Slut shaming

Reading an excellent post by Joy-Mari at digital immigrant on how the Internet- rather than being the great hope of meritocracy- is struggling to break free from the brain shape of the usual suspects. I was reminded of the word 'slut', it's just one of many epithets referring to a woman that has had, or does have sex with specifically; men. More than one or a lot more, it doesn't have a distinct numerical definition.

Being a feminist person, I should be wholly concerned with it's effects on women. But from the first finding out what this and other words like it meant I've been struck by what it says about what males are taught to think of themselves. That feeling has never left me.

If merely by having sex with men, a woman despoils and sullies herself to the point of ridicule and abuse, what does this say about men?

It seems to say men are in essence filthy, that the penis is an injector (and therefore voids) emptying that filth into not just women, but also other men . Men who receive a shot of this toxic load (have a lower status within and outside gay circles than the 'injectors').

Now if men are taught to and continue this disgust and loathing of themselves-that is up to them.

However, what you give to yourself, you tend to wish to give to others, that impulse enables you to rid yourself of your degradation and then attack those you leave it in, destroying them in order to destroy it.

This shows that you cannot tolerate feeling this way about yourself, and attempt to rid yourself of these feelings, understandably. So here's the thing, why don't you just stop seeing yourself in this degrading way, what purpose does it serve?

Using others in this way is an attempt to separate and distance yourself from these feelings, pointless, because after they've walked away carrying it away from you; it's a case of continue and repeat. Maybe that's it's purpose, presumably, your cannot be trusted to simply have sexual desire because, you feel like having sex.

Cease to generate the poison. Then you won't have anything to void but love. Or am I missing something?

Dismantle it in yourself, smash it to smithereens. Deal with yourself, confront your disgust and give yourself the regard you can live with, then you can cut out the middlewo/man

Internalised fat phobia

A thread over at WATRD , has lead me to respond to the idea that the term "fat acceptance" and the movement that goes with it is somehow alienating to those who aren't fat.

I am not trying to embrace myself at the expense of others, you'll tend to think that if you embrace yourself at my expense.

If you are say, slim and you feel like you're winning in terms of self esteem, in the weight stakes, because you are slim and/or because you weight watch, or draft your diet. I'll let you into a little secret, you aren't; it's just that at best, you might be losing a little less than me.

Looking at the situation objectively, you are losing overall. To shift the basis of your self esteem from that of your existence (the fact of your being) to that of your weight, is a loss.

It only feels like winning because I might seem to be losing more. That's one of the main reasons people resent FA, because they sense it as a threat to their sense of 'wining'. That's a bad state to be in; for your esteem to rest on others lack.

Your illusion of comfort, rests on my discomfort, or your illusion of the latter. Think of the position that puts you in.

Those encouraging you down this road are performing a confidence trick on you.

They don't care a whole lot about the price you're paying for this, in terms of dieting, disordered eating, anxiety about whether you can keep your self esteem (i.e. your slimness)etc. Anymore than they care about the price I pay for seeing myself in the light they are painting me.

Oh, the effects are monitored, don't you like to check out your handiwork? There's talk about the worrying increase in eating disorders such as anorexia and does any woman (especially) eat normally or have a normal relationship with food? As 'fat discrimination' is monitored also, making sure that setting the non-fat against the fat is actually meaningful. Discrimination against fat people is worse than this or that group and so forth, so do they rethink their dissemination of fat shaming? Hell no!

Because the purpose of monitoring is to see the extent of their ability to manipulate us to do their bidding, to do what we are told. To see the key to getting us to follow orders and to disenfranchise some, in a democracies, where persuasion is key. This is all being filed away for future reference. If there was a groundswell against their behaviour and it was called out for what it was, that would promote a swift rethink. And surely, something else would be tried.

They manipulate us all, setting us against each other, knowing as always that if the emotions are strong enough, they will trump reason, almost every time. The overall agenda of creating a mental and emotional dependency on them by giving us the feeling that we are in control and responsible. This is a more effective than just ordering us about, directly. And in the case of fat people, take away our rights/ children and pick our pockets, making us subsidise and pay for the mismanagement of health.

The way we deal with health undoubtedly needs to change, it seems we cannot afford it. The problem is, varying interests don't want to change in the ways necessary to make that change positive, because they will have to lose control, possibly a lot, and they don't want that, so the public has to be brutalised to they can remain as they are, probably causing those underlying problems to remain and resurface later on.

But hey, later on is not now! And who knows, if they can get away with what they're trying to do with fat people, they can use that same pattern, on those who've been softened up by participating in this tranche. Being part of shaming others, prepares you for being shamed. Bullying, prepares you to be bullied yourself.

This could of course backfire in more ways than just FA. If people have a semi detached place in the health system, professionals being at the centre of their health care will change, by definition. It will only work if fat people pay up and shut up.

I do feel angry that we are all, fat and thin being used in this manner, when we trust the information and so called 'advice' we are given, we expect those we believe in to tell us the truth, not to manipulate and lie using science and research because we believe in empirical evidence.

All this to lose something that cannot be bettered, you cannot better the self esteem your were born with, based on the fact of your existence. The value and worth of your actions can add to this, but the essence of your worth is that you are.

Restoring balance, the future of self help?

Bigliberty has a fascinating post on a nurses study which claims fatness and weight gain in middle age makes one less likely to qualify for the study authors definition of 'optimal health status' at the age of 70 defined thus;

...having no history of 11 major chronic diseases and having no substantial cognitive, physical, or mental limitations.

Unsurprisingly, only 9.9% can meet this definition it includes "good mental health" what is the effect on mental health of (often) long term reproach about weight?

There is a wish to define health in pointlessly elitist and arbitrary terms, even though we are all concerned with our health. With such a low number, how much are they measuring genetic inheritance?

I'm not just talking about genetic determinism, which I find a dubious concept when applied to non required traits at the best of times, but along with the way this interacts with environment? One does not choose to put on weight at middle or any other age, unless one goes on a feeding or reducing diet, anymore than a thin person chooses to be able to override unknown factors that lend themselves to weight gain at any age.

It also states that the least likelihood of being in this optimal state is if you were overweight before the age of 18 and continue to put on weight. If the things they 'take into account' have not skewered their findings, then this seems to suggest that one's metabolism is in some way related to one's health.

If so, the answer is for us to be able to adjust that, not allow that to continue and run around after the fact. It seems to me to be an extremely interesting area because the potential follow up to that is for us to be able to reset our mental and physical health, when it gets derailed and that is not a little mind-blowing.

Not only that, it's like a chain, reset weight/metabolism, reset mood patterns, i.e. depression, potentially reset from greater disturbance, drug addiction, alcoholism, other problems which possibly in some cases, are a result if some kind/s of imbalance such as criminality and so forth. Extraordinary as that may seem.

This would truly be an alternative to having a health middle man in the face of med profs and alt med practitioners. It also strikes me that it would be less misleading to categorise people not just by weight, if at all, but by some method of metabolic type.

This might actually move our knowledge on regarding the relationship between your metabolism and weight. Again, the feeling is that this would change our relationship toward those who cannot let go of the idea that all health must be regulated and channelled through them.

Changing times

Back to everyone's favourite news[trigger warning, picture of c**e]paper; to be fair it is a good paper, in terms of product. Unfortunately its endless attempts to strike fear into it's audience by some new revelation of an on coming Armageddon, is grating.

The article in question is another gaining ground to ecksplane fatness.

Addiction. I know, I know; we are addicted to food. But  wait,  this is not about the necessity of it for our existence. It's about food manufacturers making it so tasty, using artificial chemicals, that;

))))))))we can't resist(((((((( 

According to David Kessler, who used to be the commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration;

it all comes down to the bliss point. ‘The right combination of tastes triggers a greater number of neurons, getting them to fire more,’

To be fair he says the blame game needs to end. Though I think he could have framed it around how a changing food environment requires different skills to negotiate our lucky world of plenty. Rather than behaving as if our will is being overthrown by chemical wizardry in the food lab-they wish. I find this the credulity of paranoia.

In the days of lack, we could feed by the clock and other outer dictates, now, we need to be more in touch with our own inner rhythms and hunger. 

Taking a more inner directed route. In the past of just enough or lack, those skills were cultivated by that, rather than us. Pleasure came from having something at all, when there's more choice, we can adjust from that scarcity mentality.

The usual pernicious classism rears it head, if you're poor your diet is liable to be worse, in what sense? Less money to shop for expensive snacks/short cuts made with better ingredients? As usual putting it on food depoliticises the conditions of poorer people, ignoring the fact that conditions overall often mitigate against health to a greater degree than others. The focus on food in this way, becomes churlish after a while.

There's a certain lack of proportion when he mentioned seeing fat people whilst visiting HIV clinics in South Africa. A fast food outlet has opened and the cheapest deals in the supermarkets, feature calorie dense foods. So people can afford to consume adequate calories.

I mean, he can't think poor people being fat is somehow worse than than HIV. As if its the poor of the developing world's duty to be slim.

Now with more, or at least choices and some room for manoeuvre, our pleasure will come more from matching our needs and wants better, to what we have access to. Nurturing our instincts and appetites well can be of the greatest joys of living, a spiritual thing even. But that it should involve trust, positive and holistic focus, not fear or neurosis, form a place of love not hate.

Where there's hate, there's money

Looking at a subtly named report on the potential price of being hated it's pretty apparent that the writer has picked up on what fat people have discovered-yet again that fact is not mentioned, because whether we are being shamed or 'rescued' it has to be done to us- that the obesity crisis wallahs are trying to bring about their prophecy of fat ill health.

Whether fatness is intrinsically unhealthy or not is a moot point if you just manipulate factors to heighten this potentiality. Namely, the prophecy of the self fulfilling kind.

Again, the purpose of the obesity crisis, is to perpetuate itself, it has nothing to do with helping people;

The motivation is generous enough: Anti-obesity rhetoric encourages people to eat less and exercise more.

Yeah, we'll be the judge of that thanks, this line might work if you've had no experience of generosity whatsoever, I have, and I know it isn't. The so called 'well meaningness' of any participants is an irrelevancy, because you don't need to stigmatize people or take part in it to help them, that is your choice. Well meaning doesn't = well doing, and if you care enough, you'll stop flattering yourself.

Note that this list of in this case, US diet industry includes along with the usual suspects of commercial diet centre chains, the lodestars of healthism; the exercise industry, dietitians. Then there's the medical professions still pretending that dieting is scientifically valid and the merry cutters of weight loss surgery,(they ought to be laughing all the way to the bank) and big Pharma. Lovely.

It also expresses why I can't really get excited about whether BMI's uselessness, it's not any more useless than any other measure;

But even the most accurate measures of fatness—like dual energy X-ray absorptiometry—don't really improve our ability to predict health outcomes across the population

Most people in FA retain still accept the likelihood that the higher up the weight scale you get and retain an open mind, still, on whether fatness in general is intrinsically a health issue, unfortunately, as usual the 'proof' of the latter, is non-human;

That's not to say obesity won't affect your body, independent of any social factors. As Muennig points out, obese lab rodents aren't likely to suffer much emotional abuse from their fellow mice, but they seem to have higher levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines nonetheless.

Unsurprisingly, health bigwigs, don't take any of these concerns seriously, especially our old friend Kelly Brownell;

For Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center and a leading researcher on both health policy and weight bias, the dangers of discrimination are important but relatively modest. What about the idea that targeting obesity might be counterproductive for the fattest Americans? He doesn't buy it.

Oh really Kelly? This incidentally, is a man who started off his career plump and has grown bigger, whilst preaching to others about weight loss and the perils of fat. Without any explanation, as to why he could neither prevent his own weight gain or return to his former plumpness- I won't put on him the onerous task of acquiring thinness.

He has been well validated by the establishment, so I suppose that's his reward, all though he's been of absolutely no use to any one who might actually need help. That kind of sums it all up really.

* Amended to fix link

Smokers, stop it!

Since I cannot be bothered to wrestle with Slate comments there, I'm responding to this comment which I'll quote in full, here, it's from somebody called, Tarkol;

To the overweight. We warned you. We really did. We said you'd be next. We said food restrictions would come. We said once we were too rare a pariah they would turn on you. You didn't listen. -Smokers

Really, (thin)smokers, I wish you wouldn't. What is the point in your investment in this myth? I suspect as you love calling yourself addicts, this is addicts hubris borne of the constant competition for who's addiction is the hardest to give up, etc.,

Sorry smokers, you told me nothing, that I hadn't been learning for the last 30 years. I was in the playground when I realised things had changed because the medical profession had got on board with fat hating. This meant that it took on it's current triumphant sense of righteousness and sense of legitimacy that it had never had before when people could choose whether to be bullying about it or not.

Try to understand that you like others who aren't fat, shield yourself from recognising what has been happening to fat people and just because you affect this pose, doesn't make it true.

Fact is that the momentum against smokers has been building up for a number of decades now, but that doesn't mean that it precedes the fat hating bandwagon in a such an orderly way.

The obesity crisis has been dated from the late 1970's at it started to get nasty before even that.

Along the way, I haven't noticed smokers standing up for fatties, in fact, I've found a lot of them happily joining in fat bashing. There does seem to be some kind of underlying issue that some have with fat people, almost as if they feel that if fat people were more serious about their weight, they would be prepared to smoke as an aid to weight loss (just like some of them). There's also a sense of deflection- if everyone's hating fatties, they're not hating smokers.

Only a couple of years ago, when England sprang a smoking ban on it's cigaphiles, the first words out of many who went about in the media was, "whaah, this is what we do to/how we treat fatties". This is such an old sentiment, that it hardly annoyed me to be honest. They must of been made aware of themselves because they soon stopped.

This for me is the telling part, carelessly stigmatizing others prepares you and your mind to receive the stigma you think you are directing at others. It creates an atmosphere of the same responsive acquiescence and cowardice, no less because it shows the powers that be what you are willing to put up with. It gives them a mental and strategic route to go down, and I'm afraid the spontaneous recognition that this is what we do to fatties, not real humans, shows one of the reasons why smokers have so meekly accepted, not so much their fate, as the treatment meted out to them.

The lesson is, we should stop ignoring how people who may be unacceptable, to us and consider the general ramifications of what's being done to them, follow through and think, what does this mean for others who may be seen in this light? In short, think. Don't just laugh and take part and wallow, you are fouling your own nest.

We all be better off if we stuck up for each other and did not use so called health to vent personal rage or use it as a chance to lord it over each other, always a sign of insecurity.

It's not too late.

A marriage made in hell

I just happened upon a hero of capitalism, Jean Nidetch, the founder of Weight Watchers. It is undoubtedly true that she is a hero of capitalism. She took a non-product, the weight loss diet and made an absolute fortune from it.

Usually capitalism takes something for as little as possibly can and marks it up as much as it can, in order to maximise profit.

She went one better. Like the weavers in this story.

What is a weight loss diet? Eat less, expend more. Give me money now.

That, my friends is a diet, do you perceive it's sheer intangibility? Ignoring the essential uselessness of weight loss dieting, the irony about it is that it is essentially communistic in character, and fails for similar fundamental reasons.

Dieting assumes that all people ought to eat more or less the same (inadequate) amount regardless, things such as individuality, don't count for toffee. Communism that all should have more or less the same as one another in terms of necessities status etc.,

The fundamental fail of both is that the central authority charged with making all this happen, in the case of the former the conscious mind and the latter the state cannot. They are too inflexible in the same way, neither were designed for the purpose of running everything, they are suited more to an overseeing and keeping an overall balance by plugging any gaps left by the more flexible forces designed to fulfil our needs.

A strange and unholy union.

Show me the evidence

That is the cry, even if reality is that evidence.

It seems asking for that has become a delaying tactic of those who do not wish to accept reality as it is.

Whether its those into creation science, that is where people try to verify biblical creation myths according to the rules of science or those who insist there is a crisis of what would have been prevented by the success of weight loss diets that preceded them, asking for proof that they've failed.

Even though I admire rationalism, I've never fallen into the trap of assuming that this is the only worthwhile way our brains work. I used to wonder what would happen when those who assume we can function solely through logic and what can be explained by it, wanted to cling to things they couldn't explain that way.

Now I know, they just ask for evidence.