Monday 29 April 2013

Put Down Your Booze Doughnuts

Here's a telling little spat concerning the findings of a study. It apparently showed the surprising fact that fat boozehounds have a greater risk of liver disease than slim lushes. Though;
More research is required to determine the exact thresholds for each risk factor that independently and in combination increase the risk of chronic liver disease but this is an important first step in the right direction."

I find it hard to believe there's no raised risk if you're a heavy drinker in the underweight category. But as is usual in anything connected to 'obesity' this aspect is obscure(d). Not to pick on them, but to make the point-again- that weight and risk is a U-shaped curve, like many a spectrum of human function.

Jezebel's Anna Breslaw seems to have been on a misguided mission to appeal to fatz. Which I find kind of sweet, appreciate the thought. It's bit like when the very mainstream abusing thin women on their tawdry assumption that everyone hates everyone else, but without such self reverential nastiness.

In this case she got it a bit wrong. Mind's drift when banality ensues. That tends to be central to the body of knowledge that appears under the aegis of the construct of 'obesity'.  If this is so, I sympathize. 

These kinds of mistakes happen when those who have a history of being excluded are being included. The process is not without hitch, I've seen it times without number. That's okay.

What I don't like is this provides yet another unneeded opportunity for certain so called feminists to dump misogynist stereotypes on those women they consider of lesser status, in this case, fat women. As well as taking a dreary dig at fat acceptance being the sinister enemy of science.

Please.

After all we have been put through because we refused to pretend the failure of calorie restriction induced slimness hasn't happened.

No feminist who has a remotely logical or scientific brain could take 'obesity' seriously, merely because men are still able to assert it grandly, on grounds unrelated to pure science endeavour. Someone pointed out the flaw in the construct, in that it fails to correctly sketch out the ways CVD and/or organ damage degeneration happens, using fatness as a proxy instead.

Why some of these whiners don't think that might be a problem for those who have these factors, but are not fat, I don't know. I'm sure they will when some sufficiently scienterific guy tells them.

And don't get me started on some of the rank matter that turns up in that increasing turd bath of 'eating disorders'. I'd like to hear some outrage from these types then. That jazz is increasingly not just harm inducing it is straight up ignorance promotion filled with more hot air than Formula 1. Oh and can I give a special mention to things under the banner of 'nutrition'?

Oh and what about all these toxic placebos we call 'mental health meds'. Don't take us on because um..........displacement.

All that needed to be said in this case was in this excellent comment from "ruby.s.chard"
I haven't read the actual study, but it sounds like they're looking for an interaction effect. If drinking causes your risk of liver disease to be 6, and obesity causes your risk of liver disease to be 2, does being an obese drinker make your risk of liver disease 6, 8, 12, or something else entirely?
Anyway, I agree that Jez needs a dedicated science writer. And then Jez could do what no other news outlet that covers science seems to manage: include the citation for the original damn article(s) at the bottom of their coverage!!! It's hard to get mad at Jez for this when the philly.com coverage doesn't tell us either. I don't have time to spend an hour scouring Google Scholar for this exact study, but if it were linked from here, I might go peek at the abstract* so I can engage in discussion about it a bit better informed.
*Unless they're using any cool statistical techniques that I can learn about. Which is rare, because medical research seems to stick with OLS regression
Sorry to crib the whole, but she says it so well. I also agree with Vidiya's sentiment, who if I'm not mistaken is a fat acceptance advocate.

I'm not a reader of Jezebel, but I might be if it did upped its science coverage-got a scientist on board and made that a selling point. Fat people are not afraid of science. We are afraid of what masquerades as science and 'evidence' based, which is being used increasingly to transfer resources from fat to slim, if you don't mind.

Remember we asserted an instinctive understanding of ourselves as whole functioning indivisible units-when it was still total currency amongst scientists that 'excess' weight/ fatness sits there like a separate detachable preventable load.

Scientists eventually caught up not only with the fact that fat cells are actually active cells, but also that fat tissue operates as part of the system as a whole. Just like we said, not like the 'obesity' construct still assumes, slim people with detachable fat units.

This isn't clear because when others find out something we already know, it is presented to us as an accusation, in a form acceptable to their view. So active fat tissue becomes an inner guerrilla launchpad attacking our organs and glands oestrogenically

Good definitions help to explain things. When you grasp that our bodies are as whole as everyone else's, you begin to get why the body perceives an attack on fat stores is seen as an attack on itself. They say science is often elegant.  

If all these sharpies are so scienterrific, why didn't they tell us this? Why don't they ever get how much we know, or want to? Why didn't their outside perspective help us to get there? Why don't they respect our experience? Why haven't they formed a sounding board for building on more of our insights?

You know like women who take for granted that science doesn't reside in men or something.

Imagine women just taking the ball and running with it, forcing others to catch us? Think of all the effort women put into calorie restricted weight loss. Imagine if we'd used that to try and manipulate human metabolic function?

But no instead, let's dump on those under attack from our masters and compete for the imagined light of most obedient girl. Not so much Jezebel as Pollyanna.

Whatever feminist misogynists keep on hollowing out what used to be an intellectual awakening for women, it's your era and you're welcome to it. 

So, not so much fat shaming as the usual inconclusive and predictable filler that we get from a bogus construct.

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