Extracts from
Roxane Gay's book
Hunger featured in the guardian the other day. I admit I wasn't looking forward, I'm not her type of reader. "
My body is a cage of my own making" turned out to be a different kettle of fish all together.
Beautifully written-so say those who know about these things. I'm kidding, even I could tell! At first I was wound up by that title-I doubt its anything of the sort, her own making that is. After some time I remembered the book is called
Hunger. I began to sense a certain aggression-"I'm saying, I did it to myself, now you can stfu and
listen for once."
Someone used to crowd control.
I even began to wonder whether I've been at fault for not being more prepared to accommodate what's required. For me though, it wouldn't be true. I know weight isn't conscious choice. I know a body demanding more energy than is about function not emotion.
Is weight an unconscious choice choice though? I've always tried to leave that open, but the more people claim it is, the less convincing that feels, esp. given their explanations.
Why is the big question,
why go to all that trouble?
And where does this wellspring of what-ob-means come from? Is it genetically influenced?
It's a case of only when proper means of reversing body mass is available, will it be easier to perceive just how mechanical this all is.
In some sense, the reaction of the readers was most peculiar. Never have so many 'nice' middle class people been so relieved and joyous about such monstrous violation. As long as you're working within the current favoured ob trope for those who think they're nice-Nice Guys [I'm using that pansexually]-"Food addiction", that is.
Though more rigorously moderated-to minimise the, "I was raped and still managed to maintain a hell-thay wait" type comments, the extent of collapse of the usual impenetrable gabble, you know it, I'm not even going to mention it, was quite alarming. As if the biggest problem people have with fat metaphysics is the lack of (perceived) brokenness on offer- that complaint undermined only by self-pitying whines about "self-pity".
Like, this is how to be a woman/ finally-a fat woman.
Slimness signifies woman in some way, the absence of it seems to equate to the absence of womanhood, with the knowledge that it is there. Which lends a sense of impertinence. The criticisms of fat activists are tendentious and strained.
Fat women it seems are perceived as impinging on the space usually assigned to masculinity- without the qualifications for it. Therefore we come across something like aggressive, but low (very) low status males. Notable are the reaction of women, who were just as relieved/happy that finally fatz had joined them and they could get behind a fatty-joy of joys.
Nothing new, but I'm still surprised it makes this much difference especially to the sort of
women informed by feminism.
Though it is 2017 and not 18 or even 1717, it seems women cannot advocate through argument, or rely on reason they must
emote, from a place of being breached. The more 'unsympathetic' the greater the impact needed to crack through the hard carapace of favoured delusion.
----------------------------
Four aspects spoke to me. How these types require you to talk about being, i.e. "I chose fat, using food" to do x. How people treat you as a fat person. The
impotence imposed on any fat person who's ever tried to be slim/lose weight-the latter goal replaced the former when it became clear that this route had turned that into a pipe dream.
And the parts I enjoyed most, about playing your duty,
I am, perhaps, self-obsessed beyond measure. No matter where I am, I
wonder about where I stand and how I look. I think, I am the fattest
person in this apartment building. I am the fattest person in this
class. I am the fattest person at this university. I am the fattest
person in this theatre. I am the fattest person on this aeroplane. I am
the fattest person in this airport. I am the fattest person in this
city. I am the fattest person at this conference. I am the fattest
person in this restaurant. I am the fattest person in this shopping
mall. I am the fattest person on this panel. I am the fattest person in
this casino.
The self absorption of neurosis, in this case imposed neurosis of the 'obese' characterisation, so true. It's this kind of crap that drove me to step out of dutiful portrayal of the 'obese' role, remembering you are doing baad. I know the comment is more about Roxane's awareness of her size, but its what you're supposed to say to yourself, remember you are fat.
It's motivational.
Being multiply-raped at the age of 12 is so unthinkable that it was just as much so after I read it as before. Nothing can make that fit in my head, my imagination runs out. Yet I recognised parts;
...no one but those boys could hear me scream.....the surprising strength in their limbs. I remember that they laughed a
lot. I remember that they had nothing but disdain for me.
At that moment I thought, how little has changed, I couldn't help myself. So much of being abused in general is like what people want the experience of fat to be. Not for their own personal satisfaction you understand, for the good of health. Of society.
If folks want a mythos about why people "choose" to be fat, why not that when you have a trauma or shock, your nervous system assumes the construction of that trauma, the head becomes dissonant. Being an ob thing is a good alignment.
Is that true? Not the point, its better than the ones made up by others.
As it is those assaults-and this is why the Internet feels strangely old-fashioned a lot of the time-seemed to reshape RG's nervous system, straining it. Around that goes gain,
over time, especially if that doesn't retreat sufficiently. It depends on tendency as always.
Eating is taking in energy. It is the response to hunger and hunger increases when the systems that regulate and colate it are disturbed, and/or the body needs more energy. Few can sit and just eat and eat without hunger or energy misalignment.
She also seems to be a metabolic outlier. At the end of an interview she said that she'd grow 12 or so inches at around age 16, which seems extraordinary to me. Though not all tall people are fat obviously, it shows real potential toward growth.
Her top weight was 577lbs and if you still have to ask why she had to hit that, the answer is of course, no reason whatever....except, if you can stop a person's body from hitting 577, then you can stop them from hitting 200 or less.
The first rule of medicine is to
stabilise. We are still waiting for the industry/field to manage that rather conservative target after all these decades due to it not being found in how much sugar is in digestive buscuits. All that despite their sniffiness at our lack of anorexia talent. Not to mention the increasing ability of others to stop all sorts of cells from proliferating.
I wish I had known I could talk to my parents and get help, and turn to something other than food.
I must say I laughed out loud at the mention of "help" out there that would have stopped Roxane's body in its tracks. If proper investigation had lent itself to inducing a neural realignment, that would have taken something out of the trauma, make her more able to discuss it.
Why would a girl want to tell the parents she has so much compassion for what had happened to their young daughter? Children often
feel for their parents. For the responsibilities they have, their emotional/mental states, and what it would mean to them if they knew. Why should a child so utterly betrayed
have go through
another unthinkable thing? Another loss?
Many people cope by not telling those they love. They're hanging on to the view of themselves
before.
She has so many symptoms of the kind of souped up traumatised system and if mercifully that could be made to return to a rest state, the relief she'd have gotten and would still get would probably be appreciable.
That's supposed to
motivate research.
The fact that she loses a bit of weight every time she goes on a dietary regime is a possible sign that her body might respond rather readily to this in a way that would aid the reversal she desires.
We are told constantly we are sick, yet people are expressing surprise that Roxane is in pain,
really? So they do know they're lying. Certainly
'obesity' wallahs know some are in pain, they just don't give a damn, they want to tell you you
deserve it and there all, "We don't know nuttin' about nuttin'."
I have been wracking my brains for years as to why they've developed this hang 'em and flog 'em mentality when it comes to fat people. I don't claim to be perfect, but over and above umm ethics, the idea of other people's suffering doesn't interest. I don't get what makes this so
compelling.
I doubt we'll find out any time soon, they don't want to be that in touch with their fee fees.
Getting people like Roxane's systems to return to a more normalised state would would be grand, but that would also interrupt the ob narrative of distress and sickness. So, many of those involved are just going to keep fucking around with nonsense like "food/eating addiction", whilst pretending to be doing science.
A reminder of what certain establishment scientists and medics wanted to do to gay men and AIDS, under the cover of science. One shudders to think what would have happened there if they'd got their way.
The thing that's saved fat people is that being fat is
not disease or inherently a pathology in and of itself, though if it was, the sort of body count of the various opiate crises ironically would have jerked people out of this ugly stupor.
That doesn't mean there isn't a job to be done. I've made it plain that scientists/researchers owe people a debt of honour in this affair. And, that would open up a portal to greater achievement in various fields of physical and mental health.
Slander and lies have been told to hurt people who simply haven't deserved it. Whatever anyone thinks or says, the phony baloney attempts to cast weight as addiction/eating disorder/mental health problem won't work. The buck for this culture of false disease must stop somewhere and it has to be here.
This is going to have to be solved
properly, nothing less will do.
Presumably that's the underlying source of rage.
