Now, there may be legitimate reasons to wonder if these categories really make sense as they’re currently defined. But one thing is clear: for every fat chick out there fat chick-ing, there’s a fat dude to match.
Thanks for being 400lbs and yet somehow still unable to cook. That’s great. It’s a good thing we did away with those sexist home economics classes.
Dudes, given that you’re all devoted to GOING YOUR OWN WAY and all, shouldn’t you be learning how to cook your own damn dinner?
Thanks for being so fat that being 20lbs overweight isn’t even considered fat anymore. Nothing is sexier than a 5’3 150lb women.
According to some number I found on the internet, the 5’5″ tall Marilyn Monroe saw her weight fluctuate from 115-150 lbs at various points in her adult life. I don’t know why we know this, or if we should, but apparently we do. Here’s a picture of her at one of her more voluptuous moments, in Some Like it Hot.
What a hideous monster!
Thanks for having personalities that match your appearance. It’s important for people’s insides to match their outsides.
Based on iamlikethewindbaby’s personality, I can only assume he looks something like this:
I can’t wait until all your cold-giant-black-hearts explode.
What a lovely fellow.
Iamlikethewindbaby also blames obese women for rising insurance premiums, and snickers a little at the thought of obese women dying before retirement.
It’s true that obesity can increase health care costs and lower life expectancy. But you know what else increases health care costs and lowers life expectancy? Being an angry dickhead.
“There is a direct connection between being constantly angry, competitive, and aggressive, and early heart disease,” notes an article on the “health costs of anger” on mentalhelp.net.
[R]ecent research suggests that men who have poor anger management skills are more likely to suffer a heart attack before age 55 than their more emotionally controlled peers. A separate study indicated that older male subject’s hostility ratings (how hostile and irritable they tend to act towards others) predicted heart disease more accurately than other known risk factors including cholesterol, alcohol intake, cigarette smoking and being overweight. …
The evidence from numerous studies is clear: constant chronic anger, hostility, and aggression raise your risk of developing various deadly forms of heart disease by as much as five times the normal rate. The more hostility you tend to express, the more prone to heart disease you are likely to be.
And the lovely iamlikethewindbaby is hardly the only Reddit MGTOW who fits the angry dickhead profile, as a quick skim through the comments on his post reveals.
Indeed, the lovely fellow who calls himself lordjedi may have cut several weeks off his life expectancy with all the anger in this comment alone:
Not that I haven’t tried a couple times, but my policy for many years has been my bedroom is off limits to fats.
I’m sure the “fats” of the world feel just awful they don’t get to partake of lordjedi’s charms. He continues:
That means no easy money for fatties either. Get a f*cking job, Porkins, if you want to sleep indoors. Every dollar you spend in your short worthless life will be earned by you with your fine arts/wymyn’s studies degree and your $90K student loan debt, while stocking shelves on the 3 AM Walmart shift. Enjoy your Cool Ranch Doritos. Why don’t you f*cking marry them if you love them so much?
If you love your hatred so much, lordjedi, why don’t you marry it? Oh, wait, I guess you have.
MTGOStark, who has clearly never spoken to a woman in the real world, offers this thought.
If being not obese is literally the only thing they have to do in their life to succeed, and they still fail at it (and complain on top), it’s just truly pitiful.
Aanarchist apparently spends much of his Going His Own Way time scanning through profiles on online dating sites.
i see those online profiles where the woman is like 50 lbs overweight and she puts down average. a few extra pounds means 100 lbs overweight. big and beautiful means THAR SHE BLOWS. the funny thing is they want you to ignore their weight, like it has nothing to do with who she is. it’s like she wants you to watch her eat an entire f*cking cake with her bare hands, and treat her as if she’s eating salad and a water.
Huh. That actually sounds like a fun date. Who doesn’t like cake?
Ok, posted before I read Joekster last comment.
@Joekster, I have a BMI greater than 35. My chronic health problems are depression, and a vitamin D deficiency. My A1C, thyroid and all of my other tests come back normal. I eat 1600-1800 calories a day, I interval train 3 days a week and walk everywhere. (I don’t drive) I get 5 servings of veg every day. Hell, I even had a stress echo in June.
and I’m not the only healthy fattie out there. I’m not an anomoly.
Crap on a cracker a study came out this year showing that diet and exercise don’t result in long term weight loss. Let me try to dig that up for you. . .
All I’m finding is the study that followed contestants on the biggest loser. . . http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21538/full#oby21538-bib-0038
but I can keep looking.
I don’t have any behind paywall access to anything, but here’s some hits from just a quick Google search
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/size-profiling-discriminates-against-243037
http://www.research.va.gov/currents/0815-2.cfm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4381543/
Hell, if Joekster is up for fat people talking about their own experiences. . .
https://fathealth.wordpress.com/
My favorite story from my own fat files. (Even more than the undiagnosed vitamin deficiency)
So I’m in for the anual poke and prod and it’s time to get my vitals. Medical assistant is taking my bp. She stares blankly at the sphymo-whatever (I was taught to take bp with one and a stethescope, just dont ask me to spell it) and takes my bp again. Same blank stare. Takes it a third time.
Now at this point I want to offer to take my own bp (if she holds the stethescope I think we could make it work!) but then I remember I’m fat so I ask
“Are you having trouble getting a reading? or is the number something unexpected?”
“It seems. . .really low”
“How low?”
“117/70”
“That’s normal for me. . .”
About 5 microexpressions crossed her face and I swear she looked at me like I was fixing to grow a third head.
By the way, the doctor who put “obesity” down instead of “high blood pressure,” deliberately disregarding the history of high blood pressure I had explicitly mentioned (must have thought I was lying)?
Not only a woman, but a fellow fat woman. Really.
I suffered for over two years with kidney stones because the doctor I first went to when I started having the intermittent excruciating pain in my back (on the right side, right where my kidney is located…) said the pain was probably just related to my SI joint. When I tried to protest that it wasn’t anywhere near my SI joint, nor located where SI joint pain usually refers to (I’m a massage therapist, I know basic anatomy!), she told me straight out “Well, you are a little chubby” and breezed out of the room.
It wasn’t until last summer when I decided to take my pain issues into my own hand that I finally got a correct diagnosis. And even that took work – one of my common symptoms with the pain was constipation, so I went to a gastroenternologist (sp?). He proscribed a colonoscopy, because my symptoms could be caused by cancer/tumors, and personally I’m all about ruling out cancer. And he’d actually really listened to me describe the problem, so I was more willing to follow up on his recommendations. He also ordered some blood tests, and most importantly, a urinalysis. Sure enough, the urinalysis comes back showing traces of blood – small enough amount not to be noticed visually, but large enough to be indicative. Fast forward to the colonoscopy showing nothing and me going to a different primary care physician about the urinalysis. Another test shows the same thing and I got sent to the Urologist.
He orders a CT scan, and that showed SEVEN stones, three in my kidney, and four at points in the tube leading from the kidney to my bladder. A week on medication led to none of them passing, and I got scheduled for surgery right quick.
Turned out there were actually EIGHT stones in there, and the doctor was surprised I had been able to walk at all. In fact, if the problem had gone untreated much longer and more of the stones had left my kidney, they might have fully blocked the tube from the kidney to the bladder, causing way, way worse (and potentially deadly) problems.
And had my first doctor just listened to what I was actually telling her and maybe ordered a urinalysis herself, I might have avoided needing the surgery in the first place. I’ve lost all patiences with doctors who want to blame health issues on weight, especially without actually *talking* and *listening* to patients.
And the BMI can go fuck itself. According to BMI, my ideal weight is something like 130lb. If I weighed 130lb, I’d be missing organs. Or bones.
Sorry for the Teel Deer, it’s just something I have strong feelings about.
You guys know that anecdotes aren’t data, right?
Of course there are healthy fat people. Lots of fat people are healthy. It’s primarily the intersection between obesity and increasing age that obesity-related health complications skyrocket at. Young, otherwise healthy people can get away with being fat without sacrificing their health. Some people can even stay healthy into middle age after a lifetime of obesity. Most can’t though and virtually no obese people live to be elderly. Of all the people who are living to over 100, none of them are fat or spent most of their lives that way. When you’re young and fat all you have and to worry about is joint damage, which can be kept at bay for a long time via strengthening though.
And, no, eating healthily and exercising won’t result in long-term weight loss unless what’s being eaten healthily consists of fewer calories than are being burned through exercise and the ritual is titrated throughout life as one’s caloric demands change. You can gain weight while exercising and eating nutritious foods. That doesn’t mean weight loss is outside an individual’s control.
Being fat is fine if it’s something someone is cool with. What I have a huge issue with is the nonsense about weight loss being inherently dangerous (slow, steady weight loss isn’t remotely dangerous) and a low body fat percentage being impossible to maintain. There are people who want to achieve these things and virtually all of them can! They shouldn’t be told not to bother because other people aren’t interested in doing so.
Fuck off, Marinerachel.
Let’s see, we got calories in/out, threat of death fat comin’ to get us, getting away with something and something something fatties have no will power.
I’ve got bingo. . .what do I win?
@Marinerachel
When both the fat people and the actual doctor in the thread disagree with your health prognoses, shut the fuck up. Also, the UN denotes ‘old age’ as starting at 60. Virtually no obese people live to 60? Is you serious right now? Idiot
I really don’t want to wade into this, but could we maybe lay off Joekster, please? I do not mean “stop disagreeing with him”, if you wish to disagree. I mean there is no need to insult him and accuse him of gaslighting. Whatever you think of his points, the fact is he’s arguing in good faith.
I apologise in advance if it seems like I’m patronising. This thread has fascinating contributions from everyone. I fully understand that the issues involved are of real-life importance and urgency but I don’t see the need for spite.
@Mish
I was actually right about to say, but then the other threads lit up, so I forgot. Joekster said he doesn’t push weight loss on people. He’s said he takes precautions (waiting 2 or 3 visits before mentioning weight, for example) to avoid fat shaming. He’s said the diet he prescribes more about general health than weight loss. He’s said that obesity and illness aren’t causal. The main disagreements seem to be whether or not significant weight loss is possible and, If not (or even if it is), whether it’s good medicine for a doctor to include it as part of a wellness plan for most (any?) patients
As Mish said, he may well be wrong (too skinny/uninformed to accurately comment on voracity), but things are getting pretty prickly. So maybe, just a little, ease up on him? He seems like a good guy (if somewhat oblivious. Sorry, dude, but it’s true) and a doctor who cares. And, Joek? Don’t you make me regret saying this, huh?
Shit, apologies if I’ve been an asshole. I’m bowing out for the night so I can grab a late dinner and kitten cuddles.
Just a thought for my fellow fatties (especially the ladies) when dealing with health care providers. When you feel that they’re dismissing you because of your size, ask them bluntly, “Okay, but how would you proceed with assessing/treating me if I were thin? I’d like you to do that.”
And when they recommend weight loss as a cure-all or something you need to do before they take any of your medical concerns seriously, ask them how many of their patients have been able to lose significant amounts of weight and kept it off without surgery, without being in a permanent state of semi-starvation, and without having to rely on supplements. Ask them why they think that telling you to do something that 95% of people fail at is helpful advice.
Ah, the ol bmi/bodymass index/body-weight/women’s heath “facts” of questionable provenance clusterfuck. I admit I haven’t read the thread(5 pages!), but from the comments on this page, I can only imagine.
For the record, BMI is completely useless for determining fat all by it’s self. You have to actually look at someone, do strength tests and fat measurements. My BMI is definitely in the “obese” rang: I’m 5’6″, and 175lbs. No one believes it. Why? I’m female and it’s mostly muscle. I look about 140lbs. Of course, if I was male, most people would have no problem believing I was 175lbs, because the assumption is, that’s normal for a man, but any woman who weighs more that the Barbie doll expectation of 104-110lbs must be due to extra fat.
All that said, one can have extra fat and be healthy. My old workout partner, an amateur Olympic lifter, has a more “rubenesque” form. And being skinny is no guarantee of health. It can set you up for injuries and longer recovery time. I had a discussion at the gym with a trainer about getting enough to eat.(He was “skinny shamed” at a conference, all in good fun, told, “You need to eat!” ) We’re trying to get our mass and energy back, while still staying lean. I thought 2500 calories was enough, but he thinks I should be going for 3000.
So all the trolls with wildly confused ideas about what healthy strong women should be doing…chew on that. Pun intended.
😉
That’s an oversimplification. The link between glycemic index, diabetes and weight gain/loss is well established. The source of those calories matters quite a bit.
Thirding Mish and Axe re: letting up on Joekster.
Oh god, now we’re actually hearing “calories in/calories out” as if it’s valid. People, you need to start getting your information from places other than pop health sites. That’s bullshit.
Also, re letting up on Joekster: No. Mish: they *are* gaslighting, with the dismissal of personal experiences and the smug “cite” for information that has been COMMON in weight-loss discourse for fucking DECADES. All so politely and calmly, of course, so the other person gets upset and looks bad for blowing up. That’s what gaslighting IS.
It’s also worth adding that due to Joekster’s profession, people will tend to take their words as authoritative on any matters to do with health. This is a huge mistake. Weight loss is *not* Joekster’s specialty, and we have no reason to suppose they are any more knowledgeable about it than any other rando we may come across.
And yeah, fuck off Marinerachel: this has been an entire thread about what empirical study actually shows vs the popular narrative, yet you stick your fingers in your ears & wibble on as if none of that was said.
And all of you concern trolls who get your information from magazines and sports sites can fuck off, too. Someone else must have thought of this by now, but the concept of “fatsplaining” really needs to become mainstream.
Amazing how even on supposed “SJW” sites, threads on the evils of fat-shaming always end up perpetrating fat-shaming.
Again sorry for double posting, but have a story to add about how doctors’ fatphobia can screw things up:
As I mentioned previously, I have polycystic ovaries, and this was leading to increasing problems with my periods. One of the medications that can be used to treat this is Metformin, which is more commonly used in diabetes treatment.
So, I took it for a year or so, and my periods did become regular and less problematic. But one day, while in the dr’s office for a routine review, I caught sight of my file, and saw that it had “diabetic” written on it. I am not diabetic. Someone had seen that I was on Metformin, and hey, fatty right?, so had just assumed I was diabetic and put it in my file. When by just taking the time to actually read a bit, they’d have known that wasn’t right.
I find that kind of scary, because putting major errors into your official records that carelessly could have serious consequences.
Er… actually, I lost weight by eating more, not less.
I filled out a food diary for a couple of weeks, very scrupulously, and gave it to my trainer. She was very concerned I wasn’t eating enough, and I had to explain to her that I just really don’t feel hungry in the morning and usually don’t bother with breakfast.
Along with the exercise I was doing she had me eat a little in the morning and take milk in my coffee.
So it’s really not simply calories in, calories out. I was not eating enough and weight loss was aided by eating more (and better, but not just better).
The thing is, no one had ever bothered to find out what I was actually eating before. They just saw I was fat and assumed I ate too much. In reality I was down to one meal a day.
Spreading out the calories helped my body understand it didn’t have to save up fat, in layman’s terms, but there’s science behind that as well, not just a fat woman’s feelings.
I wasn’t trying to go after Joekster, he seems to be pretty fair to me. 🙂 But it sounded like he didn’t quite understand what other doctors can be like.
My current doctor is pretty good. He immediately said I was doing really well with my weight, I told him what I was doing, he said “Keep doing that,” and that was all the topic was covered during my annual checkup.
Getting a very science-based doctor helped a lot (he was extremely up on pain treatment and recent changes in recommendations for various tests, so I’m not just judging based on what he said about weight) and having a very science-based trainer also made a huge difference. There’s a lot of woo out there in nutrition and fitness, so you have to be really quite careful who you listen to.
I’ve seen my family. I’ll never be svelte; I take after my fat dad, not my thin mom. But I can put on muscle like a champ, so I hope eventually to be kind of a She-Hulk type.
@Jarnsaxa I’ve actually heard of quite a few people who’ve lost weight by eating more calories. Useful to be aware that there is a point for many that they can’t reduce their intake to without actually stopping losing weight.
And I’m really glad that you’re feeling positive and in no way want to rain on that, but we do have to keep in mind that different people’s bodies respond differently. Not saying you’re suggesting they don’t, just reminding others reading this that there is no one answer that will work for everyone.
I personally can eat a calorie-controlled, high-quality food diet and work out sensibly or spend a few weeks laying on the sofa living off of delivery and family-sized bags of chips and not really see a significant difference in my weight. At this point, after spending the first few decades of my life on the yo-yo due in large part to bullying doctors, the only way I will lose weight is to eat so few calories I cannot function in my daily life. The upside is that I also would have to gorge myself past the point of nausea on a regular basis to really put on a lot.
Btw, I’ve also of people who’ve been able to better control their diabetes by upping their caloric intake – and sometimes weighing more in consequence. And even though their diabetes is under better control, what’s the doctors’ response? “Lose weight.” Why? “For your diabetes” But the numbers are better with me weighing a little more. “Lose weight.” But WHY?? “Diabetes.” Headdesk forever.
Good morning everybody! Just checking in before I pack for my drive to Kansas after work today, I probably won’t be checking in this weekend. If I don’t, I hope that everyone here has a wonderful weekend.
First, I would like to thank everyone who shared their experiences with the American healthcare system. I am going to bookmark this thread, and I’m going to bring it out when talking to residents (or for that matter, attending physicians) about how to interact with obese patients. There seems to be a great deal of education to do.
Now, responses:
@Cleverforagirl: I am sorry if I gave the impression that I thought exercise and good diet always lead to weight loss. Sometimes they do, and when they do, that is fantastic. More often, they just lead to the patient being healthier, and that is also good. What exercise and a healthy, and above all, sustainable diet lead to is good health. We tend to use mass as a marker for those, which is not appropriate, not helpful, and not supported by the current research. Which is exactly what you were saying, of course 🙂
And if I wasn’t clear, I was attempting to express the fallacy of reasoning from anectdotal evidence. I actually know a few healthy obese individuals (obese by abdominal girth rather than BMI) socially, but I haven’t seen any in a clinical setting. The reason is obvious: I don’t generally see thin people without medical problems in the clinical setting either. The point I was trying to make is that it’s not practical to generalize from individual experiences.
@WWTH: Thank you for the links. I’ll have to peruse them later, and I will. What Crys T brought up about how the social stress caused by obesity can affect health is a valid point, but most of the research I am familiar with goes from the other direction. That is, I know a number of studies supporting the notion that social stress contributes to obesity, but not a lot quantifying how much social stress comes from obesity. It probably is another one of those positive feedback loops that are depressingly common in our modern culture.
@Jarnsaxa: Your story actually triggered a memory from medical school. The weight loss physician I worked with in Vegas once told me that he had to keep his clinic running off of his poker winnings for the first ten years, because insurances wouldn’t pay for any visit primarily concerned with obesity or weight loss. In turn, that shed some light on something that really does bother me. That is, the fact that ‘obesity’ is now a codable diagnosis (that is, officially a ‘disease’), when we all know that obesity is really more of a marker of disease. I wonder if that was done simply to force insurance companies to pay for weight loss counseling?
@Marinerachel: Some people do actually benefit from the ‘calories in must be less than calories out’ approach, but it’s a distinct minority. Others have already said this, but it is worth emphasizing that such a simplistic approach is far more likely to be harmful, and to put people off of healthy lifestyle changes entirely. Also, since starting my geriatrics fellowship, I have seen a few octogenarians pushing 300 lbs. They’re not common (prior generations seem to have been overall thinner than we are today), but they exist. One gal in particular only has issues with dementia and some fairly severe deconditioning (to the point where her heart rate spikes over 140 whenever she exerts herself), and she’s almost 100 years old.
#BVH: I agree with the importance of actually looking at someone. BMI should be used as an initial screen, not as the final word. Things like body composition and weight distribution have to be taken into account when assessing a patient.
@Mish, Axe, and Nikki: thank you. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t getting frustrated last night. However, by her own account, Crys T has been seriously hurt by my profession, her father died secondary to neglect by my profession, and I did imply that her father shared some of the responsibility for his own passing. It’s enough to make anyone testy, and I appreciate that. Still, it is nice to have third party input.
@Axe: I probably am oblivious in a lot of things. I’ve spent almost a decade buried in textbooks, medical journals, and taking care of people with few concerns beyond whatever their acute health needs are. Part of what I hope to gain from these interactions is to become less oblivious.
@Crys T: I am sorry that our discussion became so acrimonious. It was wrong of me to make implications about your father earlier, and I am sorry for that. Also, I do forgive you for your attacks on my own character last night.
I would encourage you to update your knowledge base. There are very few medical theories that survive completely unchanged for over a decade, and the field is constantly changing. There should be a medical library accessible to you wherever you are (I know in the states, most such libraries are open to the public), and I would encourage you to peruse the latest issues of the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association for American research. As you’re in Britain, the British Medical Journal is a decent resource (despite their publishing of Andrew Wakefields initial study on vaccines and autism, which they have since officially retracted), and the Lancet is good as well.
Finally, Nature is a decent resource designed more for laypeople. It’s not an official medical journal, but it does run many health-related pieces.
And now, I’ve got half an hour to pack 🙂
Everyone, have a fantastic weekend, and I’ll see you all when I get back from Kansas.
@marinerachel
I lost weight that way. I kept it off. So yeah, it can work. Despite what follows I personally wasn’t insulted by what you said. But.
I experienced fat-shaming, too, before that. I know how destructive it is and how many people let themselves be misled by prejudices about fat people and their health problems.
The problem is mostly that whether or not this way of weight-loss is possible for some people, currently fat people will have any mention of it being possible for some people turned against them by those (sometimes dangerous) fat-shamers taking an easy short-cut. As in: “See, it’s possible for some people! You’re just lazy! I won’t help you with your health issues because it’s possible for some people, so I’ll just assume it must be possible for you.”
Which is one reason why a mention of these aspects (yes, some people can lose weight, yes, sometimes being overweight can cause health problems) gets such a passionate response. These (very limited) success stories of some people are used against fat people by fat shamers in other situations and that is not only hurtful and offensive but at times also dangerous. Especially in a medical setting where you need help and are vulnerable.
Anecdote:
I was once left in a hospital bed for a night and a day with two broken ribs, no pain killers, no further exams. Because I had mentioned a med I had gotten once for my mental disorder. So those doctors “knew” I wasn’t really ill, just “whining” and they didn’t “need” to do any further exams. The “psycho” would apparantly stop her “whining” if ignored long enough… Had my family not interfered the next day, they would have left me there over the weekend, too. Without even doing an X-ray, which when done by another doctor later clearly showed my broken ribs.
This is what prejudices in the hands of a physician can do to you. This is how dangerous they can be. And while this only happened to me once and 99% of doctors probably are different, it’s so bad when it does happen, that you still get extremely wary about anything that theoretically could be used to justify it…
(Obviously that was an analogy replacing fat with “mentally ill”, but I have no trouble imagining equal mistreatment because of prejudices concerning fat people. I have been misdiagnosed and even ridiculed by doctors, too, when I was fat and needed help.)
While the aspects mentioned here were (imo) not meant as justification for those behaviours by those who brought those points up, it’s what a fat person might very well and understandably be reminded of. And then it brings back a lot of justified anger and pain. I think this is something one should be aware of when having discussions about weight loss or the relationship of health and weight. This is not a neutral subject, because a lot of people do use these points to hurt fat people.
Something else about fat shaming. My life is a million times easier than that of a fat person now because I am no longer judged by my appearance. The damage 15 years of being fat and fat shamed did on the inside, though? That doesn’t go away. The self-doubt, the seeing your body as the enemy, seeing food as the enemy, it doesn’t leave you once you have experienced the toxicity of those prejudices. Their unfairness and the inability to fight against them. I needed to learn and am still learning that my weight does not determine my worth. Because I have been taught all my life when I was fat that I had no worth because of my weight. Which is why I think there’s nothing more important when it comes to weight than body positivity and acceptance and promoting understanding that weight has no bearing on any other character trait. We need to recognize the damage that has already been done to fat people, that is still being done to them (even if we have/want to have no part in it) and focus on stopping and healing that damage before we do anything else. Only then could weight maybe be discussed as a somewhat “neutral” subject. And we seem to be very far away from that right now.
TL;DR probably, but this pushed some buttons for me. And I still have fat friends. And they start justifying themselves in front of me. Defending themselves. It breaks my heart and I want to help them, for them to be able to see that their weight does in no way determine anything else about them. And I feel the only way I can do that, is by fighting fat shaming and prejudices before anything else.
@Joekster
I disengaged when rather than addressing anything I said, you made a comment about how it’s clear that I’ve been hurt by fat shaming. No shit, but my experience is not unique. At all. Maybe the level to which my mother has rejected me my whole life is higher than for others, but I never mentioned that. I only brought up my experiences in doctor offices, which have been pretty damn normal. I was morbidly obese, now just obese (per BMI). When you started talking about bariatric surgery like it actually helps people I had to stop reading what you type. Since you’re taking notes, please take note of that.
What Kupo said.
Knowing that Joekster actually seems ok with bariatric surgery confirms every negative suspicion I had about them. Fat people are such an abomination to them that they do not care how dangerous & damaging the “cures” they tout are. We are literally so valueless to them in a fat state that they see no problem in subjecting us to procedures that have a fairly good chance of leaving us with horrifying, painful chronic issues or plain dead.
@Joekster You’ve apparently convinced yourself that you’re an ally to fat people, but in reality you’re like that guy who comes onto a feminist site, swearing up and down that he’s such a feminist ally, then gives us neverending notes from his boner and lectures all the women on proper feministing. That is not ally behaviour.
And don’t think I didn’t notice the gaslighting dig about updating my knowledge base. You know good and damn well that saying something has been common knowledge for decades is not the same as saying that one heard about it decades ago, then blithely assumes no new knowledge has been added. The only possible excuse I can think of for your attitude regarding this is that apparently medical professionals only read original journal articles and don’t give a toss about the papers that analyse results from large numbers of those original studies and collate the results. I do remember an MD on another forum saying something along those lines, and saying that she was shocked to find what real experts on the subject believe as opposed to what she’d always been taught in her medical training. Maybe it’s you who needs to expand their knowledge base?
And, let’s be clear, it’s not just me you’re gaslighting: look at the way you’ve responded to a number of us: being oh-so sympathetic to how much we’ve suffered due to fatphobia, slyly implying that what we say is based on our emotional responses and hurt fee-fees rather than study of the literature and experience.
And finally, you “forgive” me??? If I weren’t fully aware that that was aimed at not at me but at creating an impression for the others who are reading this, I’d think we’d suddenly been catapulted into an alternate reality. Firstly, my response to someone belittling my intelligence, veracity, and experience was entirely appropriate. Secondly, even if I had truly gone off on you, what on earth makes you suppose that I would want forgiveness from someone who apparently believes it’s okay to kill me for the sin of being cosmetically offensive?
For that, I sure as hell do not forgive you.