Tolerance

A little word on this Maria Kang incident. To sum up this non-event, Ms K decided to post a picture of herself and her three children, aged 8 months, 2 and 3 years on her f***book page topped off with the headline; "What's your excuse?"

This triggered a kerfuffle, cries of fat shaming plus defence of her. My response was indifference to the image. I was going to ignore the whole thing, buuuuut (yet again), I was exercised a bit by the response.

I must admit, fat shaming has never been my favoured way of representing the trouble with being fat. Its become the lingua franca for expressing it and that's that. Its popular as it is one of the few things the fat hating world can seem to understand (fat hating mashes the IQ) and that fat people also can grasp so makes them feel how they should but rarely feel. In charge of defining their own experience.

It doesn't convey that the real issues are about a cultural hegemony that is supported and fuelled by the influential medical establishment. Rather than simply emotive.

I'm not particularly sympathetic to those who moaned about people like this. It features something I detest and has no name, when people who would count as having disabilities, use them as a get out clause for being hated. As if it's somehow okay to hate those who do not have disability induced fatness.

People should be able to tell the truth about their situation, without implying that their disability is some kind of exemption pass. Though its not quite as bad as those who list their litany of good behaviour, it runs.

The best thing to do with people like Ms Kang is to laugh or pity them, not get on the defensive- when there are truly things to get on the defence about. Like being cast as disease. That's something everybody should be up in arms about.

The premise of "excuses" is something central to the whole 'obese' bogey. You are supposed to lose weight through dieting. That doesn't work. Because that truth is rejected, your placed the back foot if you cannot assert that. Reality being cast as "an excuse." We need to learn to stop falling into this trap, making it clear we know assertions about weight loss diets are mainly about belief.

Belief does not an argument make, as it depends not on reason, but the suspension of it.

I find this kind of mentality peculiar. It loves itself in a way that erases all faults, requiring them to be shifted onto others and expected to be borne by them. It's a kind of love I would neither wish to give nor receive. That kind I need is that which recognises faults and loves anyway. That to me is true tolerance.

A word much assailed by the type of brats who've not yet seen past their privilege, but when done properly, is a true state of grace.

You need a love that can tell you to stop being an arse when necessary and one that understands that your faults are just the other side of your strengths and that you can't really have one without the other, no matter how desirable that seems. Not one that's so disgusted, that it as to pretend they don't exist, only to see them in others. Because that's not how we are.

The kind of love represented by Kang's mentality used to just unnerve when I was locked into trying the calorie wastage game. It now repulses psychologically and physically, now I've had a chance to truly examine the cost to those who are dumped on by its incontinence. There is no separation now, I can see it all too clearly now.

I don't envy her or her kind and I'm sure she's not bothered one bit by that.

Which is okay because I'm sure my kind repels her, and that's okay by me too.