The word “fat” is not a slur any more than the word “black” is. Sure, someone can use it with an intent to hurt, and if the only thing you know about a person is this single adjective you probably shouldn’t be talking about them, but the word is just a description. And just like for “black”, all the euphemisms offer nothing helpful and are largely spread by people who have not lived and understood the experience.
If you’re worried about being fat-phobic the thing to be worried about is treating fat people like shit based on their physical appearance. Up to and including shaming them for “not putting in the effort” or lecturing them about how unhealthy you think they are based on the single point of evidence of their apparent weight.
And I have to say, I’d be WAY more fucking mad at someone calling me “rotund” then fat. Holy shit you have missed the mark on this.
Not to mention: in many cases, a person can do something about being fat, whereas black people… are black.
In fact, I’d argue that trying to lump being fat into the same camp as racial or gender or sexual identity is actually offensive to the latter groups, and diminishes actual vulnerable groups who are targeted based on their identity, who continue to struggle for civil rights and recognition to this day.
Here would be an almost textbook example of what I mean when I say shaming people for not putting in the effort, for any onlookers that are curious.
Of course, the actual clinical data shows that it is nearly impossible to make permanent lifestyle changes that reduce weight for normal people – all diets studies have almost hilariously high dropout/failure rates – and that nearly all people who are not fat are not putting in any special effort to not be fat. But this guy’s an expert.
I can see that you’re editing your messages, you know.
I stand by what I said: it’s offensive to groups who are discriminated against based on intrinsic personal characteristics to lump fat people in with them.
The simple truth is that body mass can be addressed and changed with external stimuli. You can’t take a drug that will make you less black, less gay, or less uncomfortable in the body you were born in (and let’s not get into a debate about how you could potentially psychiatrically medicate someone with body dysmorphia into not giving a shit, because that’s pretty fucked up). You CAN take a drug (or undergo any number of medical procedures, or make some real lifestyle and diet changes) to be less fat.
Cool, that’s nice. I’m on a different instance than you. It took hours for your comment to even federate, so the implication I’m trying to gotcha you through a self-correction made within 3 minutes of my original post and over 10 minutes before yours is totally bad faith and you know it.
Let’s just be clear about what happened here though. I posted something correct about the entire idea of fat-phobia. That is, the way you avoid being fat-phobic is by just not feeling a need to whip out a soap box and tell fat people it’s their fault and they’ve behaved badly to become that way there while knowing nothing about them.
And what did you do? You replied to me, immediately whipping out your soapbox to say that fat people are not “actual” vulnerable groups because anyone who’s body doesn’t doesn’t match your subjective standards can “do something about being fat”.
Then started this absolutely moronic verbal diarrhea about how being respectful of other people is somehow a zero sum game where if you treat one population with basic respect, it somehow waters down another group’s need to be treated with dignity? Idiotic. Just idiotic. That’s the “logic” used by TERFs.
Next time, just shut the fuck up. Seriously, all you had to say was nothing. This is a personal characteristic about someone and you just don’t have expertise in it. You don’t know what effort they have or haven’t made. You don’t know what other medical issues may be linked or causal. You don’t know whether it’s negatively impacting their health, and even if it were, it’s still none of your fucking business. All you know is what you can see. Don’t worry, the fat people already know you don’t like looking at them, so this kind of signaling is unnecessary. Instead, leave them alone and don’t preach about their lives of sin.
You want to talk about addressing things with “external stimuli”? Let’s talk about the entire skin-bleaching cosmetics industry in SE Asia. The vast apparatus of plastic surgery in places like South Korea designed to change Asian-presenting eyelids to more culturally preferred western features. And don’t even get me started about hair care products targeted at Black Americans. The long histories every country and population has pursuing goals to “pass”. Telling people they must change to match the subjective standards of idiots for their own good, irrespective of what harm might be done to them along the way.
But what, all that kind of shit is bad and bigoted, but telling an otherwise-healthy but fat person they should get medical interventions because they look fat is fine? Leave people the fuck alone, dude. If there’s medical problems going on, that’s between them and their medical provider if they so chose.
I mean, olympic contestants aren’t fat… Except for the put throwers… And the wrestlers… I feel like there should be some positive correlation between putting your mind to it versus not. But I don’t want to step on any toes here…
The word “fat” is not a slur any more than the word “black” is. Sure, someone can use it with an intent to hurt, and if the only thing you know about a person is this single adjective you probably shouldn’t be talking about them, but the word is just a description. And just like for “black”, all the euphemisms offer nothing helpful and are largely spread by people who have not lived and understood the experience.
If you’re worried about being fat-phobic the thing to be worried about is treating fat people like shit based on their physical appearance. Up to and including shaming them for “not putting in the effort” or lecturing them about how unhealthy you think they are based on the single point of evidence of their apparent weight.
And I have to say, I’d be WAY more fucking mad at someone calling me “rotund” then fat. Holy shit you have missed the mark on this.
Not to mention: in many cases, a person can do something about being fat, whereas black people… are black.
In fact, I’d argue that trying to lump being fat into the same camp as racial or gender or sexual identity is actually offensive to the latter groups, and diminishes actual vulnerable groups who are targeted based on their identity, who continue to struggle for civil rights and recognition to this day.
Here would be an almost textbook example of what I mean when I say shaming people for not putting in the effort, for any onlookers that are curious.
Of course, the actual clinical data shows that it is nearly impossible to make permanent lifestyle changes that reduce weight for normal people – all diets studies have almost hilariously high dropout/failure rates – and that nearly all people who are not fat are not putting in any special effort to not be fat. But this guy’s an expert.
I can see that you’re editing your messages, you know.
I stand by what I said: it’s offensive to groups who are discriminated against based on intrinsic personal characteristics to lump fat people in with them.
The simple truth is that body mass can be addressed and changed with external stimuli. You can’t take a drug that will make you less black, less gay, or less uncomfortable in the body you were born in (and let’s not get into a debate about how you could potentially psychiatrically medicate someone with body dysmorphia into not giving a shit, because that’s pretty fucked up). You CAN take a drug (or undergo any number of medical procedures, or make some real lifestyle and diet changes) to be less fat.
Cool, that’s nice. I’m on a different instance than you. It took hours for your comment to even federate, so the implication I’m trying to gotcha you through a self-correction made within 3 minutes of my original post and over 10 minutes before yours is totally bad faith and you know it.
Let’s just be clear about what happened here though. I posted something correct about the entire idea of fat-phobia. That is, the way you avoid being fat-phobic is by just not feeling a need to whip out a soap box and tell fat people it’s their fault and they’ve behaved badly to become that way there while knowing nothing about them.
And what did you do? You replied to me, immediately whipping out your soapbox to say that fat people are not “actual” vulnerable groups because anyone who’s body doesn’t doesn’t match your subjective standards can “do something about being fat”.
Then started this absolutely moronic verbal diarrhea about how being respectful of other people is somehow a zero sum game where if you treat one population with basic respect, it somehow waters down another group’s need to be treated with dignity? Idiotic. Just idiotic. That’s the “logic” used by TERFs.
Next time, just shut the fuck up. Seriously, all you had to say was nothing. This is a personal characteristic about someone and you just don’t have expertise in it. You don’t know what effort they have or haven’t made. You don’t know what other medical issues may be linked or causal. You don’t know whether it’s negatively impacting their health, and even if it were, it’s still none of your fucking business. All you know is what you can see. Don’t worry, the fat people already know you don’t like looking at them, so this kind of signaling is unnecessary. Instead, leave them alone and don’t preach about their lives of sin.
You want to talk about addressing things with “external stimuli”? Let’s talk about the entire skin-bleaching cosmetics industry in SE Asia. The vast apparatus of plastic surgery in places like South Korea designed to change Asian-presenting eyelids to more culturally preferred western features. And don’t even get me started about hair care products targeted at Black Americans. The long histories every country and population has pursuing goals to “pass”. Telling people they must change to match the subjective standards of idiots for their own good, irrespective of what harm might be done to them along the way.
But what, all that kind of shit is bad and bigoted, but telling an otherwise-healthy but fat person they should get medical interventions because they look fat is fine? Leave people the fuck alone, dude. If there’s medical problems going on, that’s between them and their medical provider if they so chose.
What do you think of the Jew vs Pally war?
I mean, olympic contestants aren’t fat… Except for the put throwers… And the wrestlers… I feel like there should be some positive correlation between putting your mind to it versus not. But I don’t want to step on any toes here…