A lot of focus on the damage done to fat people is on the pressure to be thin or to lose weight. Yet much of it resides in the way delusion has been enforced in place of reality. The delusion here is not merely belief. It is the suspension of reality to impose a preferred imaginary version.
Meaning, this has been a conscious imposition of falsehood.
It’s been abundantly clear for decades if not more, that conscious calorie restriction was not a viable strategy for major reversal of weight. It has been tried by millions worldwide, not just by fat people but people of all weights.
It’s failure is obvious.
Though the practice of it preceded the so called “obesity crisis”, it neither prevented, nor has subsequently reversed it. There’s a lot of emphasis on ‘obesity’, yet whole societies are getting bigger or fatter, across the board.
The failure of calorie restriction has been deliberately and consistently denied. This delusion presented as ‘scientific/medical fact’. Fat people were vigourously shamed into participating in this sham too.
Leading us to reject the reality of what was actually happening to us and our bodies. Feeling we'd dishonoured ourselves through being fat and needed to redeem ourselves by adhering to this delusion as an implied means of redemption.
I once misnamed this process as “Rebecca syndrome”, after the film of the famous novel. The main character is the second wife of a widower tormented by the housekeeper, who manipulates things around her in order to undermine her sanity.
Turns out that's a name for something else. This process has another name; gaslighting. Ironically also after another film where the same kind of thing happens;
Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory, perception and sanity. Instances may range simply from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.
In this case the purpose, or should I say, the drive has been a major repression of truth to keep us dieting. Like anorexics, those who invest in calorie restriction derive a profound sense of control from it.
being thin is in fact often only a minor matter compared to everything else that drives you...........control is probably at the centre of it all: thinness is simply an effect, a demonstration to yourself and to others. Control of food and eating might be the most obvious anorexic behaviour, but the control illusion stretches its tentacles into all the rest of life......I like Emily Trosciank's phrase "the control illusion". That is exactly what's going on at the heart of this peculiar inability to absorb reality. And vice versa, a desire for control magnetizes people to adhering to calorie restriction.
We've seen evidence of it time and again. When a paper starts off with dieting is shit, then ends up saying don't stop dieting. People cannot seem to accept that this supreme illogicality is a product of the potency of that safety blanket.
Regardless of actual outcomes or damage done this control illusion remains intact.
This is why I keep saying that anorexia's labelling as 'mental illness' is instinctively political. An attempt to other anorexic behaviour so it is not associated with respectable authority.
Because any damage is not borne by those most rigourously imposing it-by proxy-on other people. So unlike a person with anorexia, there’s not even the prospect of their own pain acting as a lever of control, to sap the fervour.
It's solely on their capacity to be swayed by the damage done to their targets, in this case fat people. If that doesn't explain why fat people are and have to wake up, I don't know what does.
The coldness to the effects on fat people induced by this mindset is becoming legendary. It has helped turn fat people into a subhuman category of disease without it even causing any pause for thought amongst decent thoughtful people.
So called caring professionals have been so fully on board with it, that this in itself has helped to discredit fat people. Virtually no criminal on earth is abandoned by the explanations and ministrations of various white coated professionals.
I guess the lesson here is criminals have learned to have more self respect than those who are law abiding. And they're more threatening to the cowardly instinct in us, that likes to bully.
The consequences have been a major source of enabling the undermining fat people’s integrity, honour. The erasure and denial of our efforts. Not only to others, but worst of all, to ourselves.
If there is one person on earth who should believe in you when all others doubt you, that person is yourself. Fat people have been cynically denied this.
Unsurprisingly, this has affected fat people profoundly. Apart from being a major source of lowered self esteem and other problems among numerous fat people. The wonder is that we've stood up to it so well overall. I suspect that is in part due to the consistent sense of openness and honourableness we've brought to things.
Thought I do not claim we are by any means perfect, we have behaved better than anyone else plus we have been morally accountable in ways many of our tormentors haven't.
Leaving aside the physiological effects of the action of constantly attempting weight loss dieting/calorie restriction. [Weight loss dieting loss and re-gain is a punishing way to fail.] It's being pressured to keep repeating the same failure, over and again on pain of accusations of a lack of moral integrity.
Which if you think about it, is a hallmark pattern of different sorts of brain malfunction. The inability to take in and draw meaning from experience.
It’s one thing to keep trying when you know the score and are prepared for the true likelihood of success and choose to suspend that in order to have a go. It is quite another to be prevented from acknowledging what has really happened and being made to see yourself as the cause of the dysfunction.
This is what has done damage to people's psyches and has been a despicable and cruel misuse of people. More that that, trust has been violated not only by those who were expected to unreservedly deliver objective scientific truths. But also, those who were expected to have best interests of those they love at heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment