A reminder, fat people's personal responsibility has been exemplary. Though one would be unwise to take anything said by weight quackists on face value, it's worth repeating. With absolutely nothing, we have been expected to alter our bodies to an extent that falls under the balliwick of the (Western) medical profession, with little to no accurate science, no medical training whilst brainwashed to abuse ourselves without mercy or cease, disregarding, burying our own true feelings, reality, actions and their results.
We repeated dieting over and over, many of us failing pretty much every time, or grinding off weight at great cost in time and effort, only to see it return with no effort in a half or even quarter of the time it took to shed it.
Every time the latter did this, they endeavoured to try again. Every time the former failed, they endeavoured to try again, expecting to succeed all the way, until we learnt. We had an education.
So much responsibility did we take that I find myself randomly identifying with the chronically and genuinely ill, who have to do numerous things to try and stay on an even keel, because of doing so much.
We did all this without being sick. Not that I want to throw sick or disabled people under the bus-some are obviously both, but there's something about having to do stuff to keep you going or alive even, that can compel in ways not having to simply cannot.
We didn't have to do all this, we did it anyway. For the cause.
Any compulsion we had was largely contrived, it's one of the reasons fat people have been so loath to give up on that, it shapes you.
This is not sad, such is the extent of our taking everything on ourselves, I feel we touched something outside the cramped norms pressed on us. It showed us that what is "expected" of us, is deliberately set way below all our capacities. It was in some ways, an outer perimeter of what we're expected to be able to do.
It has ended the doctor/ patient contract as we know it and for that, I think we should celebrate and be thanked by all still held in its thrall.
Showing posts with label FA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FA. Show all posts
Monday, 10 February 2020
Sunday, 17 August 2014
Nothing About Us
I've got more to say on the subject of this churnalism. For now though, I wanted to make a point about the nature of fat acceptance and its relationship to the mis-labelled "obesity debate." It might address those who talk about fat people "segregating" themselves and about it being an "echo chamber."
I say might, because it wasn't particularly prompted by that. What I have to say centers on BTL below the line, that is the comments section. There is no real point of entry for a fat person with consistent level of self awareness. It's narrow binds cannot stretch to include knowledge beyond its own constructs.
Any thoughtful appraisal of fat people's experience is at cross purposes with it.
It reminds me of when "Nihil de nobis, sine nobis"-nothing about us without us-was invoked, in conjunction with Michelle Obama's "child obesity" fandango. I instinctively burst out laughing when I hearing this. The continually off-centered way others as well as myself kept experiencing a certain kind of FA thought-stream.
It's not so much that it was wrong more oddly naive if that doesn't appear condescending. Its in no way meant to. The butting of mindsets between between people who consider others in a way those others simply are not considering them and vice versa, without either seeming to realise it.
Peering closer, you realise FA simply views others in the same way others view them. Not as what they are or how they are behaving, but as their (defined) idea of them. That is, fat phobes talk to their construct 'obese' and project that onto any fat person-and increasingly any person who doesn't fully uphold their fundamentalist emoting.
And many FA's talk to their idea of slim people as superior, realer and more credible and project that onto fat phobes, going so far that their minds instinctively construct a reason they simply do not possess.
That, reminds me of the famous effect of when a person pressures themselves into an anorexia corner, not listening to their body's numerous protests, ending up with their mind editing what they eat to fit the restrictions they place on themselves. Predictably, that is then pointed to as the cause of "their obesity" rather than a product of forcing their mind into a place where it cannot produce the desired effect.
Paying any attention to this can be cast as soft, but really, not paying attention to your own mind is just undermines it. Also explained as caused by 'obesity'.
When I got to FA, I used to say, "I've been trying to have a conversation about fat for most of my life." I'm still not sure I've really managed it since. By conversation, I mean a free exchange of views with mutual understanding-including of what is not understood by either.
I had no interest in having rows. I wanted to feel the liberation of talking freely, examining experience. It's fat phobes who want what they've got, endless hatefests, because that's all they've got. Fat people have experience, memories, unprocessed thoughts, learning curves, rising to incredible challenges, saying mea culpa in a world withdrawing from it, being accused, self betrayal, but above all, self rescue.
No body rescued us. No body told us to have some self respect. We decided, because that's in keeping with our overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
This so called mainstream "debate" has nothing to do with fat people and possibly never will as then it would not be this kerfuffle, it would actually be interesting. Haters don't know how boring it is due to them getting off on it. But some of us do.
The 'obesity' construct involves a willful and continued suspension of disbelief. Actually, of thought. Of even the most primitive critical faculties. The kind that rejects the idea that the sun is a wax candle before you finish thinking it as a sentence.
A slow reversal seems to be happening. People are beginning to talk themselves out of auto-tuned hate. In the past, fat hate was a minority thing, it became a sealed up everyone thing due to 'obesity' propagandizers, i.e. researchers and the medical profession.
As far as I can tell none of this wall-to-wall lipophobia could have happened with us having anything to say. If you are dehumanizing a group and let me clarify as that can happen in many ways. I mean, if you are casting people as disease not only will that curtail your communication with them to nothing, (when's the last time you felt like speaking to disease-as if it was human?)
Conversing with disease, even if such a thing isn't odd, would humanize it. Talking to things, i.e. a car or a boat, anthropomorphizes them.
Fat people's sentient experience of our fatness our bodies, has been as unreal to ourselves as we are to other people. That I'd say is pretty unique. It's also why its so hard to explain, especially in the face of a continued onslaught of outlandish stream of ad hominem that tends to provoke a defensive survival instinct. That this mismatch is not obvious shows a narrative that has not been interrupted. A "debate", no matter how disparate the views, develops lines of communication.
Despite the fact that below the line, something approaching a reason is breaking. out-questions are being asked It's no easier to participate than the usual show of rage.
The only echo chamber is the mindless assumption we've all shared.
I say might, because it wasn't particularly prompted by that. What I have to say centers on BTL below the line, that is the comments section. There is no real point of entry for a fat person with consistent level of self awareness. It's narrow binds cannot stretch to include knowledge beyond its own constructs.
Any thoughtful appraisal of fat people's experience is at cross purposes with it.
It reminds me of when "Nihil de nobis, sine nobis"-nothing about us without us-was invoked, in conjunction with Michelle Obama's "child obesity" fandango. I instinctively burst out laughing when I hearing this. The continually off-centered way others as well as myself kept experiencing a certain kind of FA thought-stream.
It's not so much that it was wrong more oddly naive if that doesn't appear condescending. Its in no way meant to. The butting of mindsets between between people who consider others in a way those others simply are not considering them and vice versa, without either seeming to realise it.
Peering closer, you realise FA simply views others in the same way others view them. Not as what they are or how they are behaving, but as their (defined) idea of them. That is, fat phobes talk to their construct 'obese' and project that onto any fat person-and increasingly any person who doesn't fully uphold their fundamentalist emoting.
And many FA's talk to their idea of slim people as superior, realer and more credible and project that onto fat phobes, going so far that their minds instinctively construct a reason they simply do not possess.
That, reminds me of the famous effect of when a person pressures themselves into an anorexia corner, not listening to their body's numerous protests, ending up with their mind editing what they eat to fit the restrictions they place on themselves. Predictably, that is then pointed to as the cause of "their obesity" rather than a product of forcing their mind into a place where it cannot produce the desired effect.
Paying any attention to this can be cast as soft, but really, not paying attention to your own mind is just undermines it. Also explained as caused by 'obesity'.
When I got to FA, I used to say, "I've been trying to have a conversation about fat for most of my life." I'm still not sure I've really managed it since. By conversation, I mean a free exchange of views with mutual understanding-including of what is not understood by either.
I had no interest in having rows. I wanted to feel the liberation of talking freely, examining experience. It's fat phobes who want what they've got, endless hatefests, because that's all they've got. Fat people have experience, memories, unprocessed thoughts, learning curves, rising to incredible challenges, saying mea culpa in a world withdrawing from it, being accused, self betrayal, but above all, self rescue.
No body rescued us. No body told us to have some self respect. We decided, because that's in keeping with our overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
This so called mainstream "debate" has nothing to do with fat people and possibly never will as then it would not be this kerfuffle, it would actually be interesting. Haters don't know how boring it is due to them getting off on it. But some of us do.
The 'obesity' construct involves a willful and continued suspension of disbelief. Actually, of thought. Of even the most primitive critical faculties. The kind that rejects the idea that the sun is a wax candle before you finish thinking it as a sentence.
A slow reversal seems to be happening. People are beginning to talk themselves out of auto-tuned hate. In the past, fat hate was a minority thing, it became a sealed up everyone thing due to 'obesity' propagandizers, i.e. researchers and the medical profession.
As far as I can tell none of this wall-to-wall lipophobia could have happened with us having anything to say. If you are dehumanizing a group and let me clarify as that can happen in many ways. I mean, if you are casting people as disease not only will that curtail your communication with them to nothing, (when's the last time you felt like speaking to disease-as if it was human?)
Conversing with disease, even if such a thing isn't odd, would humanize it. Talking to things, i.e. a car or a boat, anthropomorphizes them.
Fat people's sentient experience of our fatness our bodies, has been as unreal to ourselves as we are to other people. That I'd say is pretty unique. It's also why its so hard to explain, especially in the face of a continued onslaught of outlandish stream of ad hominem that tends to provoke a defensive survival instinct. That this mismatch is not obvious shows a narrative that has not been interrupted. A "debate", no matter how disparate the views, develops lines of communication.
Despite the fact that below the line, something approaching a reason is breaking. out-questions are being asked It's no easier to participate than the usual show of rage.
The only echo chamber is the mindless assumption we've all shared.
Sunday, 6 July 2014
Man V Collateral Damage
Adam Richman is an ex-professional feeder who presented a programme the attractions of which I simply do not understand. Seems that's due to its basis being anorexia worshipping societies boring obsessive compulsive food fixation. Even the mere veneration of it produces a displacement effect similar to that found in actual anorexics.
Anyhows, Richman stopped eating to the dictates of his career-eating amounts he doesn't want to eat and has lost some weight. He posted photos of himself on his instagram account in praise of said weight loss. One of hastags he used in this was #thinsporation which =Thin + inspiration.
This prompted a follower to get in touch with Amber Sarah who has the barefaced nerve to be a fat activist, non of this [""]. Not sure why "feminists" can't take other women seriously, probably waiting for men to do it first, giving them permission to.
She responded by, as far as I can see, calmly calling his attention to the term's inappropriate "problematic" connotations. He and others claim he had no knowledge of the origins of the term. That I doubt. It's in the air, he probably picked it up symbiotically. Funny how those who deem others guilty by existence trade so much on innocence. [Or perhaps not].
Thinspo comes from amateurs who take the 'cure' for 'obesity' to its logical conclusion and flat out define anorexia nervosa (and exercise bulimia) as a lifestyle. As indeed does the establishment-for fat people. One of the props for this turn of mind is the use of the objectification of women in the form of often doctored photos of slim and thin women to "inspire" them to continue starving themselves.
It's what a consciously induced famine requires, constant reminders to keep on doing it. All things being equal, you'd just eat when you're hungry, that's kind of a default necessity. Unless you have a form of anorexia so overwhelming that it more or less runs itself
[There's an ironic counterpart-fatspo fat + inspiration. Referring to the fact that it takes just as much continual will for fat people to swim upstream against society's imposition and view yourself as fully human, as it does to constantly and consciously contrive anorexia. If not more so.]
His first response was to state he had no fuq's to give. 'K. This prompted Amber to call on her followers to let him know the significance of ED's i.e. anorexia.
In short, Richman then went apeshit. Not merely angry but revealled he has an extent of problems way out of keeping with his cultivated image as a charming happy stuffer-shall we say. He actually called women c-nuts and went so far as to say to someone else;
What was I thinking? I know better.
Thinspo is persecuted by both the establishment and middle class parents with anorexic children, mainstream feminists and the like. Its the usual displacement of their own class attitudes showing up (mostly) daughters. They're keen to point the finger of blame elsewhere away from themselves, usually to where you'll find the expression of said attitudes.
Culture's a tricky one. We tend to be so much a part of it that seeing your children interpret it can be the first time you get a clear view of certain of its themes. That can be a real shock. It probably does feel emotionally like its coming from somewhere else.
In this way, thinspo has been saddled with the same kind of displacement as the fashion industry and its thin models.
Let's say, I'm unimpressed by anorexia and have a low tolerance for either its worship or Stockholmed too often fat phobic followers who insist others should also bow to the might of their friend 'ana'. What they deem insight, is too often expression of their inability to see how much of a hold it still has on their minds. To be fair, in a society that supports that.
Despite all this, I have sympathy for their position, and none for those who cynically use them to body shield their own disgusting capitulation to promoting this pathology, in the name of things like "weight management." With respect to Amber, I think any fat people joining in the point scoring about thinsproana should examine their motives more rigourously.
Fat activists need to learn to treat their own experience with a bit more respect, before joining any crude chorus of mindless disapproval, as a matter of principle. I've little problem confronting entitled pro-ana's who think they have the droit de seigner to abuse fat people. Though a little more understanding though of what drives, often children to pro-ana might be better when it comes to mainstream discourse is needed. A little less of the mindless replication of accepted hypocrisy.
Authority's persecution of "thinsproana" has always been self serving. It's motivated by keep up the pretense that there's a yawning chasm between anorexia nervosa and the imitation of it as a way of life, by anyone, including fat people. That its pure co-incidence that the amount of eating disorders have risen and disordered views of food have become the norm, indeed "healthy" during this 'obesity' crusade.
Because fat people's experience is almost completely erased, people can keep pretending calorie restriction as a "healthy lifestyle" will not keep spewing up its numerous sub-pathologies. Often assigning them to 'obesity' because they submerge the reality that fat people have already lived a pro-ana mindset and/or lifestyle in trying to slim the way we've been ordered.
They're also trying to continue the pretense that it doesn't require everyone to live by pro-ana, merely to implement it as the way of regulating weight. Society is required by that strategy to be the gastrectomy. That is in the nature of human design. Restricting necessity is unnatural, it requires rigid and constantly enforced artifice-before you think about results.
Instead, the voice of delusion continues to post-pone the day of reckoning. Those who wish to can still kid on about individuated harm free calorie restriction as the basis of weight regulation.
Hence this kind of tussle between anorexia as the 'obesity' cure and the value of thin/slim people damaged by it, occurs. You could say it will be interesting to see whether fat phobia or the value assigned slim people will win out.
Anyhows, Richman stopped eating to the dictates of his career-eating amounts he doesn't want to eat and has lost some weight. He posted photos of himself on his instagram account in praise of said weight loss. One of hastags he used in this was #thinsporation which =Thin + inspiration.
This prompted a follower to get in touch with Amber Sarah who has the barefaced nerve to be a fat activist, non of this [""]. Not sure why "feminists" can't take other women seriously, probably waiting for men to do it first, giving them permission to.
She responded by, as far as I can see, calmly calling his attention to the term's inappropriate "problematic" connotations. He and others claim he had no knowledge of the origins of the term. That I doubt. It's in the air, he probably picked it up symbiotically. Funny how those who deem others guilty by existence trade so much on innocence. [Or perhaps not].
Thinspo comes from amateurs who take the 'cure' for 'obesity' to its logical conclusion and flat out define anorexia nervosa (and exercise bulimia) as a lifestyle. As indeed does the establishment-for fat people. One of the props for this turn of mind is the use of the objectification of women in the form of often doctored photos of slim and thin women to "inspire" them to continue starving themselves.
It's what a consciously induced famine requires, constant reminders to keep on doing it. All things being equal, you'd just eat when you're hungry, that's kind of a default necessity. Unless you have a form of anorexia so overwhelming that it more or less runs itself
[There's an ironic counterpart-fatspo fat + inspiration. Referring to the fact that it takes just as much continual will for fat people to swim upstream against society's imposition and view yourself as fully human, as it does to constantly and consciously contrive anorexia. If not more so.]
His first response was to state he had no fuq's to give. 'K. This prompted Amber to call on her followers to let him know the significance of ED's i.e. anorexia.
In short, Richman then went apeshit. Not merely angry but revealled he has an extent of problems way out of keeping with his cultivated image as a charming happy stuffer-shall we say. He actually called women c-nuts and went so far as to say to someone else;
seriously-grab a razor blade & draw a bath. I doubt anyone will miss you.Can you believe that? I'm not that bothered by offense, but I found that repugnant. So much so that I forgot myself and honestly expected forthright condemnation, at least of that. You can be a fat hater and realise that crossed a line. After all, remember all the fuss about abuse on the internet of certain women on the internet.
What was I thinking? I know better.
Thinspo is persecuted by both the establishment and middle class parents with anorexic children, mainstream feminists and the like. Its the usual displacement of their own class attitudes showing up (mostly) daughters. They're keen to point the finger of blame elsewhere away from themselves, usually to where you'll find the expression of said attitudes.
Culture's a tricky one. We tend to be so much a part of it that seeing your children interpret it can be the first time you get a clear view of certain of its themes. That can be a real shock. It probably does feel emotionally like its coming from somewhere else.
In this way, thinspo has been saddled with the same kind of displacement as the fashion industry and its thin models.
Let's say, I'm unimpressed by anorexia and have a low tolerance for either its worship or Stockholmed too often fat phobic followers who insist others should also bow to the might of their friend 'ana'. What they deem insight, is too often expression of their inability to see how much of a hold it still has on their minds. To be fair, in a society that supports that.
Despite all this, I have sympathy for their position, and none for those who cynically use them to body shield their own disgusting capitulation to promoting this pathology, in the name of things like "weight management." With respect to Amber, I think any fat people joining in the point scoring about thinsproana should examine their motives more rigourously.
Fat activists need to learn to treat their own experience with a bit more respect, before joining any crude chorus of mindless disapproval, as a matter of principle. I've little problem confronting entitled pro-ana's who think they have the droit de seigner to abuse fat people. Though a little more understanding though of what drives, often children to pro-ana might be better when it comes to mainstream discourse is needed. A little less of the mindless replication of accepted hypocrisy.
Authority's persecution of "thinsproana" has always been self serving. It's motivated by keep up the pretense that there's a yawning chasm between anorexia nervosa and the imitation of it as a way of life, by anyone, including fat people. That its pure co-incidence that the amount of eating disorders have risen and disordered views of food have become the norm, indeed "healthy" during this 'obesity' crusade.
Because fat people's experience is almost completely erased, people can keep pretending calorie restriction as a "healthy lifestyle" will not keep spewing up its numerous sub-pathologies. Often assigning them to 'obesity' because they submerge the reality that fat people have already lived a pro-ana mindset and/or lifestyle in trying to slim the way we've been ordered.
They're also trying to continue the pretense that it doesn't require everyone to live by pro-ana, merely to implement it as the way of regulating weight. Society is required by that strategy to be the gastrectomy. That is in the nature of human design. Restricting necessity is unnatural, it requires rigid and constantly enforced artifice-before you think about results.
Instead, the voice of delusion continues to post-pone the day of reckoning. Those who wish to can still kid on about individuated harm free calorie restriction as the basis of weight regulation.
Hence this kind of tussle between anorexia as the 'obesity' cure and the value of thin/slim people damaged by it, occurs. You could say it will be interesting to see whether fat phobia or the value assigned slim people will win out.
Tuesday, 12 November 2013
Shadows
It's the 30th Anniversary of the US publication of a book called "Shadow on a Tightrope" this Friday. For many its an inspirational and seminal FA text. It's a collection of all sorts of writing, personal testimonies to poems on being fat. I got a hold of it at some point, it wasn't for me to be honest, but its worth a look. Maybe I'll peruse it at some point.
I do remember reading a horrible piece that felt like it went on forever, about a woman who had, I think, more than one weight loss operation. In those days, progressing to a figure of 1- 2 in 100 deaths-post surgery had yet to be reached.
It was horrible in so many ways and totally convinced me of what an insult "weight loss surgery" is to human beings. Even writing the term disgusts me, surgery for weight loss. Unbelievable. There's no doubt in my mind that there are potential avenues (always have been) for reversing or advancing weight. Such as manipulating gut bacteria. The issue with that is the same as that of calorie restriction; homeostasis overruling it. However, barring any problems with infection, it doesn't hurt, seek to attack the body, or cause pain. I really don't give much of one about those who think everyone should just live with being fat or thin. That's not really for anyone else to say.
The problem as I keep saying is the calorie restriction/wastage strategy.
Not only that, it doesn't make sense. Human metabolism is a biological function. Understanding it and being able to manipulate it must occur, even if weight woes didn't exist, because of metabolic disorders like diabetes-all types, PCOS. And even mental disorders from neuroses like depression, to eating disorders. Even psychotic conditions too, given some anti-psychotic meds can also cause weight gain. There's no doubt that there's a relationship between metabolic function and mental health. Understandably, as its the basis of our bodies regulation and restoration of our material selves.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's potential for some resolution for something like alcoholism perhaps some ideas on correcting the underlying dysfunction of drug addiction too. Because that's caused by the body's reaction to ingesting an external supply of chemicals (drugs) that it makes itself. The body reduces production, to avoid overdose-when drugs are taken.
The key to reversing addiction more successfully, is to get the body to restore normal levels, which may have been compromised slightly in the first place-leading perhaps to drug seeking behaviour in the first place.
Alcoholism is different, but there too, metabolic rebalancing could assist even the more chronic and intractable cases. Anyone who's seen long term alcoholic decline even its dementia knows how much suffering that could end.
For many, especially the archetypal story of a traumatic upbringing, it's really a cycle. Manipulation via nervous system and/or metabolism, could aid recovery from such and other kinds of trauma. Grief that becomes impacted and even things like PTSD.
I'm getting ahead of myself, but the point is, metabolic function is either resolution or a stepping stone to getting closer to resolutions of many conditions as it is central to maintaining our existence. As you know, sometimes, a development doesn't in itself provide answers, but becomes a stepping stone to putting you in a position to see what you couldn't see from your previous position. Even if you cannot quite reach from there.
So, the idea of treating being fat as like being gay in that it's offensive to even go any where near changing it has never been tenable for a second, though I understand why some feel that way. And shocking though it may seem, I'm not even convinced gay people will avoid options on that score either.
It just doesn't work like that. Things are discovered often because they're needed for something perfectly innocuous or righteous, only for the underlying mechanics to be applicable elsewhere. Because guess what?
Biology is biology and it doesn't give a damn about any ideology of offense. No matter how justified.
I do remember reading a horrible piece that felt like it went on forever, about a woman who had, I think, more than one weight loss operation. In those days, progressing to a figure of 1- 2 in 100 deaths-post surgery had yet to be reached.
It was horrible in so many ways and totally convinced me of what an insult "weight loss surgery" is to human beings. Even writing the term disgusts me, surgery for weight loss. Unbelievable. There's no doubt in my mind that there are potential avenues (always have been) for reversing or advancing weight. Such as manipulating gut bacteria. The issue with that is the same as that of calorie restriction; homeostasis overruling it. However, barring any problems with infection, it doesn't hurt, seek to attack the body, or cause pain. I really don't give much of one about those who think everyone should just live with being fat or thin. That's not really for anyone else to say.
The problem as I keep saying is the calorie restriction/wastage strategy.
Not only that, it doesn't make sense. Human metabolism is a biological function. Understanding it and being able to manipulate it must occur, even if weight woes didn't exist, because of metabolic disorders like diabetes-all types, PCOS. And even mental disorders from neuroses like depression, to eating disorders. Even psychotic conditions too, given some anti-psychotic meds can also cause weight gain. There's no doubt that there's a relationship between metabolic function and mental health. Understandably, as its the basis of our bodies regulation and restoration of our material selves.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's potential for some resolution for something like alcoholism perhaps some ideas on correcting the underlying dysfunction of drug addiction too. Because that's caused by the body's reaction to ingesting an external supply of chemicals (drugs) that it makes itself. The body reduces production, to avoid overdose-when drugs are taken.
The key to reversing addiction more successfully, is to get the body to restore normal levels, which may have been compromised slightly in the first place-leading perhaps to drug seeking behaviour in the first place.
Alcoholism is different, but there too, metabolic rebalancing could assist even the more chronic and intractable cases. Anyone who's seen long term alcoholic decline even its dementia knows how much suffering that could end.
For many, especially the archetypal story of a traumatic upbringing, it's really a cycle. Manipulation via nervous system and/or metabolism, could aid recovery from such and other kinds of trauma. Grief that becomes impacted and even things like PTSD.
I'm getting ahead of myself, but the point is, metabolic function is either resolution or a stepping stone to getting closer to resolutions of many conditions as it is central to maintaining our existence. As you know, sometimes, a development doesn't in itself provide answers, but becomes a stepping stone to putting you in a position to see what you couldn't see from your previous position. Even if you cannot quite reach from there.
So, the idea of treating being fat as like being gay in that it's offensive to even go any where near changing it has never been tenable for a second, though I understand why some feel that way. And shocking though it may seem, I'm not even convinced gay people will avoid options on that score either.
It just doesn't work like that. Things are discovered often because they're needed for something perfectly innocuous or righteous, only for the underlying mechanics to be applicable elsewhere. Because guess what?
Biology is biology and it doesn't give a damn about any ideology of offense. No matter how justified.
Wednesday, 19 June 2013
Fat Rights
I find the idea of fat rights to be oddly contrived. Surely it's a case
of human rights or more likely in this case, courtesies extended to all? Even in the case of fat people, we are
on the medical shit list, any rights are being impinged upon by that.
This bypasses a more direct attack through politics. There should therefore be a discussion on how much power the medical profession should have over anyone's life. And how much ability scientists and/or researchers should have to redefine you out of humanity. And indeed to redefine your sanity out of existence.
To re-classify you as a disease class of leechlike vermin.
How much veracity should their systems of classification be expected to have? Should things like the convenience of medical insurance be any part of that? If they get it wrong, who should be responsible for checking that? Should they be able to label your body and your character guilty without a hearing? Should your body weight alone be allowed to define the level of your sanity?
The professionals used to say, ask the public. In this case, we are the ones who have been silenced by their ideology of disbelief. They've undermined our integrity and their chosen beliefs requires it.
These are really important questions. Those who feel untouched by this ought to consider what they'd do if they were sandbagged like this. Or do they feel it couldn't possibly? I'll let the into a secret, neither did we.
Those accused of crimes can usually expect to be tried by a jury of their peers. If we are to be found guilty-by-body, taxed and fined, should we not be entitled to defence against the might of a system that has the power to condemn many of us to torture by withholding of treatment or ultimately death?
Are people comfortable outsourcing such powers to the medical/ scientific professions? In what way are they accountable?
Either way, these are questions for everyone. Those who see this as a fat problem are living in a fools paradise. The attitude these professions have toward fat people is the attitude they have to all lay people. Slimz who think they're beloved, merely because they're slim are simply fooling themselves.
The opportunity to unleash this frustration knocked because we've been and continue to be so accepting of it. I know people will say this is unfair and puts the burden on us, if so, would that make it less true?
The point is, other people do not accept or even actively reject this kind of treatment and that seems to be the decisive factor in this case.
The responses we have can be shaped by cultural legacies. Women's rights, Gay rights and so on. There were of course no "Black rights." The struggle for US Black people's inclusion into the basic civil rights of their country was rightly called "The Civil Rights movement." Black People's exemption meant the concept as a whole existed effectively as a system of privileges that could be withheld at the caprice of power.
Therefore there were no civil rights, only assigned privileges, until Black People could properly participate.
In the end, there are no women's, gay or any other specialist rights, there are only human rights. And their extension to all human beings.
This bypasses a more direct attack through politics. There should therefore be a discussion on how much power the medical profession should have over anyone's life. And how much ability scientists and/or researchers should have to redefine you out of humanity. And indeed to redefine your sanity out of existence.
To re-classify you as a disease class of leechlike vermin.
How much veracity should their systems of classification be expected to have? Should things like the convenience of medical insurance be any part of that? If they get it wrong, who should be responsible for checking that? Should they be able to label your body and your character guilty without a hearing? Should your body weight alone be allowed to define the level of your sanity?
The professionals used to say, ask the public. In this case, we are the ones who have been silenced by their ideology of disbelief. They've undermined our integrity and their chosen beliefs requires it.
These are really important questions. Those who feel untouched by this ought to consider what they'd do if they were sandbagged like this. Or do they feel it couldn't possibly? I'll let the into a secret, neither did we.
Those accused of crimes can usually expect to be tried by a jury of their peers. If we are to be found guilty-by-body, taxed and fined, should we not be entitled to defence against the might of a system that has the power to condemn many of us to torture by withholding of treatment or ultimately death?
Are people comfortable outsourcing such powers to the medical/ scientific professions? In what way are they accountable?
Either way, these are questions for everyone. Those who see this as a fat problem are living in a fools paradise. The attitude these professions have toward fat people is the attitude they have to all lay people. Slimz who think they're beloved, merely because they're slim are simply fooling themselves.
The opportunity to unleash this frustration knocked because we've been and continue to be so accepting of it. I know people will say this is unfair and puts the burden on us, if so, would that make it less true?
The point is, other people do not accept or even actively reject this kind of treatment and that seems to be the decisive factor in this case.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The responses we have can be shaped by cultural legacies. Women's rights, Gay rights and so on. There were of course no "Black rights." The struggle for US Black people's inclusion into the basic civil rights of their country was rightly called "The Civil Rights movement." Black People's exemption meant the concept as a whole existed effectively as a system of privileges that could be withheld at the caprice of power.
Therefore there were no civil rights, only assigned privileges, until Black People could properly participate.
In the end, there are no women's, gay or any other specialist rights, there are only human rights. And their extension to all human beings.
Wednesday, 29 May 2013
Not Opposite
Despite mathematical sub literacy; see, I can't even feel the term innumeracy, actually that's correct. I can't always read maths. I have never gotten on with this courant use of 'binary'. To mean erm, polarity. Binary has nothing to do with polarity. It's actually a digit system, like from 0-9, except it goes from 0-1. That's either mind bendinginly complex or too simple to be believed.
I'm feeling the former. There has always been something awry about being a versed in a number system of ten numbers, ergo seeing one consisting of a 'mere' two= 'opposites'.
Kind of embarrassingly parochial wouldn't you say?
Polarity is opposing forces that are magnetically linked. Our minds often default anything thought remotely to be paired thus. And like a double ended pen. Whilst you're concentrating on writing at your end, the other is writing the converse, in the air.
We think of a construct and write it's opposite through that and vice versa. Perhaps we assign either to some trait or other and fuse them. Fat and slim (some say thin) have become opposites. Saying it like that, the error seems obvious. Yet it appears to have happened without stating it openly. Just like the misuse of binary systems.
I have never gotten on with this. I am a fat person. I do not identify as fat, well, not in a way that separates me in an oppositional manner from being slim. Slim people are not opposite to me. I do not feel this. I have not bonded to identifying the experience of fatness as writing slimness as countervailing it.
This is good. I'd go so far as to call it excellent.
When people talk about being a slim person, I feel they could be talking about me. If they're not, it's a product of differing treatment and experience. Originally, a lot of trying to describe fat experience is wanting to offer slim people some information about themselves. Who said "Nothing human is foreign to me"? (Terence)
"Fat" is "slim". Pathologizing fatness, this is dodged or goes unnoticed. Indeed, many slimz tell themselves off, by shouting things at fat people. Whereas fat people tend to shout at ourselves. Like when slimmer folks "feel fat," Fat people feel this-if we do-about our actual fat selves. We do not insist we "feel slim" to say we feel crappy.
Things that are undesired can be called "obesity related", nothing to do with slimz. So no flies on them. Except there are and some part of them knows it. Which pisses them off no end (with us).
Differing experience plays up different features of our humanity, making it so richly felt in others, that they can transmit it to us, is so real and complete a way that it becomes more than a passing thought. Or a shallow observation.
'Obesity' degrades the humanity of fat people, in doing so it degrades the humanity of everyone else too. Not only in agreeing to such nonsense and that there could be a reason, but also regardless of the costs to them and everyone else. Does it need saying that this reveals a depth of self contempt? Things we need to say need to be heard by all because they make up part of our collective consciousness of being this funny animal we call human.
Or metaphysics as some might call it.
Slimness has tried to take over humanness and officially evicted fat people from sharing in that. The effects of this are as invidious as the origins are misguided. Defining fatness as bad for fat people, effectively posits fatness as something that happens to a slim body. Which simply is not only stupid, it undermines people's sense of self.
Which enables the docility and passivity many associate with their view of bovine fatness. They may not mind, thinking they're oh so separate-such is the fatuous individualism that has taken hold- except across whole populations, trust me, it brings us all down.
The notion behind this is deliberately not stated as, fat people have worse outcomes that whomever. If that's what people need to propose, they should say it. The endless, praise, complement and often worship of slimness through critiquing fatness (as oppositional) isn't good.
I can't hold with all this. That's my fat acceptance. I accept, I recognize I am human-for "fat" read human if that makes it easier. And that no one else needs to define or confirm for me thanks. Due to knowledge of ones homo sapience being intrinsic and all.
I'm feeling the former. There has always been something awry about being a versed in a number system of ten numbers, ergo seeing one consisting of a 'mere' two= 'opposites'.
Kind of embarrassingly parochial wouldn't you say?
Polarity is opposing forces that are magnetically linked. Our minds often default anything thought remotely to be paired thus. And like a double ended pen. Whilst you're concentrating on writing at your end, the other is writing the converse, in the air.
We think of a construct and write it's opposite through that and vice versa. Perhaps we assign either to some trait or other and fuse them. Fat and slim (some say thin) have become opposites. Saying it like that, the error seems obvious. Yet it appears to have happened without stating it openly. Just like the misuse of binary systems.
I have never gotten on with this. I am a fat person. I do not identify as fat, well, not in a way that separates me in an oppositional manner from being slim. Slim people are not opposite to me. I do not feel this. I have not bonded to identifying the experience of fatness as writing slimness as countervailing it.
This is good. I'd go so far as to call it excellent.
When people talk about being a slim person, I feel they could be talking about me. If they're not, it's a product of differing treatment and experience. Originally, a lot of trying to describe fat experience is wanting to offer slim people some information about themselves. Who said "Nothing human is foreign to me"? (Terence)
"Fat" is "slim". Pathologizing fatness, this is dodged or goes unnoticed. Indeed, many slimz tell themselves off, by shouting things at fat people. Whereas fat people tend to shout at ourselves. Like when slimmer folks "feel fat," Fat people feel this-if we do-about our actual fat selves. We do not insist we "feel slim" to say we feel crappy.
Things that are undesired can be called "obesity related", nothing to do with slimz. So no flies on them. Except there are and some part of them knows it. Which pisses them off no end (with us).
Differing experience plays up different features of our humanity, making it so richly felt in others, that they can transmit it to us, is so real and complete a way that it becomes more than a passing thought. Or a shallow observation.
'Obesity' degrades the humanity of fat people, in doing so it degrades the humanity of everyone else too. Not only in agreeing to such nonsense and that there could be a reason, but also regardless of the costs to them and everyone else. Does it need saying that this reveals a depth of self contempt? Things we need to say need to be heard by all because they make up part of our collective consciousness of being this funny animal we call human.
Or metaphysics as some might call it.
Slimness has tried to take over humanness and officially evicted fat people from sharing in that. The effects of this are as invidious as the origins are misguided. Defining fatness as bad for fat people, effectively posits fatness as something that happens to a slim body. Which simply is not only stupid, it undermines people's sense of self.
Which enables the docility and passivity many associate with their view of bovine fatness. They may not mind, thinking they're oh so separate-such is the fatuous individualism that has taken hold- except across whole populations, trust me, it brings us all down.
The notion behind this is deliberately not stated as, fat people have worse outcomes that whomever. If that's what people need to propose, they should say it. The endless, praise, complement and often worship of slimness through critiquing fatness (as oppositional) isn't good.
I can't hold with all this. That's my fat acceptance. I accept, I recognize I am human-for "fat" read human if that makes it easier. And that no one else needs to define or confirm for me thanks. Due to knowledge of ones homo sapience being intrinsic and all.
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;
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'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.
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"
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 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
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.
Saturday, 13 October 2012
Weak
Skin aka, Deborah Dyer undoubtedly one of the most talented singers I've ever heard (this isn't even the best performance I've heard from her) and check this out. The respect is evident. She's so good, even though I'm not a fan of the oeuvre of her band Skunk Anansie, I still like hearing her voice.
Yet, there's something about the lyric.
"Weak as I am. Am I too much for you?"
All is uh-gain leading to review the supposed weakness of the word "acceptance," as in, "fat acceptance." I can be quite nit picky about terms, yet I've never had any real problem with it. Liberationist at heart, I've never been keen on "equality" as the be all and end all of anything. I view it as at best a guide, not an aim.
So I feel like the kind of person who might find acceptance insipid somehow, but I just don't. I think that's because I don't really see the direction of fat acceptance as fronting to slim people. Or in performing, proving anything for them.
I don't believe fat hating is a genuine on face value urge. Hate comes from being threatened, its not supposed to be a contrivance of social engineering facilitation. The causes provoking it are heartfelt yes, but that's not what we are getting or being told. The action of it is the highest grade of BS there is.
It makes me cringe. If we weren't so self conscious ourselves, we'd see just how utterly reprehensible and absurd it is. Which many of us of course, don't want. We protect our love affair with thin privilege, as we complain about it.
My FA is not for slim people sorry. Though they're welcome as always to take what they want-honestly. But it's not specifically shaped for their sensibilities and they need to stop pouting about that.
The priority is enlightening (ha!) fat people young and old alike.
All this means that even if I did feel weak, I'd want room to feel it and still count myself as human-and be counted as such. The right to feel weak, to be weak, because you have been weakened by forces that may or may not be within your influence. This ability to feel feeling honestly something so often undermined in fat people. I want it.
Certainly way more than I want the tight resentful approval of those trying to persuade me to submerge myself into where they've excluded me from and where I frankly don't particularly want to be as much as all that.
You might say, it's either more toward one or the other. Either, outside- changing the minds of others to change your own. Or inside out, changing your own mind which forces others to make a decision about their response.
I don't know if either is superior, just that I know which one makes most sense to me and feels right.
The need to project strength though understandable isn't my priority, not for it's own sake. Having been beat up and drained for so long, people want to be fierce, but we forget, we've survived, amazingly well. I'm not entirely sure how or why, but don't underestimate how unexpected that is, for everyone.
How strong it is.
Fat people staying honest and true to honouring ourselves would be a mighty force indeed. Not only that, our truths are for everyone and can be used by them. Not when our actions are guided by pandering though.
Our weakness is in thinking we need to impress others more than we need to impress ourselves.
Friday, 6 July 2012
I Accept
T/W; For ideas on how to punish yourself.
As queasy as I feel about this blog I have to say when it comes to the meaning of acceptance I feel exactly the same way;
I've lived "tough", let's burn fat, let's take charge, let's get in shape. Not only was this IQ sapping, it lead only to the weakness of total obedience with total blame.
Incompatible opposites.
I can't find a way to care about how fat acceptance purportedly sounds. My focus is on what we have not been allowed to or permitted ourselves to perceive and consciously acknowledge.
It never occurred to me that the FA effort was all about changing the minds of others. I assumed for that have a chance of occurring, mine and other fat people's would have to change most of all. I didn't know people think that you have to change the mind of others to change your own.
Since having heard it years ago, I still don't get it.
That might make sense if we were talking about a situation where fat people represented our reality as a matter of course, versus others representing what? Something else to counter that. But even as I set up that premise it collapses, because if we'd done that, we wouldn't be in this position.
What has happened is we've been thoroughly on board with one mind set; other people's. The reasons for that don't actually matter as much as suppressing your own consciousness to replace it with another outside one.
We don't have a complete one of our own and we should have. The real point is nothing worth achieving should have required us to be without it.
The point of FA to me is to uncover, recover, discover that, in a way, for the first time.
I am truly astounded that people think this is what it's like to be on your own side. Slapping the recognition of what a gigantic load of shizz this has been, on top of a mind still in this shape, is supposed to the same as never having had a consciousness of self flattened to virtual invisibility, even to ourselves.
Calling the difference between the peculiarity of being fat and the lack of that peculiarity "thin privilege" is all very well but it simply obscures the fact that fat people have almost split ourselves in two to join others in the same attitude towards us.
Thin people aren't so much privileged, so much as more normal. It isn't normal to want to be something else so badly that you refuse to acknowledge your current form. Their privilege is not having been formed, directed and have lived this way-not because of the celebration of being slim.
Being defined as a thin body with a fat disease on it, listening to people talking about how they "feel fat" and how "mental illness" requires a pathological terror that the person might be fat.
Imagine if you thought you were thin, would you be terrified and respond to that terror by eating yourself senseless? Fat is awful, fat is bad. Shit, even when folks are not supposedly in their right minds still manage to uphold fat hating jazz. It reminds me of one of the eternal protests of Black People.
Why is it other people are never ignorant enough not to hate?
If you are on your own side and you can't get anywhere, yes I can see how you can say society has to change, but that takes for granted that you recognize your own existence. That is having/needing a double consciousness-which is where you recognise the fictionalized version of false universality of how to live would be the death of you; if you aren't in the right class or aren't the right race or gender etc.,
We've never really had a double consciousness. We have the faux universal consciousness, we have the if you just do what slim people do, you'll be slim. We don't have the what are you talking about? The are you telling me my life?
This is our normal that is how we are how we are, doing what slimz do in other words, being. We are just fat whilst doing it, therefore requiring us to be slim requires us to know way more about being human than we know.
About certain aspects of human physiology especially.
This for me epitomizes the state living the 'obese' construct shapes your mind into. That is why I'm here, to reject that, to accept what I know to be and refuse to be persuaded to disavow it as before.
I am as human and need to be as human as anyone. And that even if I could achieve thinness through said route, I wouldn't want it because I'm not prepared to be subhuman for anything. I cannot tolerate it. I'm not prepared to become someone who disgusts myself to do it. Not because I'm boo hooing about my fat thighs, but because I hate bullying and the politics of it-fascism. I detest having to mindlessly obey authority because it's authority, despite what happens.
Just because it won't show, because our 'betters' are saying, its all right to keep deluding yourselves because we're on board with it ourselves.
I'm not here because I give a shit about what slim people might think about fat people, what brought me to this place was finally realizing the value of me, of us and our experience; even if it didn't accord with what was acceptable or permissible to others, no matter who they were. No matter their back up, their kudos, their validation, the colour of their coats, whatever.
None of them were going to dictate reality to me anymore, none of them were going to tell me my life any more because I am living it, not them.
We are living it, not anyone else.
WE
Not other people. They don't have the final say in what we did, what happened when we did it and how it felt, subjectively to us. And if that doesn't match any "objective" assessment, that is a matter for rational investigation, not stigma, denial and erasure.
I don't believe in them over me anymore. I believe in me. I believe in us.
Whatever that's called.
*Apologies for not enough reading before posting.
As queasy as I feel about this blog I have to say when it comes to the meaning of acceptance I feel exactly the same way;
Acceptance means that you perceive reality accurately and consciously acknowledge what you perceive.That's certainly how I feel about acceptance in general and the acceptance bit in "fat acceptance". I must admit I don't know if it sounds wishy washy, but I can't say I care if it does. All the more to lull certain folks into a false sense of security, ha, ha!
I've lived "tough", let's burn fat, let's take charge, let's get in shape. Not only was this IQ sapping, it lead only to the weakness of total obedience with total blame.
Incompatible opposites.
I can't find a way to care about how fat acceptance purportedly sounds. My focus is on what we have not been allowed to or permitted ourselves to perceive and consciously acknowledge.
It never occurred to me that the FA effort was all about changing the minds of others. I assumed for that have a chance of occurring, mine and other fat people's would have to change most of all. I didn't know people think that you have to change the mind of others to change your own.
Since having heard it years ago, I still don't get it.
That might make sense if we were talking about a situation where fat people represented our reality as a matter of course, versus others representing what? Something else to counter that. But even as I set up that premise it collapses, because if we'd done that, we wouldn't be in this position.
What has happened is we've been thoroughly on board with one mind set; other people's. The reasons for that don't actually matter as much as suppressing your own consciousness to replace it with another outside one.
We don't have a complete one of our own and we should have. The real point is nothing worth achieving should have required us to be without it.
The point of FA to me is to uncover, recover, discover that, in a way, for the first time.
I am truly astounded that people think this is what it's like to be on your own side. Slapping the recognition of what a gigantic load of shizz this has been, on top of a mind still in this shape, is supposed to the same as never having had a consciousness of self flattened to virtual invisibility, even to ourselves.
Calling the difference between the peculiarity of being fat and the lack of that peculiarity "thin privilege" is all very well but it simply obscures the fact that fat people have almost split ourselves in two to join others in the same attitude towards us.
Thin people aren't so much privileged, so much as more normal. It isn't normal to want to be something else so badly that you refuse to acknowledge your current form. Their privilege is not having been formed, directed and have lived this way-not because of the celebration of being slim.
Being defined as a thin body with a fat disease on it, listening to people talking about how they "feel fat" and how "mental illness" requires a pathological terror that the person might be fat.
Imagine if you thought you were thin, would you be terrified and respond to that terror by eating yourself senseless? Fat is awful, fat is bad. Shit, even when folks are not supposedly in their right minds still manage to uphold fat hating jazz. It reminds me of one of the eternal protests of Black People.
Why is it other people are never ignorant enough not to hate?
If you are on your own side and you can't get anywhere, yes I can see how you can say society has to change, but that takes for granted that you recognize your own existence. That is having/needing a double consciousness-which is where you recognise the fictionalized version of false universality of how to live would be the death of you; if you aren't in the right class or aren't the right race or gender etc.,
We've never really had a double consciousness. We have the faux universal consciousness, we have the if you just do what slim people do, you'll be slim. We don't have the what are you talking about? The are you telling me my life?
This is our normal that is how we are how we are, doing what slimz do in other words, being. We are just fat whilst doing it, therefore requiring us to be slim requires us to know way more about being human than we know.
About certain aspects of human physiology especially.
This for me epitomizes the state living the 'obese' construct shapes your mind into. That is why I'm here, to reject that, to accept what I know to be and refuse to be persuaded to disavow it as before.
I am as human and need to be as human as anyone. And that even if I could achieve thinness through said route, I wouldn't want it because I'm not prepared to be subhuman for anything. I cannot tolerate it. I'm not prepared to become someone who disgusts myself to do it. Not because I'm boo hooing about my fat thighs, but because I hate bullying and the politics of it-fascism. I detest having to mindlessly obey authority because it's authority, despite what happens.
Just because it won't show, because our 'betters' are saying, its all right to keep deluding yourselves because we're on board with it ourselves.
I'm not here because I give a shit about what slim people might think about fat people, what brought me to this place was finally realizing the value of me, of us and our experience; even if it didn't accord with what was acceptable or permissible to others, no matter who they were. No matter their back up, their kudos, their validation, the colour of their coats, whatever.
None of them were going to dictate reality to me anymore, none of them were going to tell me my life any more because I am living it, not them.
We are living it, not anyone else.
WE
Not other people. They don't have the final say in what we did, what happened when we did it and how it felt, subjectively to us. And if that doesn't match any "objective" assessment, that is a matter for rational investigation, not stigma, denial and erasure.
I don't believe in them over me anymore. I believe in me. I believe in us.
Whatever that's called.
*Apologies for not enough reading before posting.
Saturday, 26 November 2011
Not anti for
I'm not an "anti" person, I don't even like being called "anti racist". Since racism is BS of course I'm against it, why wouldn't I be? Naming or thinking of yourself by what you aren't or don't like, is not something I tend toward.
I'm an atheist not because of the god question, but because I believe in something else. That may or may not put me at odds with those who are religious, but it is not my defining mode. Incidentally, I find 'arguments' about whether there is or isn't a god pointless and sterile and I have no time for the so called "unbelievers" seeking to indulge.
I suppose my feeling could be summed up as the destiny of humans is in our own hands; through the understanding and mastery of ourselves.
Phew, I think I'll go and lie down.
I could be wrong, perhaps it isn't. Maybe that's the road to hell it could all depend on how we understand and where we go with that. I'm saying this because I do not and never have defined myself by being against the 'obesity' crusade right? I'm against it like I'm against kicking puppies, it's so obviously a bad idea, it's often difficult to understand how any one could genuinely see it as good thing.
To define myself as against it, it would have to announce its intentions clearly. I'd have to know exactly what it was for most of all though, it'd have to make sense and apart from at some point way in the past, it doesn't.
And I must say, the more I unravel the self immolating behaviour encouraged by being under its cosh, it makes even less sense than that, on its face. It's clear that it is about somethings, many things. Certainly smoking doesn't compare, we all know what that's about, but 'obesity'? What even is 'obesity'? A 'disease' with no symptomatology or cause, apart from EXISTENCE.
That's the real cause of 'obesity' existing in modern society with some degree of susceptibility. So presumably the 'cure' is to transcend society and create a virtual bubble of slim which you can walk around in like a computerized space suit.
It's hard to be against something that cannot even stand up on its own terms let alone any other.
Those familiar know what I'm talking about; fat people eat unhealthily. They must eat healthily to become slim, they must not eat healthily and exercise because that is giving up if its not a diet. Fat people's problem is comfort eating, artificially inducing extreme discomfort is required to reduce this. Fat people have never tried to lose weight. Fat acceptance will kill you because it will keep you from doing what you've never done anyway and so on, so stupid.
Calories in/ calories out used to make sense, the number of calories you take in must be exceeded by the amount of calories you expend. But hey, what about the rest of "in", stored energy?
There are times when I almost admire some fat acceptance folk's ability to-it seems to me-create a cogent narrative out of this premo grade hokum and critique that, but then some or most seem to define themselves as against the crusade, rather than for something else.
There's also definitely a shared culture, it's very middle class and the sort of attitudes you find in the crusade are shared by many critiquing it, which makes for some weird exposure to class solidarity.
There are exchanges that go on that only those who are part of that are party to, just like the rest of the internet. Accommodating other voices is really hard, I can see that better now.
I don't like it, I think it's pathetic that its this hard to be able to communicate with people you supposedly agree with, but to be honest, I'm getting past caring or trying. I thought fat acceptance was a chance to move beyond this sort of thing, to some extent, but it isn't and that's that. If it is, I won't be a part of that, enthusiasm has gone the way of indifference.
All I can do is try and say what I have to say to the best of my ability and leave it at that. And stop behaving as if a cause could be more important than what divides, right now, it isn't.
I'm an atheist not because of the god question, but because I believe in something else. That may or may not put me at odds with those who are religious, but it is not my defining mode. Incidentally, I find 'arguments' about whether there is or isn't a god pointless and sterile and I have no time for the so called "unbelievers" seeking to indulge.
I suppose my feeling could be summed up as the destiny of humans is in our own hands; through the understanding and mastery of ourselves.
Phew, I think I'll go and lie down.
I could be wrong, perhaps it isn't. Maybe that's the road to hell it could all depend on how we understand and where we go with that. I'm saying this because I do not and never have defined myself by being against the 'obesity' crusade right? I'm against it like I'm against kicking puppies, it's so obviously a bad idea, it's often difficult to understand how any one could genuinely see it as good thing.
To define myself as against it, it would have to announce its intentions clearly. I'd have to know exactly what it was for most of all though, it'd have to make sense and apart from at some point way in the past, it doesn't.
And I must say, the more I unravel the self immolating behaviour encouraged by being under its cosh, it makes even less sense than that, on its face. It's clear that it is about somethings, many things. Certainly smoking doesn't compare, we all know what that's about, but 'obesity'? What even is 'obesity'? A 'disease' with no symptomatology or cause, apart from EXISTENCE.
That's the real cause of 'obesity' existing in modern society with some degree of susceptibility. So presumably the 'cure' is to transcend society and create a virtual bubble of slim which you can walk around in like a computerized space suit.
It's hard to be against something that cannot even stand up on its own terms let alone any other.
Those familiar know what I'm talking about; fat people eat unhealthily. They must eat healthily to become slim, they must not eat healthily and exercise because that is giving up if its not a diet. Fat people's problem is comfort eating, artificially inducing extreme discomfort is required to reduce this. Fat people have never tried to lose weight. Fat acceptance will kill you because it will keep you from doing what you've never done anyway and so on, so stupid.
Calories in/ calories out used to make sense, the number of calories you take in must be exceeded by the amount of calories you expend. But hey, what about the rest of "in", stored energy?
There are times when I almost admire some fat acceptance folk's ability to-it seems to me-create a cogent narrative out of this premo grade hokum and critique that, but then some or most seem to define themselves as against the crusade, rather than for something else.
There's also definitely a shared culture, it's very middle class and the sort of attitudes you find in the crusade are shared by many critiquing it, which makes for some weird exposure to class solidarity.
There are exchanges that go on that only those who are part of that are party to, just like the rest of the internet. Accommodating other voices is really hard, I can see that better now.
I don't like it, I think it's pathetic that its this hard to be able to communicate with people you supposedly agree with, but to be honest, I'm getting past caring or trying. I thought fat acceptance was a chance to move beyond this sort of thing, to some extent, but it isn't and that's that. If it is, I won't be a part of that, enthusiasm has gone the way of indifference.
All I can do is try and say what I have to say to the best of my ability and leave it at that. And stop behaving as if a cause could be more important than what divides, right now, it isn't.
Friday, 25 November 2011
Fat cats are okay?
Given the -ism shifting fat phobia of the left. Sorry about that, SOSDD.
Some in FA are disappointed that the term "fat cats" has gained currency in capitalist challenging rhetoric/ imagery. There's some to and fro, it has accrued traction as something to avoid being identified with.
Question is, should fat people feel implicated by this term?
It's use as a political term is attributed to a man called Frank Kent who used it to write an essay about big money donors in the world of politics wielding undue influence over the whole system.
Prescient indeed; isn't OWS's reviving that exactly?
What's fascinating about this term is it uses the word "fat" in a way that doesn't refer explicitly to the crusade, though operating in a fat baiting context some do try it on. Its meaning does not refer directly to everyday fat people it explicitly refers to the kind of middle aged upper class men of no specific weight category, you can be a slim "fat cat", who occupy power wielding echelons. Though always illustrated by fat men or animals.
It's fat as sitting at the top of the tree living easy off the efforts of others in that it voices a lot of underlying fears caricatured in fat hating tropes "lazy" springs to mind. The ill defined chant of "unhealthy" is an attempt to weaken fat people's access to the strength of minds and body. The conflation of fitness and thinness definitely smacks of a sort of Napoleon complex of weight.
It has been marked out as not "fat positive", in that it's not celebratory of fatness, but how negative is it? Is it close to being fat neutral in that it can be anyone who fits the definition, rather than a number on the scale?
I mean we use all sorts of terms using words also given to weight bands. Thin skinned/lipped,wearing thin, none of which are positive at all, should they go too? Doesn't this predate 'obese' pathology and shouldn't we keep a hold of that rather than forget it, leaving only the current derangement a clear field?
Its also powerful to be a fat cat, isn't there value in having a symbol of power linked obliquely with fatness? Do slim people on lower incomes feel implicated by rich slim people? Of course not, so why should fat people on modest incomes feel particularly got at by this term.
As has become the rule with "social justice" economically challenged representatives of whatever are brandished around when needed to give kudos to an oppression narrative and put away as soon as there's something for the 'chosen few' to discuss. Thus it is used as a reason why the varied narrative of fatness, must be crow barred into a crude and I feel, unrepresentative "poor benighted fatty" one which more high falutin' fatz are convinced will push the fat agenda up the SJ hierarchy.
When fat people populate the homeless, the prison population and those with mental disorders, disproportionately, you might have a case, right now, the more interesting thing is why they don't seem to be.
It's a laughable failure of self awareness as much as anything, not grasping the rabid depths of class hatred amongst those they come from/identify with.The only people more openly derided by the impacted bourgies are the working classes in whom as many coded -isms are hidden as obezoids. And anyway, "feeling" sorry for people happens when people pass through authority to a pronounced degree, the desired pity is visceral not abstract.
I have never been convinced for one minute that insisting poorer people are fatter, if its even true which I've always had varying degrees of doubt about, will produce the required simpatico feelings expected. I remember when I first hit the FA nets I said more than once, "Fat people are just not sympathetic", I wasn't regretful on the contrary, I felt FA might encourage us to set a certain boundary on trying to prize a necessarily withheld empathy.
Despite in fact probably because we look too robust, too rude in health a bit too energetic somewhat immovable, sometimes indomitable, unreachable even, we are just too far from the most universal evocation of vulnerability, slenderness. Breaking boundaries is fine but instinct says what we'd have to do to overcome that would simply not be worth it and we should allow that to settle the matter.
Part of the challenge for many of us is to believe that slimmer people despite any acquired capacity to work themselves into mouth frothing ire are still threatened by fat people the idea of us in some ways, rather like many of us are jealous of others and our idea of them.
It's a pain in the arse, one of the reasons why I so resented fatness is that it didn't reveal my poetic (though I don't get on with it strangely enough) soul. What about my wistful ethereality? How would anyone properly get me, if I looked like I could play women's rugby? (Yes, slim women, excellent players and no you don't have to be fat to etc.,)
I've gotten over that, because funnily enough it fits most snugly into an aspect of FoBT, weight as an indicator of character. I mean its a question of having the confidence to be. After a while, you get caught up in that and funnily enough, people who get to know you know you. We all have mistaken first impressions and it seems like a lot of people don't "match" their image.
Who cares if people mistake you for, in my case once a hearth mother type who must be able to pass on a desired recipe, as I remember it, she indicated I was of no use as any thing else, cheek!
She was disappointed and I habitually apologetic, yet I didn't feel any way about it, I just like to help if I can.
(It turned out later that I could have advised her, but though she rightly identified the dish, I didn't know it by that name).
In some ways the real fight for fat people is whether we are going to go with the fact that we are still standing and stop fighting due to things like self consciousness about size, the grass is greener. Or if this will mean being boxed into a "strong fatty" trope, which can be self negating.
Or whether we are going to keep faith with how the damaging self betrayal of being an 'obese' has inflicted on us as and get others to be nice/r, or something.
It's often occurred that if only I'd shown the same kind of resolute no nonsense attitude to things as the sterling defenses of my "diet proof" body, who knows how I'd be feeling now? They say free your mind and your body will follow, but it feels more like allowing your body to inspire, even instruct your mind.
Some in FA are disappointed that the term "fat cats" has gained currency in capitalist challenging rhetoric/ imagery. There's some to and fro, it has accrued traction as something to avoid being identified with.
Question is, should fat people feel implicated by this term?
It's use as a political term is attributed to a man called Frank Kent who used it to write an essay about big money donors in the world of politics wielding undue influence over the whole system.
Prescient indeed; isn't OWS's reviving that exactly?
What's fascinating about this term is it uses the word "fat" in a way that doesn't refer explicitly to the crusade, though operating in a fat baiting context some do try it on. Its meaning does not refer directly to everyday fat people it explicitly refers to the kind of middle aged upper class men of no specific weight category, you can be a slim "fat cat", who occupy power wielding echelons. Though always illustrated by fat men or animals.
It's fat as sitting at the top of the tree living easy off the efforts of others in that it voices a lot of underlying fears caricatured in fat hating tropes "lazy" springs to mind. The ill defined chant of "unhealthy" is an attempt to weaken fat people's access to the strength of minds and body. The conflation of fitness and thinness definitely smacks of a sort of Napoleon complex of weight.
It has been marked out as not "fat positive", in that it's not celebratory of fatness, but how negative is it? Is it close to being fat neutral in that it can be anyone who fits the definition, rather than a number on the scale?
I mean we use all sorts of terms using words also given to weight bands. Thin skinned/lipped,wearing thin, none of which are positive at all, should they go too? Doesn't this predate 'obese' pathology and shouldn't we keep a hold of that rather than forget it, leaving only the current derangement a clear field?
Its also powerful to be a fat cat, isn't there value in having a symbol of power linked obliquely with fatness? Do slim people on lower incomes feel implicated by rich slim people? Of course not, so why should fat people on modest incomes feel particularly got at by this term.
As has become the rule with "social justice" economically challenged representatives of whatever are brandished around when needed to give kudos to an oppression narrative and put away as soon as there's something for the 'chosen few' to discuss. Thus it is used as a reason why the varied narrative of fatness, must be crow barred into a crude and I feel, unrepresentative "poor benighted fatty" one which more high falutin' fatz are convinced will push the fat agenda up the SJ hierarchy.
When fat people populate the homeless, the prison population and those with mental disorders, disproportionately, you might have a case, right now, the more interesting thing is why they don't seem to be.
It's a laughable failure of self awareness as much as anything, not grasping the rabid depths of class hatred amongst those they come from/identify with.The only people more openly derided by the impacted bourgies are the working classes in whom as many coded -isms are hidden as obezoids. And anyway, "feeling" sorry for people happens when people pass through authority to a pronounced degree, the desired pity is visceral not abstract.
I have never been convinced for one minute that insisting poorer people are fatter, if its even true which I've always had varying degrees of doubt about, will produce the required simpatico feelings expected. I remember when I first hit the FA nets I said more than once, "Fat people are just not sympathetic", I wasn't regretful on the contrary, I felt FA might encourage us to set a certain boundary on trying to prize a necessarily withheld empathy.
Despite in fact probably because we look too robust, too rude in health a bit too energetic somewhat immovable, sometimes indomitable, unreachable even, we are just too far from the most universal evocation of vulnerability, slenderness. Breaking boundaries is fine but instinct says what we'd have to do to overcome that would simply not be worth it and we should allow that to settle the matter.
Part of the challenge for many of us is to believe that slimmer people despite any acquired capacity to work themselves into mouth frothing ire are still threatened by fat people the idea of us in some ways, rather like many of us are jealous of others and our idea of them.
It's a pain in the arse, one of the reasons why I so resented fatness is that it didn't reveal my poetic (though I don't get on with it strangely enough) soul. What about my wistful ethereality? How would anyone properly get me, if I looked like I could play women's rugby? (Yes, slim women, excellent players and no you don't have to be fat to etc.,)
I've gotten over that, because funnily enough it fits most snugly into an aspect of FoBT, weight as an indicator of character. I mean its a question of having the confidence to be. After a while, you get caught up in that and funnily enough, people who get to know you know you. We all have mistaken first impressions and it seems like a lot of people don't "match" their image.
Who cares if people mistake you for, in my case once a hearth mother type who must be able to pass on a desired recipe, as I remember it, she indicated I was of no use as any thing else, cheek!
She was disappointed and I habitually apologetic, yet I didn't feel any way about it, I just like to help if I can.
(It turned out later that I could have advised her, but though she rightly identified the dish, I didn't know it by that name).
In some ways the real fight for fat people is whether we are going to go with the fact that we are still standing and stop fighting due to things like self consciousness about size, the grass is greener. Or if this will mean being boxed into a "strong fatty" trope, which can be self negating.
Or whether we are going to keep faith with how the damaging self betrayal of being an 'obese' has inflicted on us as and get others to be nice/r, or something.
It's often occurred that if only I'd shown the same kind of resolute no nonsense attitude to things as the sterling defenses of my "diet proof" body, who knows how I'd be feeling now? They say free your mind and your body will follow, but it feels more like allowing your body to inspire, even instruct your mind.
Friday, 23 September 2011
No drama
A while back a typically passionate * [T/W for those offended by soulful takes on the sacred R-O-C-K] Mary J Blige recorded a seriously heartfelt track called "No more drama" in which she excelled even her usual resolute delivery.
In it she described breaking free from an disturbingly abusive relationship after the drama of it exhausted her habit of clinging on for whatever she was getting or thought she was getting out of it.
"Drama" does that. The constant everyday ups and downs are a vortex drawing you deep and holding you as you adapt to that and forget before.
Until burnout loosens your grip.
Its a strange thing to come to your rescue. The imperative to GET AWAY crowds out and upturns the status quo, whether you have any idea how you are going to manage or feel up to escaping, or not.
Physical, emotional and psychological withdrawal, as far as you can manage is the only order and that's all there is too it.
We can probably all agree people do things because they are not fully aware of the consequences or the risks they are taking.
From there assumptions differ.
For instance reversing that to presume if others appear to be doing something considered risky, it is due to their lacking awareness of assumed risk.
Some of us will have to disagree.
If you extrapolate from there insisting the more associated risk is exaggerated and dramatized, the more you can affect your target's reactions, you'd probably be correct in that.
You can even direct all behaviour that way, but what you and your drama cannot do with it is dictate outcome.
That is decided by the efficacy of the actions you are eliciting.
If you are going to ignore that fact and continue to manipulate people into actions you desire, prepared for when people become too weary and tired of your antics to care.
And when that happens, as the lady sings, people will have to cut you and the ugliness you're dealing in loose.
It's called, survival.
In it she described breaking free from an disturbingly abusive relationship after the drama of it exhausted her habit of clinging on for whatever she was getting or thought she was getting out of it.
"Drama" does that. The constant everyday ups and downs are a vortex drawing you deep and holding you as you adapt to that and forget before.
Until burnout loosens your grip.
Its a strange thing to come to your rescue. The imperative to GET AWAY crowds out and upturns the status quo, whether you have any idea how you are going to manage or feel up to escaping, or not.
Physical, emotional and psychological withdrawal, as far as you can manage is the only order and that's all there is too it.
We can probably all agree people do things because they are not fully aware of the consequences or the risks they are taking.
From there assumptions differ.
For instance reversing that to presume if others appear to be doing something considered risky, it is due to their lacking awareness of assumed risk.
Some of us will have to disagree.
If you extrapolate from there insisting the more associated risk is exaggerated and dramatized, the more you can affect your target's reactions, you'd probably be correct in that.
You can even direct all behaviour that way, but what you and your drama cannot do with it is dictate outcome.
That is decided by the efficacy of the actions you are eliciting.
If you are going to ignore that fact and continue to manipulate people into actions you desire, prepared for when people become too weary and tired of your antics to care.
And when that happens, as the lady sings, people will have to cut you and the ugliness you're dealing in loose.
It's called, survival.
Saturday, 3 September 2011
How mean is fat acceptance?
The appeal for FA denizens to tread lightly on those who've kicked the crap out of fatz has forced me to consider this question, is it cruel to people who are used to having a soft landing place for their feet swinging limbs to withdraw that and let them fall on their own momentum?
That may seem like an idiotic question when you say it like that, but there is no doubt that in general we fatz seem to be awful reticent about calling our tormentors to account, for their own freely chosen behaviour.
This wasn't altogether unpredictable, after all, I myself have as much reluctance as anyone else but I try to overlook it somewhat because I feel it is old habits dying hard, namely being outer directed, focusing on other people's feelings with disregard for my own.
Then being asked to account for what I was supposed to be the product of what I was not paying attention to and also repressing. You can say its forcing myself to get back in touch with my own feelings, rather than distracting myself with others, I trust them to take care of themselves in the meantime.
I've also noticed a lot of the hurt people feel at fat people's emergence from non sentient outer directed. There's an element of we thought that was settled and we were happy with that. As you know when you put anything down that can become a makeshift storage or table, it exerts a gravitational pull bringing all flotsam and jetsam of the universe.
Okay, people put stuff on it.
People put a lot more stuff on our erased, obedient, genuflecting selves than I ever thought possible. Or maybe its that the things they put on them, got things put on them and enabled all sorts of things out of reach things to be tantalizingly touched with the finger tips.
By trying to regain the humanness of that part of ourselves, there's a sense that we are cruelly disregarding all this and we are in our way just as reluctant as others I sense. We don't want to be where we are, but its the change our minds that will have to come about that we ambivalent about.
If you want to look at it this way and it is fair to a fault fat acceptance is cruel or certainly feels it, both ways. From looking outward to restoring inside, from thinking about how you look to hostile others, to how you actually feel as an original autonomous being.
You know as in existing with the flow of your experience inside and out, rather than watching yourself, looking to catch yourself out before you do any fat creation whilst you're not looking.
Relative to before it can feel incredibly self absorbed, I certainly do feel I have become that way myself and sometimes overly analytical and precious.
Isn't it grand? In the past I would have worried, I'm a fat person being precious, oh the shame. Now I just think lighten up or get over it, I treat myself according to the way I'm being, not how much I'm making up for or not being fat.
Sometimes, it's almost fun.
The 'cruelty' of fat acceptance, is really the cruelty to ourselves of going along not with cals in/out ideology, anyone can make a mistake, no it was by accepting the hostility that increasingly went with it, for that reason.
For not policing boundaries by saying "okay you can say I'm in the wrong but that doesn't give you the right to act up like this, back off" etc., Its the lenience of "anything goes" as we are fat and wrong that was really cruel to ourselves.
And if you view this belated push back as a cruelty to those who've for instance gotten used to us making them feel better because we seemed a bit more beaten down, then let that be a lesson to us all.
If we carelessly allow cruelty to ourselves that builds future "meanness" towards anyone nice enough to take advantage.
That may seem like an idiotic question when you say it like that, but there is no doubt that in general we fatz seem to be awful reticent about calling our tormentors to account, for their own freely chosen behaviour.
This wasn't altogether unpredictable, after all, I myself have as much reluctance as anyone else but I try to overlook it somewhat because I feel it is old habits dying hard, namely being outer directed, focusing on other people's feelings with disregard for my own.
Then being asked to account for what I was supposed to be the product of what I was not paying attention to and also repressing. You can say its forcing myself to get back in touch with my own feelings, rather than distracting myself with others, I trust them to take care of themselves in the meantime.
I've also noticed a lot of the hurt people feel at fat people's emergence from non sentient outer directed. There's an element of we thought that was settled and we were happy with that. As you know when you put anything down that can become a makeshift storage or table, it exerts a gravitational pull bringing all flotsam and jetsam of the universe.
Okay, people put stuff on it.
People put a lot more stuff on our erased, obedient, genuflecting selves than I ever thought possible. Or maybe its that the things they put on them, got things put on them and enabled all sorts of things out of reach things to be tantalizingly touched with the finger tips.
By trying to regain the humanness of that part of ourselves, there's a sense that we are cruelly disregarding all this and we are in our way just as reluctant as others I sense. We don't want to be where we are, but its the change our minds that will have to come about that we ambivalent about.
If you want to look at it this way and it is fair to a fault fat acceptance is cruel or certainly feels it, both ways. From looking outward to restoring inside, from thinking about how you look to hostile others, to how you actually feel as an original autonomous being.
You know as in existing with the flow of your experience inside and out, rather than watching yourself, looking to catch yourself out before you do any fat creation whilst you're not looking.
Relative to before it can feel incredibly self absorbed, I certainly do feel I have become that way myself and sometimes overly analytical and precious.
Isn't it grand? In the past I would have worried, I'm a fat person being precious, oh the shame. Now I just think lighten up or get over it, I treat myself according to the way I'm being, not how much I'm making up for or not being fat.
Sometimes, it's almost fun.
The 'cruelty' of fat acceptance, is really the cruelty to ourselves of going along not with cals in/out ideology, anyone can make a mistake, no it was by accepting the hostility that increasingly went with it, for that reason.
For not policing boundaries by saying "okay you can say I'm in the wrong but that doesn't give you the right to act up like this, back off" etc., Its the lenience of "anything goes" as we are fat and wrong that was really cruel to ourselves.
And if you view this belated push back as a cruelty to those who've for instance gotten used to us making them feel better because we seemed a bit more beaten down, then let that be a lesson to us all.
If we carelessly allow cruelty to ourselves that builds future "meanness" towards anyone nice enough to take advantage.
Thursday, 18 August 2011
Accountability
The urge to hold the 'diet industry' accountable for its undoubted shenanaigans is the easy part. The knottier issue seems to be the accountability of the scientific and medical establishment/s (and professionals) for the climate of hatred towards fat people.
No one could possibly pretend they are not the ones who's gravitas has raised fat hate to this pitch and extent of credibility, could they? Yet for some reason or other, that seems to be the deal with many amongst fat acceptance seeking to pretend that businesses, who relatively few are under any real duress to keep giving their cash to, who's stated and unhidden intent is financial gain, has no dictate of "do no harm" that has been thoroughly supported by those who do, nay saved from bankruptcy by them at one point are somehow more to blame for the 'obesity' mess than anyone.
I have to hold the professionals more accountable for what we have had to endure and I don't really see, morally speaking, why they should be allowed to get away with it. I can understand why emotionally people might want them to carry on regardless. I can trust them to weasel out of their misdeameanours as skillfully as ever, but I simply feel that whether we or they like it, if they are not held to account for their own actions, they will be empowered to repeat this and probably will.
How do we feel about that, okay so long as its not us?
The other day I saw a comment trivialising weight matters as being "taken in" by the diet industry. If I was taken in by any one it was the science and medical establishment. What upsets me is not so much that they did, I've gotten too used to their breathtakingly low standard of behaviour with regards the fat issue-yeah and I remember the "good ones" like they remembered good fat people.
What really grabs me by the throat is that I never suspected they could behave in such a way, if I had, I can assure you I would have saved myself earlier, guessing that's the same for a lot of fat people out there, currently disabling themselves on doctors orders.
Part of the reason some won't contemplate the possibility of the disregard shown to them and their sometimes excrutiating efforts is that they cannot begin to imagine how they will deal with such a sense of betrayal.
Maybe I've just answered my own question.
So I can delete the rest of this post.
No one could possibly pretend they are not the ones who's gravitas has raised fat hate to this pitch and extent of credibility, could they? Yet for some reason or other, that seems to be the deal with many amongst fat acceptance seeking to pretend that businesses, who relatively few are under any real duress to keep giving their cash to, who's stated and unhidden intent is financial gain, has no dictate of "do no harm" that has been thoroughly supported by those who do, nay saved from bankruptcy by them at one point are somehow more to blame for the 'obesity' mess than anyone.
I have to hold the professionals more accountable for what we have had to endure and I don't really see, morally speaking, why they should be allowed to get away with it. I can understand why emotionally people might want them to carry on regardless. I can trust them to weasel out of their misdeameanours as skillfully as ever, but I simply feel that whether we or they like it, if they are not held to account for their own actions, they will be empowered to repeat this and probably will.
How do we feel about that, okay so long as its not us?
The other day I saw a comment trivialising weight matters as being "taken in" by the diet industry. If I was taken in by any one it was the science and medical establishment. What upsets me is not so much that they did, I've gotten too used to their breathtakingly low standard of behaviour with regards the fat issue-yeah and I remember the "good ones" like they remembered good fat people.
What really grabs me by the throat is that I never suspected they could behave in such a way, if I had, I can assure you I would have saved myself earlier, guessing that's the same for a lot of fat people out there, currently disabling themselves on doctors orders.
Part of the reason some won't contemplate the possibility of the disregard shown to them and their sometimes excrutiating efforts is that they cannot begin to imagine how they will deal with such a sense of betrayal.
Maybe I've just answered my own question.
So I can delete the rest of this post.
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
The medium is their message
I’ve always really liked the aphorism, "the medium is the message".
I think about it both ways turning it around and around in my mind-the message is the medium. I had it somewhere in my mind when thinking about how fat acceptance should write itself by via its own experience and not be sunk under a lot of irrelevant ideologies and positional conceits that are often don't add any tangible meaning to it.
Or seek to be no threat and fit into what other people have laid down.
McLuhan described it once as meaning;
He was referring to mass media, I think it works for any message- the shape formed through a message expressing itself is the message it conveys.
Its not too hard to see this when you think of how people repeatedly recognising the futility of “proving” stuff to fat haters.
We all start from the rigid hegemony of what fat or thin people are like, fat and thin alike with differing consequences. All the terms of reference, of meaning are set to serve ideas of eating as an extension and measure of character and the conscious mind the creator of eating and through that the decider of weight. That's in the service of fat phobes.
It empowers them.
We don't get kicked around because we are repressed, or because we lack the capacity to speak about ourselves, we argue solely on terms based on us being defined by what erases our experience. Our assigned place is to be described by what we are supposed to be.
Drawing us in to play the same old game same rules trading on that common ground and reviving it in our minds with us in in the same old position of answering to the kangaroo court.
Its not what they’re asking “prove your healthy/fit/sane” etc., its the medium of us as supplicants, running around after hostile diktats.
Our views are formed in response to the same old medium of fat hating, rather than an assertion of our own.
I think about it both ways turning it around and around in my mind-the message is the medium. I had it somewhere in my mind when thinking about how fat acceptance should write itself by via its own experience and not be sunk under a lot of irrelevant ideologies and positional conceits that are often don't add any tangible meaning to it.
Or seek to be no threat and fit into what other people have laid down.
McLuhan described it once as meaning;
The content of the medium is never the message, any medium, at all creates a new pattern, a new atmosphere a new environment of human perception, which works upon the whole man, it works upon the whole society. That is the message.
He was referring to mass media, I think it works for any message- the shape formed through a message expressing itself is the message it conveys.
Its not too hard to see this when you think of how people repeatedly recognising the futility of “proving” stuff to fat haters.
We all start from the rigid hegemony of what fat or thin people are like, fat and thin alike with differing consequences. All the terms of reference, of meaning are set to serve ideas of eating as an extension and measure of character and the conscious mind the creator of eating and through that the decider of weight. That's in the service of fat phobes.
It empowers them.
We don't get kicked around because we are repressed, or because we lack the capacity to speak about ourselves, we argue solely on terms based on us being defined by what erases our experience. Our assigned place is to be described by what we are supposed to be.
Drawing us in to play the same old game same rules trading on that common ground and reviving it in our minds with us in in the same old position of answering to the kangaroo court.
Its not what they’re asking “prove your healthy/fit/sane” etc., its the medium of us as supplicants, running around after hostile diktats.
Our views are formed in response to the same old medium of fat hating, rather than an assertion of our own.
Radical fat acceptance
Not my definition.
I rarely manage to lead with ideology about the way I see the world. Even when I find myself in agreement with people I tend to part company at some point along their arrival at a conclusion.
Which I may also disagree with.
I daresay I'm not alone in that we come together on what we can agree on as much as anything, although what we can't be allowed to get in the way.
I've been puzzled from the start by the cry of how “radical” fat acceptance is supposed to be as is. An "Uncle Tom" mentality is pretty ‘out there’ compared with a KKK one when it was the norm but really, who cares?
N.B. I'm using that to illustrate the point not to call anyone an UT or anything else, just in case that's a potential point of confusion.
An extreme view can be acknowledged without it defining yours, whether or not it is the norm. Its always annoyed me that something which should never have been in doubt is presented as ‘out there’ because its fat people reclaiming it, belatedly. Am I the only one uncomfortable with the idea that its "out there" for us to acknowledge we have a conscious awareness of ourselves, from the inside?
I see others under a lot more duress, oppression keep a hold of that, we do too in other areas the question is why such a difference with fatness can that really just be about other people's insistence? That this can be derailed but never replaced or switch off until we are?
Doesn't that haunt anyone else?
Reasons why don't get rid of that feeling completely.
I'm not wholly surprised people are putting up a fight against us regaining this aspect of ourselves, the primary strategy is to keep us tied to the same old thing, "answering" the same questions responding to the same points knowing as long as we are doing that we are still operating by their rules.
Our behaviour was/is such that they think they are in control of our thoughts with their "We can't tell fat people its okay to be fat". We agree insisting we were wholly forced by them, by their words.
A lot those fighting us are up to their necks in knowingly bad behaviour choosing to indulge themselves, opportunistically. We can see they feel badly, hence the repeated insistence that "its for our own good". Yet I hear plenty about how "well meaning" that is.
A lot of fat hating is on the defensive, if we recover ourselves we maybe asking them some questions they may find tough to answer. There's an element of denial, keeping us tied is easier than than that.
That won't change until people feel that is the losing side, we are all like that to some extent.
Many of us seek to reassure that fear (often) we don't want to go there we say, others are a bit more reticent because really who knows? No-one has any idea how people will feel when they've forgotten how to pander hate. Are we really sure every one's going to be so forgiving? It's not been for free there have been costs.
I'm beginning to think perhaps the cries of radical is the same restlessness I often feel, a sign others too recognise the mindnumbing circularity of an FA that will not stop congratulating itself by comparison to the low standards of wilfully ignorant hostility.
The whirligig does move overall a bit, not much mostly its just round and round, defined by its supposed "opposition" clearly that’s not what we came for, if so I’m glad because I was beginning to wonder.
What we need and want is a fat centric point of view that starts from us (which is the norm for all humanness) and is not merely opposing the same old worthless erasure of us and endless piles of straw.
Defined by our restored consciousness and understanding of things. We are as capable of being objective as anyone (or is that the worry?) and I'd have thought possibly more so as many are tired of being juked by falsehood.
I wouldn't say we are asking for dignity etc., I don't think you ask for those things do you? Others get used to you not standing for anything less.
This is one area of deviation from the norm, we are not survivalists about to decamp for the woods on this particular question we differ from the mainstream. We have different/ no religion, I'm sure we can break away on this thing alone, without having a mental breakdown, we cannot be compared on this level as we know better.
We should be as wildly different from that ‘standard’ as is necessitated by our experience.
Often the tooing and froing between the mainstream mentality and an FA which chooses to be formed by it many feel it feels like being dragged endlessly to the same level. And that's way more of an insult to FA than it is haters.
So why does FA have to keep being turned into a gigantic response to straw? Rather than being about fat people's needs? For some, that's all about throwing off the burden of stigma, that isn't the same as people needing to be relieved of actual ailments and distress that is sometimes reflected in their overall functioning including in their size. Can we get over that because we are no longer care about performing for others?
Why are they more important than those submitting to weight loss surgeries NOW? Sorry, but something has to be done about that. The "keep trying" brigade have done untold harm to fat (and other) people's health. They've done it in the name of the current crusade they are milking. Let them deliver up solutions and clear up the mess they've helped to make of some people's lives and health.
They have been avoiding this from the start, its really hard for them to get outside the prison of calorie restriction they've built but they need to, just for once, can FA stop body shielding them? They should be made to deliver on the false promises they've made.
A need for intellectual purity is better served by shaping your own worldview rather than not and then tripping over fat people to fashion the appearance of it.
There are other reasons, knowledge and understanding of how we as humans actually function, if we'd known that would have known better, this crusade has advanced mis-using science egregiously, eschewing knowledge is no more an answer for anything than, "Let's not tell children about sex in case they start doing it" style arguments. Ignorance is never an answer.
I'd also like to say something else.
If you think I've made an error or a mistake or you want me to/ think I should clarify something I've written here (or elsewhere) there's the comments or an e-mail button on my profile, use them, I'll do my best. If the latter doesn't work, let me know in the comments if necessary (stating if you don't want me to publish).
You can tweet me, if you prefer the button's on the side there.
I think I've been around long enough for people to have some understanding of me, don't assume you're so easy for me to read or that any tolerance is one way. I recognise I require that, I extend it too. I sure there are limits on both sides. If you feel I've reached that, let me know.
I rarely manage to lead with ideology about the way I see the world. Even when I find myself in agreement with people I tend to part company at some point along their arrival at a conclusion.
Which I may also disagree with.
I daresay I'm not alone in that we come together on what we can agree on as much as anything, although what we can't be allowed to get in the way.
I've been puzzled from the start by the cry of how “radical” fat acceptance is supposed to be as is. An "Uncle Tom" mentality is pretty ‘out there’ compared with a KKK one when it was the norm but really, who cares?
N.B. I'm using that to illustrate the point not to call anyone an UT or anything else, just in case that's a potential point of confusion.
An extreme view can be acknowledged without it defining yours, whether or not it is the norm. Its always annoyed me that something which should never have been in doubt is presented as ‘out there’ because its fat people reclaiming it, belatedly. Am I the only one uncomfortable with the idea that its "out there" for us to acknowledge we have a conscious awareness of ourselves, from the inside?
I see others under a lot more duress, oppression keep a hold of that, we do too in other areas the question is why such a difference with fatness can that really just be about other people's insistence? That this can be derailed but never replaced or switch off until we are?
Doesn't that haunt anyone else?
Reasons why don't get rid of that feeling completely.
I'm not wholly surprised people are putting up a fight against us regaining this aspect of ourselves, the primary strategy is to keep us tied to the same old thing, "answering" the same questions responding to the same points knowing as long as we are doing that we are still operating by their rules.
Our behaviour was/is such that they think they are in control of our thoughts with their "We can't tell fat people its okay to be fat". We agree insisting we were wholly forced by them, by their words.
A lot those fighting us are up to their necks in knowingly bad behaviour choosing to indulge themselves, opportunistically. We can see they feel badly, hence the repeated insistence that "its for our own good". Yet I hear plenty about how "well meaning" that is.
A lot of fat hating is on the defensive, if we recover ourselves we maybe asking them some questions they may find tough to answer. There's an element of denial, keeping us tied is easier than than that.
That won't change until people feel that is the losing side, we are all like that to some extent.
Many of us seek to reassure that fear (often) we don't want to go there we say, others are a bit more reticent because really who knows? No-one has any idea how people will feel when they've forgotten how to pander hate. Are we really sure every one's going to be so forgiving? It's not been for free there have been costs.
I'm beginning to think perhaps the cries of radical is the same restlessness I often feel, a sign others too recognise the mindnumbing circularity of an FA that will not stop congratulating itself by comparison to the low standards of wilfully ignorant hostility.
The whirligig does move overall a bit, not much mostly its just round and round, defined by its supposed "opposition" clearly that’s not what we came for, if so I’m glad because I was beginning to wonder.
What we need and want is a fat centric point of view that starts from us (which is the norm for all humanness) and is not merely opposing the same old worthless erasure of us and endless piles of straw.
Defined by our restored consciousness and understanding of things. We are as capable of being objective as anyone (or is that the worry?) and I'd have thought possibly more so as many are tired of being juked by falsehood.
I wouldn't say we are asking for dignity etc., I don't think you ask for those things do you? Others get used to you not standing for anything less.
This is one area of deviation from the norm, we are not survivalists about to decamp for the woods on this particular question we differ from the mainstream. We have different/ no religion, I'm sure we can break away on this thing alone, without having a mental breakdown, we cannot be compared on this level as we know better.
We should be as wildly different from that ‘standard’ as is necessitated by our experience.
Often the tooing and froing between the mainstream mentality and an FA which chooses to be formed by it many feel it feels like being dragged endlessly to the same level. And that's way more of an insult to FA than it is haters.
So why does FA have to keep being turned into a gigantic response to straw? Rather than being about fat people's needs? For some, that's all about throwing off the burden of stigma, that isn't the same as people needing to be relieved of actual ailments and distress that is sometimes reflected in their overall functioning including in their size. Can we get over that because we are no longer care about performing for others?
Why are they more important than those submitting to weight loss surgeries NOW? Sorry, but something has to be done about that. The "keep trying" brigade have done untold harm to fat (and other) people's health. They've done it in the name of the current crusade they are milking. Let them deliver up solutions and clear up the mess they've helped to make of some people's lives and health.
They have been avoiding this from the start, its really hard for them to get outside the prison of calorie restriction they've built but they need to, just for once, can FA stop body shielding them? They should be made to deliver on the false promises they've made.
A need for intellectual purity is better served by shaping your own worldview rather than not and then tripping over fat people to fashion the appearance of it.
There are other reasons, knowledge and understanding of how we as humans actually function, if we'd known that would have known better, this crusade has advanced mis-using science egregiously, eschewing knowledge is no more an answer for anything than, "Let's not tell children about sex in case they start doing it" style arguments. Ignorance is never an answer.
I'd also like to say something else.
If you think I've made an error or a mistake or you want me to/ think I should clarify something I've written here (or elsewhere) there's the comments or an e-mail button on my profile, use them, I'll do my best. If the latter doesn't work, let me know in the comments if necessary (stating if you don't want me to publish).
You can tweet me, if you prefer the button's on the side there.
I think I've been around long enough for people to have some understanding of me, don't assume you're so easy for me to read or that any tolerance is one way. I recognise I require that, I extend it too. I sure there are limits on both sides. If you feel I've reached that, let me know.
Monday, 1 August 2011
In depth
Not saying this isn't a good post in some ways, but I found it too snaggy, mentally speaking to be able to support it wholeheartedly, it's as much about interpretation as much as simple outright disagreement.
I find this a lot when it comes to FA, when it comes to blogging, I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that its too crude a format for the job that needs to be done re fat acceptance. There isn't the trust or respect that we see endlessly for those thought to have more 'kudos'.
The extent to which we cannot maintain a disagreeing interaction is unprecedented amongst such a thoughtful group of people. In fact, it's down right odd, I can't think of a comparable example off hand.
To discuss our nuances of disagreement we need a forum specifically for that purpose. I know we have some already, but they don't to my knowledge have the same focus. We need one to go through and discuss all received ideas and those of FA with as open a mind as possible, to test them and see if they hold up.
FA is perhaps too unwieldy to be one thing. If people get together with the specific purpose to generally go through ideas then maybe we can shake the dust of some of the more banal/suspect ones.
I find this a lot when it comes to FA, when it comes to blogging, I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that its too crude a format for the job that needs to be done re fat acceptance. There isn't the trust or respect that we see endlessly for those thought to have more 'kudos'.
The extent to which we cannot maintain a disagreeing interaction is unprecedented amongst such a thoughtful group of people. In fact, it's down right odd, I can't think of a comparable example off hand.
To discuss our nuances of disagreement we need a forum specifically for that purpose. I know we have some already, but they don't to my knowledge have the same focus. We need one to go through and discuss all received ideas and those of FA with as open a mind as possible, to test them and see if they hold up.
FA is perhaps too unwieldy to be one thing. If people get together with the specific purpose to generally go through ideas then maybe we can shake the dust of some of the more banal/suspect ones.
Monday, 18 April 2011
Lost identity
I can't help thinking too great a love of quotation is the sign of a mind that thinks its cleverer than it is. However this one struck me immediately.
When I was a girl, I made a profound error. Between my earnest little soul and whoever knows what, I'd got it into my head that people are so selfish, self centered and self absorbed, naturally, and that I'd better not bother with my ego or I'd become horrible.
I should concentrate my attentions elsewhere, on being good as it would be needed there. I was wrong! It seems the ego needs a surprising amount of maintenance, cultivation and above all protection.
Live and learn.
Alain de Botton's quote speaks to how absorbing fatness from the outside in, has robbed us of identity then love and vice versa. That curtailed and suppressed our own true responses, to the extent that they were not able to develop or even, appear.
FA is a reaction to that surpression, our induced passivity and where that and the hostile defining have led us. It has not restored a self defined fatness, beyond this, yet.
That is not a putdown of fat acceptance, but a recognition of the extent to which the view has interrupted a distinct view of our own.
The demands of answering to others meant our own connection to our feelings has faded and a fat identity is in a state of arrested development.
That lost (self) love has created an emptiness at the heart of our thinking and means we have circled around a shallow opposing of what has come at us.
Which is also, inside us. It is not so much internalized fat hate as we are part of the collective consciousness of default fat phobia.
That was where we truly "let [part of] ourselves go".
Use self or lose self.
Even those who have a relatively positive view of themselves as fat people, are part of the same, there is no escape. It's not enough to not hate yourself or your fatness, you actually have to think without quarter and I've yet to come across anyone who really does.
Self hatred is on top of that and is more in the fighting of weight and the yearning not to be what you are, not an admiration of thinness/ desire to be thin.
A lot of people will probably disagree with that, but I don't see why admiring other body types and and envying them means you have to count yourself any less.
It's the striving without respect of pain or cost that both creates and demonstrates the extent of your hate. In time, if we go about it the right way, we will rediscover and change that, restoring creating, getting in touch with our own sensibilities.
Before any expression or response to outside orders had to be 100% affirmative, anything less than that was labelled as the cause of our fatness. I'm not talking about mere objection on our part, I mean any thoughts that were not what they should be. Gung ho, proving we were committed to becoming something else.
We had to view ourselves as temporary, always ready to "move on" at any point.
We are the disease so we effectively had to fight an invention of our inner degeneracy, which turned out to be us.
There could be no middle ground, no righteous, balanced, fat view. No conversation or communication, only complete obedience any thinking which does not totally agree is non-compliance.
Full stop.
Either pepole believe in method, or in (the biology of ) people and no-one, including ourselves chose to really believe in us.
In modern society's framework of self definition and expression, this is unusual, I cannot think of anyone who matches it, although if they did, would I notice from the outside?
This unprecedented hegemony, between inner and outer worlds made one whole unbroken consciousness was conveyed using the influence of science.
Science finds truth and brings about answers with that. As we have all gotten used to it doing this, it has started a dynamic which can be reversed in our minds to our answers or wishes can create science, or truth.
Trust in its truth finding has made it powerful; "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".
Our challenge is demanding, what we have to be freed from is a view that is as much inside as outside us. We need to relearn how to feel about ourselves as fat people as we do about ourselves as individuals, as a continuous flow.
No split or switch.
We have not so much internalized as replaced what would be a naturally occurring view with something else, which wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't the view of those who are not fat and are hostile rather than objective or curious. It is not only their view, it is all their phobias and hang ups. Irrational fearful, illogical unreality, distorting any real observation or meaning to lies.
Removing one that is equally inside us as out. But it isn't fully realised yet and that is the real difficulty, even more than the resistance of others.
Of course they are resisting, that is the extremeness and narrowness of their chosen position, they have nowhere to go, there is no give in their stance. If they were going to do anything else but resist, they would not have erased our view in the first place.
The way things are now is more or less the only way that can serve the crusade. The decisions cannot be others because of that, crusaders will just have to reconcile themselves to our efforts, we cannot appeal to them.
What we have to decide is whether we really want that, or not.
Without love, we lose the ability to possess a proper identity. Within love there is a constant confirmation of ourselves. ~Alain de Botton
When I was a girl, I made a profound error. Between my earnest little soul and whoever knows what, I'd got it into my head that people are so selfish, self centered and self absorbed, naturally, and that I'd better not bother with my ego or I'd become horrible.
I should concentrate my attentions elsewhere, on being good as it would be needed there. I was wrong! It seems the ego needs a surprising amount of maintenance, cultivation and above all protection.
Live and learn.
Alain de Botton's quote speaks to how absorbing fatness from the outside in, has robbed us of identity then love and vice versa. That curtailed and suppressed our own true responses, to the extent that they were not able to develop or even, appear.
FA is a reaction to that surpression, our induced passivity and where that and the hostile defining have led us. It has not restored a self defined fatness, beyond this, yet.
That is not a putdown of fat acceptance, but a recognition of the extent to which the view has interrupted a distinct view of our own.
The demands of answering to others meant our own connection to our feelings has faded and a fat identity is in a state of arrested development.
That lost (self) love has created an emptiness at the heart of our thinking and means we have circled around a shallow opposing of what has come at us.
Which is also, inside us. It is not so much internalized fat hate as we are part of the collective consciousness of default fat phobia.
That was where we truly "let [part of] ourselves go".
Use self or lose self.
Even those who have a relatively positive view of themselves as fat people, are part of the same, there is no escape. It's not enough to not hate yourself or your fatness, you actually have to think without quarter and I've yet to come across anyone who really does.
Self hatred is on top of that and is more in the fighting of weight and the yearning not to be what you are, not an admiration of thinness/ desire to be thin.
A lot of people will probably disagree with that, but I don't see why admiring other body types and and envying them means you have to count yourself any less.
It's the striving without respect of pain or cost that both creates and demonstrates the extent of your hate. In time, if we go about it the right way, we will rediscover and change that, restoring creating, getting in touch with our own sensibilities.
Before any expression or response to outside orders had to be 100% affirmative, anything less than that was labelled as the cause of our fatness. I'm not talking about mere objection on our part, I mean any thoughts that were not what they should be. Gung ho, proving we were committed to becoming something else.
We had to view ourselves as temporary, always ready to "move on" at any point.
We are the disease so we effectively had to fight an invention of our inner degeneracy, which turned out to be us.
There could be no middle ground, no righteous, balanced, fat view. No conversation or communication, only complete obedience any thinking which does not totally agree is non-compliance.
Full stop.
Either pepole believe in method, or in (the biology of ) people and no-one, including ourselves chose to really believe in us.
In modern society's framework of self definition and expression, this is unusual, I cannot think of anyone who matches it, although if they did, would I notice from the outside?
This unprecedented hegemony, between inner and outer worlds made one whole unbroken consciousness was conveyed using the influence of science.
Science finds truth and brings about answers with that. As we have all gotten used to it doing this, it has started a dynamic which can be reversed in our minds to our answers or wishes can create science, or truth.
Trust in its truth finding has made it powerful; "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".
Our challenge is demanding, what we have to be freed from is a view that is as much inside as outside us. We need to relearn how to feel about ourselves as fat people as we do about ourselves as individuals, as a continuous flow.
No split or switch.
We have not so much internalized as replaced what would be a naturally occurring view with something else, which wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't the view of those who are not fat and are hostile rather than objective or curious. It is not only their view, it is all their phobias and hang ups. Irrational fearful, illogical unreality, distorting any real observation or meaning to lies.
Removing one that is equally inside us as out. But it isn't fully realised yet and that is the real difficulty, even more than the resistance of others.
Of course they are resisting, that is the extremeness and narrowness of their chosen position, they have nowhere to go, there is no give in their stance. If they were going to do anything else but resist, they would not have erased our view in the first place.
The way things are now is more or less the only way that can serve the crusade. The decisions cannot be others because of that, crusaders will just have to reconcile themselves to our efforts, we cannot appeal to them.
What we have to decide is whether we really want that, or not.
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
Exit poll fat acceptance
There's always a great hole at the heart of fat acceptance and that's the great people missing from it and as usual, its our fault. Says other people in FA. Those committed to fat acceptance aren't up to much, the unpopularity of FA is, according to theory, testament to that.
Not to worry. The answer's at hand. People are exit polling those on their out of their recent enthusiasm. The thing to remember here is these people always understand their own motivations, are not trying to cover up their own desire to continue with fat hating. Never wish to take digs at people because someone failed to fall at their feet. They never fail to take account of misunderstanding, cultural divides or expectations, such as fat people are so ultra friendly, they'll never say boo to anyone.
They never have any of these (and many more issues) nope, they always seek to answer in deeply thought out ways, earnestly trying to illuminate a better path to ending the campaign against fat people.
Bearing that in mind, the reasons why FA is not popular, have nothing to do with the fact that we've all been encouraged without restraint to dehumanize, degrade and hate fat people. Nor that people aren't as brave as maybe we like to think. Or that people love to fit in and bond with each other over a widely accepted enemy.
It's not even that fat acceptance is really, really hard. It's isolating, dispiriting and you have to exercise the most undervalued kind of small courage and that is of being a subject of unrelenting ridicule and some people just might not be up to it.
Nope. Non of that, not on your life.
The actual reasons why are......................
Not to worry. The answer's at hand. People are exit polling those on their out of their recent enthusiasm. The thing to remember here is these people always understand their own motivations, are not trying to cover up their own desire to continue with fat hating. Never wish to take digs at people because someone failed to fall at their feet. They never fail to take account of misunderstanding, cultural divides or expectations, such as fat people are so ultra friendly, they'll never say boo to anyone.
They never have any of these (and many more issues) nope, they always seek to answer in deeply thought out ways, earnestly trying to illuminate a better path to ending the campaign against fat people.
Bearing that in mind, the reasons why FA is not popular, have nothing to do with the fact that we've all been encouraged without restraint to dehumanize, degrade and hate fat people. Nor that people aren't as brave as maybe we like to think. Or that people love to fit in and bond with each other over a widely accepted enemy.
It's not even that fat acceptance is really, really hard. It's isolating, dispiriting and you have to exercise the most undervalued kind of small courage and that is of being a subject of unrelenting ridicule and some people just might not be up to it.
Nope. Non of that, not on your life.
The actual reasons why are......................
Sunday, 10 April 2011
Suspension of goodness
A while back I worked out a pretty comprehensive overview answering the what is fat acceptance question. I worked it all out on cards, used a diagram to connect the main themes overall. I was truly inspired that day, unexpectedly so.
Alas, I left it some place and that was that. Usually things like that wouldn't worry me as themes swirl around my head and I feel able to replicate them.
This time not so.
One I do remember was the "suspension of disbelief". I meant why people find something as simple as don't stigmatize fat people too complicated to grasp. This is of course absurd in a little like going back in the day when it was too weird to say black and white people are equals.
As a girl, I used to joke that MLK could have been described, technically as insane for proposing this, given the cultural climate of his day. As we know, insanity is culturally mediated. Often that means majority madness=sanity and minority sanity=madness.
As many fatz are finding out to their cost.
People have to suspend disbelief to get on board with the crusade fury. They have to pretend fat people are their designated 'obese' role because they know us, we are them and they us we live amongst us. It's a bit like an actor in a torrid soap opera being fused with the character they play.
Often people who think they're above that 'confusion', only hoi polloi get carried away with sort of thing, but listen to any interview with an actor who's played some beloved role in some indie film and you'll hear the same you/your character, you s/he did, mash up in interviews.
When people latch on to a good character, villain or goody, it makes a noticeable inroad into our sense of the actor's persona, more so the actors themselves.
Fat acceptance is like those who insist firmly, they are not their character. Its hard to be relaxed when you used to be overtaken by the role yourself and are still squeezed between the aftermath of that and those who wish to keep you pressed into said role.
But really there's another form of suspension on my mind.
If you are on fire and I beat you with a heavy blanket or roll you roughly on the ground. I have to suspend good manners, propriety and most especially your autonomy to put you out. That's fine, I'm saving you. It would become problematic though if I only thought you were on fire and you knew you weren't.
Even if you were in some other kind of trouble, it wasn't that.
Yet, here's me insisting that you are and that trouble is fire and I'm going to beat heck out of you, to "put you out".
If I refuse to listen to you, which is effectively feedback on the situation-taken as I am by my conviction, I'm just beating you up, abusing you because of what I insist on believing. What could possibly be my motivation?
Further, where is the line on my actions and their duration to be drawn? If not by feedback, by what force?
Thus we have the so called "well meaning" fat phobes, suspending their own goodness in order to push us to do what we've done already, many of us still.
People some in FA think this is a comment on the character of the well meaning. Presumably because fat phobes insist on the doing the same, fusing their discontent with our weight with how they should judge us as people, when they accuse us of being sinfully culpable for our fatness.
No, saying they are not well meaning is a comment on this suspension, how it makes it very difficult for them to judge any feedback that will alter their behaviour to the better. That should be evident from I imagine that person's unhealthy, that means I can stigmatize them into better health.
But even if we overlook that, there is the construct they are operating in which requires them to write off any discomfort, distress or pain as just the devil within trying to have it's way.
And that is why no matter how nice people are when they start, they quickly descend as we have seen with certain folk recently.
My essential disagreement with the crusade is not the possible fat prognosis if that indeed that makes any real sense outside the calories in/out model, but of the crusaders ethical stance.
I have always maintained that I, we have nothing to fear from people who believe fat is bad news and are concerned only with our own well being. So are we. Even if there is disagreement on prognosis, they are not likely to bother us much, we will just disagree.
What I think most if not all in FA are saying is we get that you think we are heading for trouble, that is still no reason for stigma, full stop. We are rational, we have shown by the way we responded to all this that we are capable of being reasoned with.
There is no reason for any untoward emotive behaviour directed at us and we judge it for what it is, not for any purported intent however noble, we call BS on the premise.
Alas, I left it some place and that was that. Usually things like that wouldn't worry me as themes swirl around my head and I feel able to replicate them.
This time not so.
One I do remember was the "suspension of disbelief". I meant why people find something as simple as don't stigmatize fat people too complicated to grasp. This is of course absurd in a little like going back in the day when it was too weird to say black and white people are equals.
As a girl, I used to joke that MLK could have been described, technically as insane for proposing this, given the cultural climate of his day. As we know, insanity is culturally mediated. Often that means majority madness=sanity and minority sanity=madness.
As many fatz are finding out to their cost.
People have to suspend disbelief to get on board with the crusade fury. They have to pretend fat people are their designated 'obese' role because they know us, we are them and they us we live amongst us. It's a bit like an actor in a torrid soap opera being fused with the character they play.
Often people who think they're above that 'confusion', only hoi polloi get carried away with sort of thing, but listen to any interview with an actor who's played some beloved role in some indie film and you'll hear the same you/your character, you s/he did, mash up in interviews.
When people latch on to a good character, villain or goody, it makes a noticeable inroad into our sense of the actor's persona, more so the actors themselves.
Fat acceptance is like those who insist firmly, they are not their character. Its hard to be relaxed when you used to be overtaken by the role yourself and are still squeezed between the aftermath of that and those who wish to keep you pressed into said role.
But really there's another form of suspension on my mind.
If you are on fire and I beat you with a heavy blanket or roll you roughly on the ground. I have to suspend good manners, propriety and most especially your autonomy to put you out. That's fine, I'm saving you. It would become problematic though if I only thought you were on fire and you knew you weren't.
Even if you were in some other kind of trouble, it wasn't that.
Yet, here's me insisting that you are and that trouble is fire and I'm going to beat heck out of you, to "put you out".
If I refuse to listen to you, which is effectively feedback on the situation-taken as I am by my conviction, I'm just beating you up, abusing you because of what I insist on believing. What could possibly be my motivation?
Further, where is the line on my actions and their duration to be drawn? If not by feedback, by what force?
Thus we have the so called "well meaning" fat phobes, suspending their own goodness in order to push us to do what we've done already, many of us still.
People some in FA think this is a comment on the character of the well meaning. Presumably because fat phobes insist on the doing the same, fusing their discontent with our weight with how they should judge us as people, when they accuse us of being sinfully culpable for our fatness.
No, saying they are not well meaning is a comment on this suspension, how it makes it very difficult for them to judge any feedback that will alter their behaviour to the better. That should be evident from I imagine that person's unhealthy, that means I can stigmatize them into better health.
But even if we overlook that, there is the construct they are operating in which requires them to write off any discomfort, distress or pain as just the devil within trying to have it's way.
And that is why no matter how nice people are when they start, they quickly descend as we have seen with certain folk recently.
My essential disagreement with the crusade is not the possible fat prognosis if that indeed that makes any real sense outside the calories in/out model, but of the crusaders ethical stance.
I have always maintained that I, we have nothing to fear from people who believe fat is bad news and are concerned only with our own well being. So are we. Even if there is disagreement on prognosis, they are not likely to bother us much, we will just disagree.
What I think most if not all in FA are saying is we get that you think we are heading for trouble, that is still no reason for stigma, full stop. We are rational, we have shown by the way we responded to all this that we are capable of being reasoned with.
There is no reason for any untoward emotive behaviour directed at us and we judge it for what it is, not for any purported intent however noble, we call BS on the premise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)