The Accusation of Suicide and Suicide

Few should be judged solely by the worst of themselves and if this is the worst the now late Anthony Bourdain has done he couldn't be said to have been as bad as all that. By the accounts of many, he was kind generous and supportive to them.

Still, I feel its entirely fair to revisit this video which illustrates the weird chasm that's opened up between our more typical reaction to an apparent suicide and how accusations of suicide are thrown at fat people as a justification for saying that our purported self destruction means we deserve abuse and death.

In the past, it was uncomplicated. The focus was on the loss of a life and the meaning of that to those left behind.

 

Now one has to ask, which reaction to suicide is the real one? As usual, folks can't hear themselves. It is typical of the double consciousness surrounding weight. The extent to which we live in different lanes remains unacknowledged.

How then should one view Bourdain's end, if indeed he has committed actual suicide? [Honestly, is there anything that doesn't split into real and false in this area?] There can only be one way really.

It would be nice though if from now on people dropped this stupid "slow suicide" meme and started to listen to what they are actually saying to (some) people.

No Slimming for Channel Four

If I was bending over backwards, I'd say Channel 4's a mixed bag when it comes to representing the fatz. It commissioned the TV version of "My Mad Fat Diary", which gave us much joy. It has also featured another series with a lead that acts like a human being and not a saddo obot. I typed in Channel 4, female, northern, detective and it came up! "No Offence". I saw bits of it and it thought it seemed well made and had an interesting antagonist, it got away from me.

The other side of this however is far bigger. That's the side that made TV fatsploitation classic Supersize/Superskinny. It has continued with this level of class, upping the ante being a typical achingly bourgeois ghetto for scienterrific fat phobia [you're fooling no-one C4]. Usually featuring, the-you are totes unaware of how much you are pushing into your face-type premise. Specialising in humiliations of the gotcha kind- where people are set up with secret cameras, caught eating pies/cake etc., to then be lectured with the expected pompous yet insipid twit-toned nutritionista.

Every airhead diet trend is taken seriously, all dieting is the same Mao suit, no matter the fabric or colour.

So it was a complete surprise to hear this channel criticise one of their stalwart presenters- Jamie "Please can we not have any more" Oliver. "Channel 4 tells Jamie Oliver he's wrong on junk food ad ban campaign". Thunderstruck, I did the mental equivalent of falling over my feet desperate to find out what their objection could possibly be.

I couldn't even speculate, I was taken aback by their rationale. Money. Not that they said this outright from the get-go;

Channel 4 bosses have said Jamie Oliver’s campaign for a ban on airing junk food adverts before 9pm is wrong, arguing that it is anachronistic because children rarely watch live television.

Megalmao.

......Channel 4 said any such ban could have a substantial impact on its revenue and prevent it from funding programmes about healthy living.

Arrrhahaha..further, snorts, guffaws etc.,

They're not bothered about participating in the relentless dehumanisation and exploitation of people in the name of reducing the size of their bottoms. 

When it comes however to trimming their fat bottom line, they come over all fat positive max, butt only because it means they'll have less money available to produce more useless pseudo science fuelled crap. 

Isn't that well meaning of them?

This is the age we live in my friends. Real maltreatment is not being exhorted to starve on the demand of others neurosis, but the prospect of corporate loss of funds.

Call the UN.

To be candid though, this could pose a dilemma.

Oppose Jamie Oliver or support him and possibly reduce C4's budget for fat hating propaganda.  Tough choice.

Never did I think anything could even for a moment make me reconsider objecting to the Oliver that wants to give less rather than ask for more.

Reclamation

Oh dear, someone has called someone the cee word, pass the smelling salts Agatha! "Why is it so Taboo?" I must confess: I-do-not-know.  It's sechsual, so it's taken on baggage from that. It also reflects the status of men and the age old habit of labelling women unclean and/or inherently harmful. We can see this in terf [look it up], yeah, I know, handmaidens came up with that-so what?

Their whole point is they don't want to have a mind of their own.

What I do know for sure is that the word has/is being reclaimed by women themselves.

When you seize your body back from (internalised) misogynist utility, you tend to find it hard to be offended by titles for la chatte. Let me not mislead, there's something about the word.

It conveys power and is powerful. Vagina's a dear Latinate, but it's a bit wet [sorry, not sorry]. Vulva, sounds like it could be a character out of Star Trek, or possibly a volcano. It isn't well know and can't even be shortened as in Vag.

Cnut is also being reclaimed because of the reason behind the perceived insult. That the vagina was defined as a hole and it failed to be, because it is not. This biological mismatch frustrated the Man and this translated into a raging complaint that could be spat out any time a woman failed a patriarchal definition.

Part of this aspect has also survived and it is used by both men and women for someone they consider to not being doing what they should to the extent that they become an obstacle to right and proper aims. There is some etiquette. It's never sounds right for a man to call a woman this, though a woman can call a man this, it's probably not good either, from a psychological point of view.

Reclamation has been proposed for 'obesity'. That its just another word for fat. It isn't though. Nor does it refer directly to fat people. It exists as a rejection of acknowledging bodies bigger than slim bodies are as whole as slim bodies.

It's not as much to delegitimize fatter bodies as it is to keep slim in sight at all times. Imagine a slim person (always) standing in front of a fatter person, with the difference between the outline of the slim person and that of the fat person being the 'overweight/obesity'.

This difference is purportedly attacking the slim body and 'causing' harm to it. Nothing to reclaim in this sci-fi, it's got nothing to do with anyone but those who feel this. An 'obese' is not a person, it's an object lolling around waiting to be defined and programmed by those promoting this.

'Obeses' do not exist until this mindset takes aim at them, and they do not exist when it looks away. It is their life. Basically, a kind of zombie. Incidentally, slim people are increasingly becoming 'obese'. By that, I do not mean fat, I mean the remove they used to have from torturing food with negativity has gone. Remember when some of them retained a freshness from the default that food is a good thing?

Gone. They've now acquired the dull patina of stress about food that fat people have had all this time. Even when they try to be positive about food, like fat people, they sound increasingly strained and as if they're sinning. Noticed?

It hadn't occurred that this zombie puppet meaning could be of use if it was matched with such an implement. Amusingly, Donald Trump gets the meaning of 'obese'. His recent medical where his stopped a pound before 'obese' categorisation I think shows his instinctive recognition of the toxicity of this branding.

Yes, he's a fatphobe, but 'obese' is supposed to be medical/respectable. Yet Trump wanted nothing to do with it. His gargantuan ego sensed being danger and he opted to be mocked over being Jim Jones Kool-Aid level owned. And I suspect his doctor allowed it not simply out of any pressing, but because he too knows its a branding not befitting the office of the most powerful person in the US (nominally).

I don't blame any woman for not appreciating reclamation of cnut, but it pales besides worse.

How Science Does and Doesn't Go

Here's an example of what you are missing.

"Potential new cure found for baldness" everything is clear in 6 words. The issue: baldness, the aim: to resolve it. Use of the term 'cure' is quaint, from a time when the desire for solutions was evident. It also tells us that anything remotely undesirable easily lends itself toward pathologisation and the language of disease as metaphor.

Along with issue and aim is the need for a target, in this case it happens to be a compound that acts as a brake on hair growth. Amusing given the amount of times I have said usually scientific protocol is to look to stabilise a condition or state-to stop it increasing/moving on/continuing, at the same time as seeking a reverse gear.

Tackling baldness is presented as being about manipulating the action of cells, in an understandable way. It's clear that scientists are doing this for lay people. There's no resentment on the part of the professionals, who do not feel they're being overburdened or taxed by being expected to want to practise what they trained for-in addition to freely choosing what field they wish to engage in. Of their own volition.

All despite the utter triviality of baldness. There's no sense that this is an unworthy investment of scientific resources. Doctors are involved, supporting in this case leading research.

Current remedies, their efficacy and lack of it are accurately rendered, in no sense is a failure of these remedies the failure of anything but those remedies. Reactions to baldness are also allowed to vary. It is made clear some 'suffer', there's a distinct sense that you don't have to.

It isn't required and you are not accused of anything, if you do not by your own initiative choose to suffer from baldness.

Overall the tone is cool, detached and interested in its subject. Shaped by the professionals involved.

Looking at a sample of the most recent article on weight, "Study casts doubt on 'healthy obesity'", it's easy to see it has no real sense of its issue, no desire to resolve, and clearly it is on the attack. It is unfocused, goes nowhere, is highly personalised and seeks only to create anxiety and to demoralise its targets. Not the functioning of the body and its cells, but people.

There is no such thing as objectivity when it comes to 'obesity'. The construct itself is the stigma and its operatives are the stigmatisers.

The public go along with this, including fat people, who also allow themselves to be trapped inside its terms.

Oh Look, a repost: from 04/04/15

Cancer!!!

Now I've got your attention......

Back in the day that'd be, "Seeeeex!!!!" Made you look. In these i-net days of jiggy at your fingertips, that's over. Now, it's the death part of sex 'n' death that really gets attention.

As I'm sure you've heard, @besity is erm- the terrible health threat/deadly disease-those raging loudest about it, don't wish to solve or cure. Remarkable. Oh they may pose otherwise, convincingly to some it seems. In action though, they can barely be arsed.

Insisting on a route that doesn't work, the mere implementation of which goes against their own highly favoured selves and their denied human impulses. Endless hypothesizing around a defunct ideology that refuses, no cannot-let's not mock the afflicted- generate any real progress.

Lies gives it away more than anything. If something is a disease that will be discovered because disease is a real entity, not a metaphor. The drive to fake disease, i.e. alcoholism, drug addiction etc., came from lay quacks. Not from actual professionals trained to deal in and uncover objective fact. 

Take cancer, no please do. Being fat is said to increase the risk of certain cancers. ....According to this, such knowledge has been uncovered in the last ten years.

Rather than admitting they don't know why. To account for this, the much adored go-to ideology is pressed into service;

• adipose tissue generates oestrogen, yet oestrogen in the form of contraceptive pills can't raise your weight, at all, no never.

There's some more;

• @beses often have more insulin. This could cause cancer in selective sites, rather than others of the same kind, because..... why....?

• Adipose cells produce (other) hormones which stimulate or inhibit cell growth [what like metabolic function or something?] ....i.e. leptin [aaahhh, leptin]. That's more abundant in @beses, so it must be up to no good. 

• @beses are inflammed. No not the state brought about by constant provocative accusations, endless threats of doom, social isolation, unemployment, plus death threats, but the "low-level inflammation" that @beses have, apparently. £tc.,

It's toxic adipose.  Adipose that decides to become toxic in fat bodies. Like you, its a baad fat.  Do you know they've named something called a "sick fat syndrome"? Yeah, that's where they want to go with this.

What annoys me about all this is not more of this or that chemical that is said to create this or that effect, it's the insistence on their pre-determined fix for no good reason but, who cares if they do? Adipose cells must be the baddies, because that's based on the almighty premise that adipose is iccccck. 

You'd think they'd have noticed all this long before. Where the body is affected to the good or ill is most likely to tell you something about the nature of your freely chosen focus of inquiry. Collectivizing fat people indiscriminately then individualizing from that is it gives an unrealistic picture to all fat people, regardless of their health status.

If you did the same thing to all under bmi 25, you'd have a similar kind of outcome. Sick people who are acceptably-weighted are sick people. It is not associated-with-weight even if they are the lightest on the size spectrum. It is defined by what's happening in their bodies, which is as it should be, it makes more sense. It's useful.

Fat people with or without disease are deemed the same, leading to the odd premise that all fat people would be healthy, if not for being fat. Illness and disease then have to be regarded nonsensically as "obesity-related," as they are both never absent nor present, but somehow, both. Yes, the paper below presents 'obesity-related' as above an estimated level of disease-we know all about @besity wallahs and their estimates.

Instead of clearing up this conceptual breakdown, we get "evidence" of how even if a fat person isn't sick, they are, because they will be in 5-20 years. Not meaning they'll actually be unwell but more will score on an index of associated-with risk factors.

Nor does this lead to where it should-let's move heaven and earth to resolve this scientifically. No, all this leads to, do what's already failed. Or let's change society. Oh you want to change society? Well you go ahead and do that, in the mean time. Save the lives you claim will be lost.

When I first saw this collection of cancers, apart from this I thought, what could possibly be the link between them? Mainly, parts of the digestive, excretory and reproductive systems?! Apart from oesophagus-which is connected to and has similar tissue to the stomach and post-menopausal breast that's mostly in the lower part of the trunk. Is there some underlying connection? If so, is it direct or theoretical like the link between those nerves and the brain?

In both men and women, body-mass index was also significantly associated with higher rates of death due to cancer of the esophagus, colon and rectum, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, and kidney; the same was true for death due to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and multiple myeloma. Significant trends of increasing risk with higher body-mass-index values were observed for death from cancers of the stomach and prostate in men and for death from cancers of the breast, uterus, cervix, and ovary in women.

[Breast is of course, post-menopause, pre-menopause it lowers the risk. Watch out, the latter appears to "promote obesity."]

I couldn't see anything obvious, I mean, reproductive and digestive? So I figured, whatev's. Till I happened to be reading a book I had little inclination toward.......Future Mind by Michio Kaku then BAM!

• The hypothalamus. This regulates body temperature, our circadian rhythm, hunger, thirst and aspects of reproduction and pleasure.

Now, I do not wish to jump to conclusions buuut, the hypothalamus has form when it comes to weight. Amongst fat people, there seem to more who may have some kind of compromised hypothalamic function, I know I have. Which is exactly the point-unusual function collects more among the outer reaches of either end of an active trait. 

So @besity wallahs love to keep it on greed and laziness. Actually finding stuff out makes this about something, the biggest danger of all is the risk of actually finding something out.

The Body Knows

I like this response to the usual drivel about weight, from "Barbyr"

I'm here to tell you I don't believe any of these scientists really have any idea what's going on. I'm boycotting these articles and studies. They are fluff pieces injurious to our mental health.

I'm feeling that last line especially right now. Some folks come back at her a bit and she responds,

Luck and genes keep me thin - will power has very little to do with it.

Indeedy. My body too keeps and has kept me from being 600lbs, my willpower has absolutely nothing to do with that, unless you mean avoiding the 'temptation' to follow orders. The message is getting out there though, people are sick and tired of other people's anorexic fantasies.

But that's not enough.

Scientists must be told to work out how the body regulates its weight and find a way or ways to key into that, preferably using the conscious mind, to trigger it. Or some other benign factor.

I don't care whether you call yourselves a fat activist, body positivist or are just a common garden person, or even someone who's had their gastric organs redesigned. Everybody needs to get on board with this message.

Even if you're happy with your body, doesn't matter, others aren't and if there is nothing for them but whatever is thrown at them, then more of them will be killed by these mutilations and poisoned by shit drugs.

So yeah, tell anyone and everyone you know that the key is science not social engineering, do it whether you are okay with your body/accept it, like it, love it or don't. Make it clear that the reason you've decided to make peace with your body is not "fat acceptance" its because the(ir) alternative is so much worse.

And it is, that is no joke. A life sentence of dieting for most people is not only not possible, it's questionable as to whether its worth living. That's a shocking thing to say I know, but having what you eat decided by others is way more than just 'advice', it's like being taken over by an eating disorder, somone else's. And we all know how eating disorders make people feel.

What makes people get cut is feeling trapped, no one should be forced to accept or mutilate.

Face it, the only way these fanatics will shut up is if there is a way to alter our weight properly. Only then will they have to find something else to gain significance. Don't you want Jamie Oliver to have to face his life?

Exactly.

Happy

Apart from the general quietness of this blog, I must admit, I've struggled to frame a response to Cancer Research UK's recent marketing bombshell, linking human bodies with cancer. The major reason is 'obesity' is a failed term and the framing of weight in terms of risk of weight is dubious and in the finish, irrelevant. Everyone knows the issue is can we reliably and permanently alter weight or not? Secondly, I'm struggling to grasp what if anything the information given could be pointing to.

Have a look for yourself, Adiposity and cancer at major anatomical sites: umbrella review of the literature. In the meanwhile, my attention was caught by an article on bulimia, as an illustration of a certain mindset.

On my way to that though, I just saw "I have prostate cancer. But I am happy". It stopped me in my tracks. I was largely indifferent to Monbiot, until this "slim chance" ugh puke [no pun intended]. After that fiasco, I linked him with irritation. Despite that, I wouldn't wish cancer on him or anyone else for that matter. Sad to say that's becoming a somewhat lofty standard.

Under the circs, it can't help but be instructive to hear from someone who actually has cancer;

It would be easy to curse my luck and start to ask “why me?”. I have never smoked and hardly drink; I have a ridiculously healthy diet and follow a severe fitness regime. I’m 20 or 30 years younger than most of the men I see in the waiting rooms. In other words, I would have had a lower risk of prostate cancer only if I had been female.

Straight in with the difference between risk and occurrence. Weight is obviously described in terms of "risk", "association" and "linked with", as that can be controlled through, ahm, statistical determinism.

Disassociation, that is being associated with low risk and being unlinked to that which is baaad cannot though protect you from occurrence. Though clearly it feels like it does. 

What about his reaction to the news, will it be what CR-UK are jonesing for?

And yet … I am happy. In fact, I’m happier than I was before my diagnosis. How can this be?

Is this "denial"?

The reason is that I’ve sought to apply the three principles which, I believe, sit at the heart of a good life.

Um, so deciding and seeking to control the way you feel can change what you feel. Let's see those principles;

The first is the most important: imagine how much worse it could be, rather than how much better. 

Oh I'm feeling that, count your blessings. No matter what people want to say or feel about weight, compared to real illness, it's an embarrassment.

The second principle is this: change what you can change, accept what you can’t.

Well, we all know the changes wrought by decades of attempts at calorie restriction induced weight loss [CRIWL].

The third principle is this: do not let fear rule your life.

Lols;

Fear hems us in, stops us from thinking clearly and prevents us from either challenging oppression or engaging calmly with the impersonal fates.

You don't say? Preach son! No matter what the news, or the intentions of others, we all have to carry on in the way that makes sense to us.

Suffice to say, the intention behind George's rules are the opposite of what crusaders wish to impose on those they consider too weighty,

There are, I believe, three steps to overcoming fear: name it, normalise it, socialise it. For too long, cancer has been locked in the drawer labelled Things We Don’t Talk About. When we call it the Big C, it becomes, as the term suggests, not smaller, but larger in our minds. He Who Must Not Be Named is diminished by being identified, and diminished further when he becomes a topic of daily conversation.

This is interesting, George is saying cancer needs to become less scary. Using cancer to make fear larger not only goes in the opposite direction, it re-invigorates fear toward sufferers."Margaret McCartney: Cancer patients should not be shamed";

....Cancer Research UK has gone large on its publicity campaign about obesity. The plain layout with warning label is reminiscent of a cigarette packet. In what Cancer Research UK itself describes as a “PR stunt,” the charity also created “fake cigarette packets with chips in to visually represent that obesity is the second biggest preventable cause of cancer after smoking.” The effect of this has been somewhat predictable. Some people with cancer have told me that they have felt blamed. Other overweight people have written on social media of how they felt shamed.

Predictable indeed.

Hard though to believe though it may seem, there was a time was a time when cancer had a stigma as great as HIV/AIDS in its earlier days. Doctors even took pity on families-leaving it off death certificates. Sufferers were hidden away by their relatives who often lied about their sickness, for fear of repercussions.

People finally going from shame to anger at the lack of progress is credited as part of the momentum for Richard Nixon's famous War on Cancer, which led to a lot of advances in the treatment of the disease.

It's taken a lot for cancer stigma to be lowered to the point of now and there's obviously further to go. Those who like to fake pathology and disease also like to enforce the reactions of their targets to their various machinations. 

They can't make that realistic either because everyone responds differently to actual disease, often confounding the expectations of fakers.