I don’t think anyone here has a problem with “treating people with respect.” In fact, there’s no reason that even the harshest judgement of a person, the most severe devaluation of that person in your mind, need extend to actual behaviour. It’s possible to be exceedingly polite and respectful to people whose actions have made you think of them as scum. Judging a person by their appearance does not necessarily translate into treating them differently, at least not when it comes to ways they’re entitled to be treated.
When it comes to how people treat each other, there is quite simply nothing to be learned about a person from an internet web board. It’s actions, not words, that prove the content of a man’s character.
Well…yes, on a web board anyways, and in some contexts IRL. Words coming from people you know IRL I might classify as a verbal act in as much as the words said to someone might be incongruent with “acting nice” to that person. But generally I still think that sticks and stones might break your bones but words will never hurt you unless you let them. There are obviously some exceptions. If someone goes around defaming you and spreading lies and gossip about you, that could adversely affect your opportunities. Someone might say something to you that’s so severe and outrageous that you keel over with a heart attack. Someone at work or school might verbally harass you so endlessly and repeatedly that it interferes with your ability to do your work or studies.
If other kids called me a nerd or a dork in grade school, it wasn’t that which caused harm. It would be the actions that came along with it, social isolation and so forth, that would have been the harmful acts. A label itself does no harm, it’s the way people alter their relations to you in virtue of the label that creates the harm.
Words have no extrinsic meaning. They only have meaning assigned to them when the listener decodes the sounds to decipher the meaning by guessing the intent with which they were uttered. If I went up to someone who didn’t know English and called them an insolent dickfaced pile of shit, those words have no meaning to that person so they can’t be insulted by them. Meaning is attached to words when they are decoded by the person hearing them.
An isolated callous remark, without accompanying action, cannot frustrate my goals, deprive me of my assets, or increase my obligations and liabilites. Thus it cannot do me any tangible harm on its own.
RexDart, it’s rather ridiculous, the way people have twisted your words around, I think. You didn’t say you hated overweight folks. Nor that you treated them badly. Almost kind of shocking, the way people have accused you of saying things you didn’t say, especially when your posts are archived. Just had to throw my two cents.
And I don’t see how alice is “just as guilty” by responding. She didn’t bump a three month old thread, she posted to a thread that was maybe a few hours old (I can’t tell from this window), just like the rest of us who posted after if you don’t know i won’t tell.
Hmm. I take his warning to mean the gratuitous “bump for the sake of bumping and nothing else” bump, not the “respond with some comments on the issue being discussed” bump. Also, arnold mentioned the three month rule in that post. for responding/starting a new thread. While very close, this thread is still not three months old.
(pre warning, AIW this isn’t directed at you, you just reminded me of it, I just see this sort of unnecessary complaint a lot in here).
Argh!! This whole “don’t respond to old threads” thing drives me nuts (well not really nuts, but it’s silly), because if a new person, or even just somone looking to talk about a subject, didn’t search through the archives, and started a new thread on say “anti, anti fat people” sure as shootin’ all the “protocol police” would be screaming bloody murder saying “We just HAD a thread on this, don’t you RESEARCH the ARCHIVES???, @#$# !!!”.
You know? What I always wonder when I see people complain about petty stuff like this is, if you were talking with a group of people at say a party or something, and someone happened to tell a joke that they told at the last party, (several months prior), would you be all up in arms and complaining about “you just TOLD that joke 3 months ago!!! (never mind that there might be new people that didn’t hear it), JEEEZZ!! Don’t bring up OLD DEAD STUFF”!!!
Speaking of “old dead stuff” old threads aren’t “old” to everyone, we have new folks coming in all the time.
Whatever happened to if you aren’t interested in a thread, don’t open it???
I saw this ina documentary, a couple of years ago (sorry, no cite, can´t recall the title or author).
The good shape of a woman is ruled bya proportion, you see, the measure of the waistline must be, more or less, 1/3 less than that of the hip. Women with overwegith or underweight with this proportion, should be atractive and desirable.
Seems that this measures are the proof that a woman is able to take a pregnancy to a good end. You see, it points that a woman has in her hips a supply of about 80.000 calories (or so) needed for the last months of the pregnancy.
And for me, I got no preferences, but usually I prefer a little overweight than underweight in women. That mekes them soft and warm to the touch and I like to have something to grab when it comes to the touchings.
I think I saw the same documentary. They took outlines of women and showed them to tribesmen in the Amazon (IIRC) who have never been exposed to advertising. They all picked women within a certain waist-to-hip ratio since they “would be good at making babies.” It also said (IIRC) that Marilyn Monroe and Kate Moss (two totally different sized women) had the exact same waist-to-hip ratio and therefore were both successful as sex objects/models.
Frigging zombie threads are annoying and the Mods have frowned on them more then a few times, often having to lock the stupid things. Opening a three month old thread to basically say nothing is rather questionable.
Open a new thread and link.
Fucking Zombie threads, grrrr! If you keep raising them, soon they will be running amok, slaughtering folks for their sweet tasty brains.
To Bickering_Annoys_Me, yes, it was that documentary.
By the way, I´ve seen so much disrespect in this thread about fat/ugly/bald people… are you supermodels? Is your face or body in advertisements? are you world famous actors remarked by your beauty? Gosh, I hope I will never meet you face to face or else I will irremediably fall in love will all of you, being so beautiful and all… cough assholes cough
I do agree that a person’s weight is, in general, their own responsibility. Then again, I don’t see too many folks suggesting that anyone is forcing them to be whatever weight they are.
As far as judging the quality of a person based on thier physique, my knee-jerk is to say that’s a fucked up way to be. But when I think about it a bit more, I have to say that I often have thoughts about others based on thier appearances. Some of these thoughts are complimentary in nature, some are decidedly not. But I also consider it my responsibility to amend or discard (or sometimes even accept as accurate) these thoughts after getting to know more about the person about which I’ve had these thoughts.
Being prejudiced at times seems to be pretty universal and is not necessarily the sign of a bad person. It’s when the prejudices are clung to to the degree that one cannot see the other person more realistically for fear of dissolving these prejudices that things get nasty.
And not that it matters that much, but I’m overweight, and yes, I’m the only one that’s responsible for being so. Well, me and the manufacturers of cheese that is.
As for the bumping of the thread, this was one of the more entertaining weight wars.
The person who re-opened this thread was commenting on the subject matter, not “nothing”. He/she was likely new and did a search as “oldies” demand that we do INSTEAD of open new threads on subjects which already have threads present.
Make up your MINDS!!! Do you want us to reply to old threads? OR open new ones? Also, bear in mind, that this isn’t a “zombie” to everyone. New people join all the time.
Why do you bother opening it if you are so attuned to the board that you know the precise age and shelf life of each thread?
She didn’t bump a three month old thread, she posted to a thread that was maybe a few hours old (I can’t tell from this window), just like the rest of us who posted after if you don’t know i won’t tell.