Hey I’m not the one getting my gym shorts in a knot over a moist rowing machine handlebar. (And just not believing that someone else couldn’t give a shit about it when I warned him of impending moistness!)
As far as chillin’ about people using “fat” as an insult and promoting fat stereotypes … true story - 30 something years ago that’s what some told me when I would speak up when they used “fag” and “he’s so gay” as casual insults. It was socially acceptable to denigrate that group of people so I was the odd one to take exception to it. (No, I didn’t go around correcting people I did not know, but friends began to know that calling people fags around me would get that response and at least learned that some would find it offensive.)
Yes, fat people are discriminated against in our society. Yes, people casually use “fat” as an insult. Yes, many hold very strong anti-fat stereotypes. Yes, until enough people let it be known that expressing such beliefs is unacceptable it will continue. No, it is not comparable to racism, or anti-Semitism, or Islamophobia, or gay bashing, but it is similar in nature and still unacceptable. Roll your eyes at me all you want.
Now I entered the conversation about “fat” in this thread late, stating explicitly that in this context there was an argument to made that it was pertinent to have specified fat since the fat do sweat more, but offering up a reasonable guidance for figuring out if using the word will be felt to be offensive by some rather than descriptive. Only after that, when this doofus didn’t take the chance to just say then (rather than later) that yes, the fat people are more noticably sweating more, end, but instead dug deep by saying that yes he meant it as a casual insult, that it is specifically fat people who are disgusting, that using fat as a casual insult is okay, and that anyone who thinks it isn’t is the easily offended, did I rise to the subject. At that point the guy is not just odd for having an extreme fear of invisible dried sweat and moist handlebars, and clueless for being gruff about it instead of trying to actually ask nicely and let others know that wiping after themselves would be appreciated, he is a full blown ignorant jerk.
A bit ironic actually. Sweat phobic dimbulb here wants everyone in the gym to be sensitive to and cater to his phobia and wipe down the machine (and the friggin handlebars!) whether they have left visible sweat or not, even if most people in the gym really don’t care (80% of the gym patrons don’t wipe after themselves he claimed in the op … I guess most of the gym membership is fat). Yet his having the common courtesy to ask someone to do it nicely, rather than treat offenders “gruffly” is too much for him. He can’t be bothered to wipe himself before he uses equipment if he’s the one concerned about the possibility a spot of moistness, or perhaps all dried, but possibly still there, sweat. (Again, please note, he did not limit his rant to a leaving puddles of sweat, just the awareness that some are not wiping so he can’t trust that there is not dried sweat there, so he is forced to thoroughly wipe down the machines himself.)
Yes Felix Unger could have a hard time at a real gym. If the possibility of contact with a spot of dried sweat or a somewhat moist handlebar is too much for you then you can either not exercise in common area or wipe stuff down yourself before you use it.
Mr. K., by now you should know that rants don’t always go the way the ranter wants. Sometimes the ranter shows themselves to be the idiot or the asshole and become the Pitted rather than the Pitter.
