Responses are defined by the terms of engagement

Here's a post complaining about lack of niceness forcing the author to abandon her deeply held belief in HAES-or fat people improving their health from where they are. I've never gotten used to the idea that this requires a mighty acronym.

It's a kind of complaint that usually sounds off-kilter, given people like this think nothing of telling fatz to piss away their whole lives in search of thinness through unlikely means; as if that's nothing. In contrast they're rather precious about their own fee fees. Some contact with someone they deem not nice and its over. They should try the "niceness" of a life being beaten up, inside and out, by weight loss diet fail.

The post links to another by the blogger himself tauntingly entitled; "Why HAES may never go mainstream." That being posed as the ultimate test of what's worthwhile is very revealling. The shame is fat people don't appear, popular. Again, the only real thing in this world. To shamelessly crash Godwin's; Hitler was elected the first time. Amusingly, he comments on "obesity research";

Fighting misinformation with misinformation, relevant omissions with relevant omissions, and logical fallacies with logical fallacies, is not the way to accredit your movement,

Get that! "Misinformation....... relevant omissions.....logical fallacies", indeed. This is what we should of heard from med profs long ago. So, appearing to do the same is not enough to acquire the holy grail of mainstream acceptance. Even though that's clearly worked for 'obesity'!

and if HAES has any hope of actually penetrating mainstream medicine, something I would dearly love to see happen, they're going to need to hold themselves up to at least the same, if not a higher level of scrutiny to which they hold others.

Yes, without the halo effect of slimness-what some refer to as "thin privilege", its own standard reflected in the response to it, looks reprehensible. Answering 'obesity' means taking it on its own often senseless terms plus devil's horns means its standards will be reflected and played up in your responses to it. What these people are complaining about is the scent of that hanging over fat people.

And as fat people are defined as intrinsically pathological, it makes sense that this must be all theirs.

People already know 'obesity' is BS, well, their minds have worked it out. Just because you suspend your moral and critical faculties, doesn't mean you stop them functioning. It's just BS they want to get on board with at all costs. Dealing with this can be hard work, these people have gained an insight into that and they assume that is down to fat people or those that support them.

Rather than what they're up against.

To set a better standard, you'd have to ignore 'obesity' all together. I've always been in favour of that. 'Obesity' is held up to so little sustained critical scrutiny and HAES or any kind of fat acceptance is rarely anything but. But then, ('obesity')  shouldn't need to be of course as it should be pursuing facts in the first place. It should be leading the pursuit for health at every size.