Friday 31 December 2010

Goobye 2010: Hello 2011!

Ahh! On the cusp of another year, goodbye 2010 it's been interesting in FA terms (I'm of course talking about the shift in response). Living400 has written a cool list of things she'd love to see the back of /would like to happen.

I won't touch that, but leaving you with something over the new year festivities, yes I know its by the whatever calendar, but I can't rightly be bothered right now to che.... Gregorian!

Suffice to say I acknowledge other calendars that I can't call to mind right now as equally valid in their own way yakka yah. I'm so full of charm today!

Anyhowzzahs, I was getting on to a list of more FA related stuff I'd happily see the back of and frankly over here there's still half a day, don't stand on ceremony waiting for tomorrow on any of these.

No more please, no really I insist ;

* People who claim to be in fat acceptance yet do not grasp one (FA) point of view that they already fervently disagree with.

In fact, people with purportedly polar opposite stances conservative/progressive no more about and can accurately surmise-if they had to- the other stance better than most people in FA can do the same for other people in FA that they claim to disagree with.

I understand that when you stop dieting or hating yourself, you think most work is done, we all do at first. You'll get over that, if you allow it.

Example- insisting that being absolutely against weight loss dieting/calorie restriction is 'extremism' designed to hurt the fee fee's of 'dieters' rather than a rational well thought out point of view.

When you have been told "no" take that as a "not so", not as "I'm a fat 'extremist' who talks bull and is without compassion or understanding for dieters"-and you wonder why people aren't 'nice' about telling to suck it!

If you want those under the influence of fat phobia to make the leap to understand you in the face of feelings of disgust and loathing towards you. Make that leap with your fellow FAers, umkay?

* The inability for fat people's views on anything to count unless they've been backed up by the only truth confirmers allowed on planet earth, scientists/researchers or unless it has happened to the real people i.e. people who are not fat.

Fat people are as human as any others, if something is happening more with or to us or just about only with us, that does not make it a sign of our innate degeneracy more than our innate humanity. It is happening to real humans and doesn't require the validation of anyone else. If we are not fully human, no-one is either.

* The blatant lack of self value and respect for our own fat bodies.

Weight loss surgery is wrong, full stop, no exceptions, not get out clauses, none. There is never a point when it is right or justifiable or good in any way shape or form ever.

N.B WLS is not a fat person, it is not fat people. So criticising it does not criticise those who've had it or are thinking of having it or will have it done. Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do, heroin users needing to withdraw will tell you methadone is a steaming pile, often they feel its worse than heroin, but needs must and authorities have made sure there's little alternative there either.

Maybe because this assessment is formed from the male psyche and also from those so stigmatized and criminalized that there is no need for this fatuous Pollyannaish mentality women tend to cling to-presumably as compensation-that whatever we do must make us good or its ripping our hearts out.You are always more than what you do, more than what happens to you.

Conflating your very self with an operation to mutilate your very self. Is a sign of other things which won't be resolved by body shielding things either designed to hurt fat people or with an abject disregard for any level of our discomfort or pain.

I caused myself harm by trying to restrict and reduce my food intake over many years. When I say weight loss diet culture often makes me feel ashamed to be human, I'm not casting any aspersions on myself whatsoever, because I know I am not a weight loss diet. I criticise nothing but the idea of calorie restriction which leads to this kind of thing amongst numerous others. That is not a criticism of anyone who took or is taking these drugs.

WLS is wrong because it attacks bodies, it attacks human beings, it does violence to them purely for the purpose of undermining their health. Which is the logic underpinning an unprovoked attack on anyone. It would be just as wrong if it was done to thin bodies, the fact that it's done to fat bodies makes it an equal abomination. The devaluation of fat bodies doesn't affect that one iota. The end. And before you shout 'extreme' scour every version of that opinion until you completely understand what I'm saying.

Then see if you disagree.

Any group that cannot reject such vileness wholeheartedly, cannot claim to want equality because they cannot ask for what they don't believe in themselves. If you advocate for female genital mutilation, you are not pro the equality of females, you just don't agree with it, full stop.

That is not going to change because you wish to reconcile two incompatibles, nobody is owed that. Either accept what you believe or change your beliefs to what you can accept because something has to give one way or t'other. That's how many of us change our minds not always by being persuaded directly by another view, but by what we have to accept in order to keep believing.

If you cannot stand for something, you'll go for anything, sorry, but believing in things, excludes that which you do not believe in or that which is incompatible with those beliefs. If you try to include everything you exclude by another means, so make up your mind you cannot avoid it. I respect your intelligence too much to kid you on that one.

* Taking the start of opinion from the wholly illegitimate as if it is legitimate, because of its source.

The nature of the fat hating obesity crisis is bogus and illegitimate-if anyone is genuinely worried/ terrified of fatness being a health problem, they would never recommend what doesn't work. In the same way that if your house is on fire, I'm not going to tell you to pour petrol on it, because its liquid and there's not a drop of water to be had and "we've got to do something!"

What you do is the best thing you can, not follow busted logic-petrol is liquid-regardless of the actual results. If the best you can do is to get the hell out of there, that is something enough until you can actually do better.

In fact, they'd be telling fat people to think very carefully if at all before they wasted their time. Why?

Because if you are against something you see as a threat to health, your number one priority is to not make things worse and to exclude what doesn't work, it gets in the way especially if it is widely believed to work. What you want is something effective, if you aren't interested in that, you aren't anti anything except making cash money. That's why anti cancer charities don't recommend people who claim to cure it with snake oil.

In fact they would be ferocious in exposing that because the principle of do no harm is as important as seek remedy. Compare that to so called 'anti obesity' who first of all shout fire in a crowded place, with exits marked calorie restriction even though that has made numerous people fat(ter) and has not headed off the crisis, even though the idea predates it by a few years at least.

Taking the irrational as 'one side', merely because its authority mandated and fat acceptance as the end point (and suspect because it comes from lay people), claiming bovinely that the truth is in the middle is weapons grade bilge. A bit like claiming that the KKK is the start of opinion because it too has been validated by the authorities and the NAACP as the other and therefore 'extreme' in comparison with it.

Objectivity is about judging opinion on its merits, without fear or favour, playing the ball not the man as they say. If it is nonsense it is nonsense that remains unaltered by rank either way.

Claiming the NAACP is super radical not due to its content but by juxtaposing it with racism, not matter how many luminaries put on the pointy hood, is bull. FA should be 'extreme' compared to hysterical fat phobia as any rational impulse should be compared with an irrational one. Not having a mental breakdown, should seem 'radical' compared with having one, because of the nature of the two, not because the former is deliberately trying to upset the former, or vice versa.

Now disagree if you wish, I'd welcome it, I wouldn't claim to know everything, but disagree with the actual point. I have to refer some of those who (genuinely) aren't grasping that to a lyric from a song.

"With never the need to fight or to question a single thing".

If you rigidly think that whatever authority says must have some intrinsic virtue merely because it's you know *hushed reverence* from authority, regardless of what it says. If you think the mainstream view must be moderate, purely because it is the mainstream because it must, then I'm looking at yoo-hoo.

Those who have not been or kept themselves so sheltered should not have to apologise for being more able to contemplate a wider range of possibility on that score. Others share your feelings of embarrassment and betrayal, its just that it happened earlier or deeper before, taking it out on them is not the way to go.

I get that people think that FA has to have a huge membership- I don't agree with that assessment at all. An indicator is the MC thing, that caught everyone in FA by surprise which confirms my view that not all resistence happens or is contained in FA and its a tad vainglourious to assume it is or must be.

Or that it must appeal to Mr and Ms Middle brow of Middlesbourough, but I wouldn't be quite so condescending as all that. Many of those people are far more 'radical' and clued in than you. Yeah, not everyone's a joiner.

Some people don't join precisely because they see more clearly than they should and would rather keep the extent of that to themselves. You'd probably think they were crazy radicals anyhow.

So that's enough for now, I'm looking forward to an automatic recognition by fat people that we are as human as anyone and that means what happens to us, in us, defines the truth of being human as much as any other. If we do not, no-one else does end of story.

To all teh fatz of all races creeds, beliefs, genders, whatevers there are no group of people on earth finer or better, nor worse than you.

Got that?

I'm looking forward to it being unthinkable to think anything else.

Let's go for the instant gratification we are infamous for and make that right now.


Happy New Year

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