I think in a way that’s what I was asking in my post. At what point does discrimination become no big deal? When discrimination starts interfering with your ability to get a job that you are perfectly capable of doing, that is hitting too close to home and family. That’s just an example.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I have been involved in trying to get people to see the damage that discrimination does to any group that is discriminated against. For example, I spent my teaching career – all twenty years – teaching in a high school in the inner city. I did it because I wanted to make a positive difference in the lives of African American teenagers. I’m a Protestant, but I save up money for the Jewish Defense League. At the same time, I made it a point to patronize Arab businesses where I live. That was a little thing, but I’m not at all insensitive to the suffering of others – I don’t think, anyway.
If someone wants to discriminate against me because they don’t like me or my haircut or my absentmindedness, that doesn’t bother me. Or if someone calls me names, that slides right off. (You can get pretty tough-skinned about name-calling when you teach high school.)
It is the group discrimination that is so damaging to so many. After so many years of being told how stinky and ugly and grotesque and lazy we are, it does tend to mess with our heads. And the bullying makes problems even worse for large people. The taunts just add to their depression which results in overeating (a symptom of depression). It is part of a terrible cycle of self-loathing for many (but not all) seriously overweight people.
Weight is no longer a problem for me. But I will speak up anytime I hear damaging stereotypes and generalizations about any group of people.
At least I’m not a Johnny One-note. I am just as bitchy about several other issues.
Discrimination against “fat” people is so entrenced that no one thinks anything about taking pot shots. Think back about school days. Weren’t the “fat” kids bullied all the time? No one thinks twice about what they say about overweight people.
Just because the Jews have suffered horribly for generation after generation doesn’t negate in any way the pain I have felt. If you can’t hear that in what I’m saying to you, I guess it can’t be helped.
It doesn’t make sense to say, “You don’t hurt because hurt people hurt worse.”
By the way, I didn’t mind being called fat. That was a fact of life for me then. But I did mind being excluded and dismissed.
People are excluded, bullied and generally pissed upon for a great many socio-economic reasons, especially when growing up. The cruelty of children and teens can be astounding. Some fat kids were bullied, nerds were bullied, the ugly, social misfits, the poor ect. Till my junior year in high school I didn’t have much fun either (enough said). Never did I think I had it as bad as African-Americans in Jim Crow South, or the religious minorities in Ruwanda or Bosnia.
But to say that bullying, social exclusion or name calling is in anyway comparable to the historic and current impacts of racism, religious bigotry and hatred, or violence and discrimination against homosexuals and transgendered persons is simply wrong and is demeaning to the tragedies they have suffered.
If you read carefully you will see that many posters support your general position (including me), but you lose us when you try to compare the two (or worse, as one poster did in the original thread, say they are equal). The historic and current impacts (as discussed in my prior post) of the two simply are not even remotely the same.
Did I say at some point that overweight people have been as discriminated against as Jews? African Americans? Please quote what I said that make you think that I have in any way diminished what has happened to them?
People are excluded, bullied and generally pissed upon for a great many socio-economic reasons, especially when growing up. The cruelty of children and teens can be astounding. Some fat kids were bullied, nerds were bullied, the ugly, social misfits, the poor ect. Till my junior year in high school I didn’t have much fun either (enough said). Never did I think I had it as bad as African-Americans in Jim Crow South, or the religious minorities in Ruwanda or Bosnia.
But to say that bullying, social exclusion or name calling is in anyway comparable to the historic and current impacts of racism, religious bigotry and hatred, or violence and discrimination against homosexuals and transgendered persons is simply wrong and is demeaning to the tragedies they have suffered.
If you read carefully you will see that many posters support your general position (including me), but you lose us when you try to compare the two (or worse, as one poster did in the original thread, say they are equal). The historic and current impacts (as discussed in my prior post) of the two simply are not even remotely the same.
Hmmm. To opine that the effects of racism have been profoundly greater than sizism is one thing. To state that they are not “in anyway comparable” is another thing.
So, is a “Little” discrimination okay? No? Then they are comparable, just at different places in the discrimination scale.
People are excluded, bullied and generally pissed upon for a great many socio-economic reasons, especially when growing up. The cruelty of children and teens can be astounding. Some fat kids were bullied, nerds were bullied, the ugly, social misfits, the poor ect. Till my junior year in high school I didn’t have much fun either (enough said). Never did I think I had it as bad as African-Americans in Jim Crow South, or the religious minorities in Ruwanda or Bosnia.
But to say that bullying, social exclusion or name calling is in anyway comparable to the historic and current impacts of racism, religious bigotry and hatred, or violence and discrimination against homosexuals and transgendered persons is simply wrong and is demeaning to the tragedies they have suffered.
If you read carefully you will see that many posters support your general position (including me), but you lose us when you try to compare the two (or worse, as one poster did in the original thread, say they are equal). The historic and current impacts (as discussed in my prior post) of the two simply are not even remotely the same.
elf6c If you think that I am unaware or uncaring of the horrors of Nazi Germany, it is because you don’t know me very well at all. I didn’t just visit the Anne Frank house, I made a pilgrimage. I made it a point in my classrooms to see that no student ever left my class without knowing what had happened to the Jews and seeing pictures of it. If you noticed my signature from two or three weeks ago, it said this: “I am the Nazi. I am the Jew.” That is my way of saying how horrible I feel that human beings like me could do this to anyone.
Earlier in the two related threads, I had tried to set aside the issue of who has been hurt the most because it was irrelevant to whether or not fat people are discriminated against. But when that was misunderstood, I concede earlier in this post that all of the things that you mentioned are worse so that people would quit saying, in essence, that overweight people can’t hurt because the Jews hurt worse!
If you have one child who has a terminal illness and another that has the flu, you don’t tell the child that has the flu, “You are not sick because your sister is dying.” These are analogies which at some point will always break down. But the four points that I made earlier today are true! Which one of them is not? Just because I try to illustrate a point by showing what we have in common doesn’t mean that I don’t see the differences.
I don’t know what it feels like to be a Jew or a homosexual or an African American. I do know what it is like to be discriminated against as a woman and as a morbidly obese person. But I will tell you that I think that my homosexual friends are, as a whole, happier than my obese friends. They seem to have come to terms with society’s bullying better than the obese. But I don’t KNOW that. And I fully concede that people don’t go trawling for obese people the way they do for homosexuals. We are not beaten up as often. I do think that perhaps we have as much mental anquish but, again. I don’t KNOW that. I would think that it would vary from person to person. Again, I hate generalizations.
I am not angry with you about anything you have said. But I am feeling very frustrated because I have not made myself clear to you.
If there is no one reading this thread who understands what I am trying to get across, then I will stop posting here because your ears are lost to my voice.
Don’t be dense. What I said was in no way a “Godwin”. Ben seemed to be saying that castigating a person for being intolerant is as bad or worse than castigating an entire group of people. My example shows that not to be the case. And notwithstanding Ben’s insistence that fat-bashing is somehow not as bad as other forms of intolerance, I find any insults to an entire group of people to be a much more grievous harm than insults to one intolerant person. I’m really not seeing the reasoning that’s being presented here. Since six million fat people didn’t get slaughtered, does that make it OK to hate fat people? Help me out, here - how does that make any kind of sense?
Am I the only one who sees the difference between hating ONE person, and hating a WHOLE GROUP of people? Let me spell it out for you if it’s not clear. A PERSON might do a bad thing that is deserving of scorn, but if you attribute negative things to a WHOLE GROUP of people, like “fat people” or “blacks” or “Jews”, then you are not judging them as individuals. And it’s NOT mitigated by factors like “they don’t have it as bad as another group”, or “they could lose weight if they wanted to”. I mean for CHRIST’S SAKE, do I really have to explain this?
And on a side note, what’s up with people not understanding what an analogy is? Are people missing the part of their brain that allows them to understand IT’S A FUCKING ANALOGY? If I say that hating Hitler is not the same as hating Jews, I am IN NO WAY comparing anyone to Hitler. It just boggles my mind that it should even require explanation.
I understand you completely now. I was discussing overall historic and overall impacts. You were talking out of your personal experience and made some excellent points. Please keep posting on this as much as you want!!
I am sorry, but the Board has been majorly wonky for me today (hence the stupid triple posts- sorry guys and gals) so it took well over 20 tries to just to get through. I just wanted you to know that I do get you, and while we do not agree 100% we probably more agree then disagree.
Now I will try and post this. Come on hamsters, daddy needs a new pair of shoes [hits submit]
elf6c, I also spent the last twenty minutes trying to get to this thread to read your response. It was worth it! I feel so much better now that you and I understand each other.
Blowero, I thought I was losing my mind until I read your response and that of some others too. Thanks to all of you for relieving some of the frustration I was feeling through the night last night. (I spent twelve hours here working through this.)
To The Wrong Girl, my post was a mixed bag, and whistled neatly over your head.
My comments about the veracity of the OP were tongue-in-cheek when comparing the ‘goat fucker’ to ‘fat bitch’.
IMHO, people seem to have their favorite cause and will bleat at full volume for it, displaying myopia regarding other issues, perhaps within the scope of their own conduct.
The bottom line is that each and every one of us, if we are truly honest, has thought or expressed nasty things about another person based upon stereotypes. The flip side of that is that we have all been subject to similar treatment at the hand of someone else.
In closing, I refer to my previous statements in that I may deplore what you stand for, and will not listen to your speeches or read your publications, and choose not to associate with you. That said, so long as you refrain from criminal activity, I will defend your right to speak your views, publish your work, and associate with others who share your views.
The OP was expressing an opinion and has caught hell for it, which is wrong.
PC has gone overboard in that offensive thoughts, words, and images must be excised at all cost. If we all get to list that which we find objectionable, and the great Delete key is pressed, I submit that the screen will be blank.
Well, perhaps you should have made your post’s “tongue in cheek” nature more obvious.
You know what? That’s fucking bullshit. What if the OP had said [note: THE OP DID NOT SAY THIS; I AM NOT DIRECTLY COMPARING OR USING THIS AS SOME SORT OF METAPHOR FOR FAT BASHING, so Jesus Christ do NOT accuse me of comparing the two, okay?]
“All black people should be lynched.”
So, it would be wrong for them to catch hell for expressing that opinion.
This really can’t be that hard to understand. And you do not KNOW if there have, or have not been people who were beaten to death merely because their fatness “offended” someone else.
Just because the discrimination and harrassment of an obese person might not have gotten to that point of being killed because of their weight does NOT make it any more okay to pick on a fat person because of their difference (regardless of whether they “can” change it or not) than it is to pick on any other group.
Obese people have endured every other type of discrimination, hatred and abuse, from being beaten up, to being frozen out of jobs, to having slurs made against them by “normal” people.
If you see enough “No Fat Chicks”, or the ever-popular, “Save a whale, harpoon a fat chick”, as a fat person, you get a message. If you are harrassed, insulted and “mooed” at while you are minding your own business, just walking down the street, you get a message. When you are ignored or treated markedly less polite than those around you because of your appearance, you get a message.
Look—maybe it was just worse where I grew up, in the San Fernando Valley. Thinness and beauty are valued to an extreme extent there, and complete strangers have no problem with going up to the fat and telling them what they think of fatness. Even from my own family, I got many messages about my less “worthy” state, because of my weight. But it happened, I’m not making it up, and I don’t have to pretend that it didn’t hurt, and still doesn’t hurt.
Does this mean that what I suffered was comparable to what Jews, gays, blacks, etc. have suffered? No. But it stunk. It sucked. To get that look, over and over again, as if you are a second-class citizen—it wears you down after a while. And I don’t particularly appreciate it when other people try to minimize what I went through, and what other “geeks”, “lepers”, “misfits” go through. It’s not right, it’s no fun, and I don’t think we have to suck it up and take it without any complaint.
Those two statements seem a little contradictory to me.
Are you saying it was wrong for us to express our opinions about what the OP said?
Some have said that I am part of the “PC” crowd. I don’t know. I certainly don’t fit your description. Again, I am opposed to censorship. I am for educating people on sensitive issues.
But we already do get to list that which we find objectionable! That’s what it’s all about!
You say the PC people have gone overboard. That’s your opinion. I would think that opinions on that vary from person to person.
sorry guys and gals) so it took well over 20 tries to just to get through. I just wanted you to know that I do get you, and while we do not agree 100% we probably more agree then disagree.