So would I be incorrect in characterizing your argument as “you’re a fattie” = a baseball bat upside the head while “you need to eat a sammich” = a smack on the ass?
Stoid, do not drag insults from the BBQ Pit into Great Debates–not even if they were posted self-referentially by the target.
(And if you are truly finished, here, I expect to see no more personal comments about other posters in this thread.)
[ /Moderating ]
How many calories per day does she eat vs burn?
Yes, you would be wrong.
“you need to eat a sammich” is a smack on the ass, but the whack to the head would be the more aggressive types of fat mockery, as well as commentary to the effect that fat people deserve the insults because they “choose” to be fat, whether stated in a reasonable-sounding way or in a ruder way.
That’s the whole argument that the “you choose” contingent refuse to acknowledge: the fact that it is technically possible to reduce the amount of food one consumes sufficiently to lose weight is not the beginning, middle and end of all important facts that bear on the issue, and they persist in acting as though it is. That is ignorant as well as insulting, and it is ignorance often embraced in the service of supporting a person’s desire to BE insulting. “It’s ok to call you a gluttonous, weak-willed pig because you’re a gluttonous, weak-willed pig. Ta Da!”
I can see both sides of this, really. On the one hand, I have friends who struggle with weight issues, and it’s heartbreakingly painful for them. I get that, I really do, and it’s frankly scary to have someone you care about teeter on the brink of extreme bad health due to weight issues (especially now that we’re firmly in middle age). On the other hand, like any addiction, food addiction can only be overcome by one person…the addict. We don’t cut ANY addicts much slack in our society. Look at smokers…they regularly are reviled and called disgusting on this board. But…smoking is an addiction. It’s obviously incredibly difficult to kick the habit. Smokers often develop the addiction at a young age, just as overeaters do, when the are too young to realize what they are doing to themselves and the rest of their lives. And yet, it’s perfectly acceptable to call them disgusting, to tax their addiction to a ridiculous degree, and to generally show a complete lack of respect for them as people, beyond just disagreeing with their bad habit.
So…to direct this towards the OP, am I obligated to also defend smokers, alcoholics, drug addicts, and anyone else who just can’t help it? I’m not inclined personally to call any of these folks disgusting, but I think there’s an issue of consistency here that ought to be addressed.
I guess I set myself up for that one. I don’t suppose I should be any luckier at deciphering your point on the first try than anyone else.
Bottom line is that you do not get to choose how insulting someone else finds an insult. They both come from the same place, an attempt to make the other person feel worse about them self. I suspect that you’ve been ripped on for your weight, so you can’t imagine how being made fun of for being skinny could possibly be anywhere near as bad. Your lack of imagination doesn’t change reality any more than a YEC’s inability to comprehend humans evolving from single cell organisms means that the world was creating exactly as it is approximately 6,000 years ago on a Tuesday in October.
“I suspect that you’ve been ripped on for your weight, so you can’t imagine how being made fun of for being skinny could possibly be anywhere near as bad.”
I dont have to imagine either because as I said above, Ive been both under and over weight and have seen the reception I got on either side of the equation.
No comparison. Nearest I’ve really had to it is being told to eat more when thin, and friendly jokes - nothing about it being due to a lack of willpower or whatever with anywhere near the amount I saw when being overweight turned up. You really have to get to anorexia levels before any real critique happen and sometimes not even then.
So maybe its a case of you not really having an idea of what either side can be like rather than the converse.
Otara
Comparing the insults that thin women get to the insults that fat women get is comparing apples and oranges. A thin woman might get a handful of negative comments about her body in her lifetime, and she has the backing of the whole weight of our culture telling her that thin is in, that a thin woman is always more beautiful and desirable than a fat one, that she’s more valuable as a human being because she doesn’t have too much extra fat on her body. A fat woman will get negative comments about her weight much more often (not to mention the disapproving stares watching everything she puts in her mouth), and she has the constant knowledge that she is considered less attractive, desirable, and valued by our society simply because of her weight, with no other attributes considered.
Should people insult thin people’s bodies? No, that isn’t a good thing. But people pretending that it is exactly the same as insulting a fat person are kidding themselves.
What Cat and Otara said. 10
Let me give you a scenario:
You’re in high school. There’s a group of catty teenage girls who make fun of anyone who isn’t up to their standards. Their two favorite targets are a girl with a weight problem and one who’s skinny. The fat girl isn’t morbidly obese and the skinny girl isn’t anorexic. The insults to the fat girl are standard fare, ripping on her gut, her ass, her thighs. The skinny girl gets told that they can see her ribs where her boobs should be, she wears the same jeans as a 9 year old boy, and are you sure she doesn’t have a penis?
Obviously, a mature, self-assured person can let these insults roll off their back and will take solace in the fact that most of these girls will probably spend their lives as waitresses working the night shift at Denny’s, but these are teenage girls we’re talking about. Are you saying that the skinny girl will not feel as bad as the fat girl because more fat people get made fun of that skinny people? Is that how you would comfort her?
You have left the originating discussion behind, as you can see from a review of how we arrived here:
So answering your question doesn’t actually add anything to what I was saying.
I’m sorry you’re having trouble following an organic discussion. Like others before me, I’ll leave you to think you’ve won.
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Neither addicts nor the obese can do it by themselves all that well, or with great success. Success usually is correlated with having support networks and appropriate guidance. Any drug addict who thinks it is going to be easy to quit is foolish and anyone who tells them that they are just lazy or weak willed for failing to quit successfully without support is ignorant.
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I personally usually see smokers being reamed for exposing others to their smoke, not for choosing to smoke. People accept that quitting smoking is doable but very difficult and I rarely see those who have tried to quit but failed being called weak or lazy or worse or disgusting. Do you? Certainly I would call such an attack on a smoker as unacceptable bullying. No, they can’t smoke in a way that I am forced to smoke passively, or my kids would, but they are not disgusting people by virtue of being smokers. And I have no objection to taxes on junk foods, nanny state be damned.
In tems of Lord Ashtar’s example: indeed in that specific case both are similarly hurt and both sets of speech are equally bullying. And?
OK, sure, but the one key ingredient is the will of the addict. Without that, no support system in the world is going to solve the problem.
The point is that no one feels bad for smokers…they get criticized, told they are stupid, called disgusting (ok, it’s their habit and the effects that are called disgusting…but how is that different from calling the habit and the effects of overeating disgusting?), and sure, they are told they are weak or have no willpower. And…yes, they can smoke in a way that you are not forced to smoke passively…they can smoke in their own homes. Doesn’t typically change the attitude people have towards them.
My point is only that it’s not a “fat” thing…the attitudes of our society go much deeper than that.
:rolleyes:
I chain smoked for 26 years, on top of being fat. Nothing anyone ever said to me about my smoking was anything like the things people said to me about being fat.
You are absolutely wrong.
Because the lie that some are attempting to promote about this is that the insults, judgment, commentary, etc. that the fat receive is about something other than being fat. It isn’t. It’s absolutely about being fat, and its absolutely about the visceral, pretty much uncontrollable reaction that many people have to fat people: disgust, revulsion, repulsion.
Nothing else engenders that kind of reaction in people except things which are considered outside the control of the person - perhaps we are equally revolted by rampant acne, for instance, but most people aren’t mean to the afflicted. (Some are, but very few. Not true of fat.) Fat holds a special place in society because it grosses us out and because people believe (as these threads attest) that being fat is a “choice”, the fact that a person hasn’t chosen to not be fat means they then deserve to be insulted, ridiculed, judged -in other words,
“Because fat people choose to be gross, I am grossed out and I get to openly react to how gross I find them to be, either by mocking them, being mean to them, or otherwise talking to them or about them in ways I would never do about people who gross me out because of their disgusting skin condition or birth defect or scars or whatever, because they can’t help that. Since you, fat gross person, can technically spend your life eating 1200 calories a day to stay thin and you don’t, you don’t get to complain about your choice to gross me out and the fact that I’m expressing it.”
It’s all about fat, don’t kid yourself.
Yeah, I don’t get it either. The best way to not convince someone is to say (paraphrased)
a: You’re Wrong
S: No I’m not
a: Screw you, I’m outta here
I may disagree with them (not sure yet, I’m on the fence), but Stoid and DSied have been the best debaters in this thread.
And I’ve been fat for as long as I have smoked. The “abuse” about smoking has always been much more noticeable than that about weight.
But there’s a major difference between us. I’m male, you’re female.
This isn’t “all about fat.” It’s overwhelmingly about gender, and stereotypes for women. Just as jokes and comments about blondes really aren’t about the color of the hair, nor is what you are describing. It’s societal sexism at work, not sizism.
Thank you.
(Although men do suffer when they are fat, too - I don’t agree that it’s entirely a sexism thing, just mostly.)
Thanks, very kind of you to take the time to say. 