Thursday 31 December 2009

Difference of opinion

We can start with the same facts but the real gulf often comes with interpretation and reactions to the the information and data on which our views are based on.

My interpretation of reality is starting to feel so different from those who gainsay fat people and/or fat acceptance that debate seems pointless in it's current form. The current frame in which the terms of debate are couched, don't allow for any other points of view.

Those of us who reject the usual discourse are taking the road less travelled, we are thinking and reacting differently and reaching different conclusions. We are including experience which has been excluded or suppressed in order to go with the commonly favoured view.

For me the interest is in seeing where our understandings that take us. Not in regurgitating a view we no longer share. In the history of science it has sometimes taken a huge amount of effort, enquiry and experimentation to find out why results in the laboratory or of research don't match reality.

Eventually, the science has matched or explained the reality. The reason why scientists knew they had to carry on, is because of that divergence between their findings and what actually occurs, they felt the need to find out why.

That is the acid test, do results match or explain reality. Without being grounded in that, what exactly does science mean? What I cannot understand is why the change in the field of weight and weight loss etc.

We do not live in the laboratory, so saying that in the lab X happens doesn't mean a whole lot if when outside the lab something else is happening. If scientist wish to stop there-and I don't know if they do- then that is their affair not anyone else. It is they who've given up and it is they who have to explain why.

It's not the public's duty to match their themselves to science if it clearly doesn't fit, that's religion.

Wednesday 30 December 2009

No fat health dream

An article by a guy called David Frum illustrates so well how desperate some are to see ending fatness as the solution to health inflation. The frame fits the usual patsies;
And many are uncomfortably aware that self-destructive behavior is most often found among the poor and among minorities: Black women are more than three times as likely as white women to be severely obese.
Yeah, how could they behave fat, abusing themselves with racism and classism like that, not even having the decency to use their magic to clean up the mess. That magic stuff which makes society's whipping boys able to lap it up and not show any signs. Unlike those accorded more room to manoeuvre who still manage to come down with all sorts, some at their own hands too, no doubt.

Before assuming health outcomes are solely down to a favoured fixation and it's supposed endgame, one should make sure treatment, when received isn't an issue.

Black people may take less out of the system to deal with their issues, in terms of drug use anyway. That could could be implicated in putting timber on anyone prone to it. Before jumping to conclusions, I suggest people look into things like that and comparative consequence.

Which points up something else. Fatness is such an easy target, especially false equivalence. Children not wearing seat belts is hardly comparable to fighting a primary instinct of your life force. This assumption of free standing fatness, without context or positive intent for it-by the body, fails to take into account that when you try to deal with real things through suppression, you can just drive that energy elsewhere.

One could say the decline in smoking as good as that is has removed an obstacle to weight gain. I'm not advocating smoking. Just noting that stopping smoking doesn't necessarily stop the reasons for smoking.

Pretending there aren't reasons doesn't do that either. Take note this time.

Monday 28 December 2009

Gay MBF

I was reading about a take down of the idea of a woman's gay best friend. And I must say I'm glad that cliche's being punctured.

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir says that after the menopause, it could be argued that women, biologically speaking are no longer women in the way that tends to be defined.  They're not men either, obviously, because a woman is not a default man, nor vice versa.

Others focus on the potential insult value to gay men. But I've always found there is something inherently patriarchal about the way gay men are supposed to be the ones to resolve women's purported estrangement to their 'femininity'.

And there's the usual idea that gay men are somehow feminine. I've not been convinced of that since years ago, I began to question that. I'm not sure that what seems feminine on a man would be on a woman, but nevermind. 

There's something rather commodifying about defining gay men in terms of their purported usefulness in arranging women's lives to get more out of their heterosexuality.

Like many gay men, I do not accept there's any underlying connection between women and gay men apart from the estrangement from their own autonomy imposed by the great chore of hetereomasculinity

Wednesday 23 December 2009

From the bunker

Fun and games over at BFB where we are being bothered by trolling. It's pointless because it leads nowhere and is just making it an unpleasant place to visit, though that's probably the aim.
What it has revealed, again is that certain groups like having fat people around as cannon fodder, which helps them feel they're maintaining a certain ideal of themselves. Of themselves as people who are wholly rational, basing their views on science and evidence.

As this seems to be an unrealizable ideal in general as well as in these particular terms, I can't see the point of engaging with them as it can only be on their terms. The mainstream view is their terms. I don't need to go to particular places to hear their views, they are everywhere. I can hear them anytime I want and frankly, I don't.

If that seems like hiding or ducking the issue, so be it. A long stream of endless criticism all blurs into one eventually. What difference does it make whether you are criticised for being dishonest, venal or morally bad or cowardly?

The shaming tactics aren't working any more because in order to feel ashamed, you have to feel there is something to be ashamed about. You have to feel that you've lessened yourself in the face of those who are behaving better. You can see the flaw right there. In order to feel ashamed, you have to play by the same rules, we don't so whatever judgement they rain down upon you, you have to concur with the basis of it. Again, nah-uh.

I've gotten the message, you think, me bad.

Ok.

If you can't tell me anything new, I'm not interested in the same old same old.

Defying the laws of physics

This expression has always struck me as really odd from the start. It alerted me to the possibility that those claiming knowledge of physics weren't perhaps as able to work with those laws in practice as they thought.

I was always way to intimidated to continue that thought. As time has gone on, I've been able to put my doubts into words.

The laws of physics describe how the universe works. It is reality. How can you defy that? Either you'll find something else you didn't know before you add to science, or you will be in big trouble. But you cannot 'defy' the laws of how things really work.

Wrong metaphor.

Sounds much more like the law of the land or even accepted morality. That kind of shows how physics is being invoked, as something to browbeat and intimidate, you are breaking the rules of what is accepted and that's really annoying. It's an attempt to silence others and continue not listening to what's actually being said.

Defying your interpretation of the laws of physics is more like it and its the body that does that.

Tuesday 22 December 2009

Relgious shame

Ada Calhoun;
I am a closet Christian At least, I was until now. Because in my circle, nothing is more embarrassing than being religious
This has become more and more evident. The contempt in which religion is spoken of amongst certain classes especially-shames rather than persuades people out of religion. That's okay if the impulse withers away. More often than many realise though, its repression means it just pops out in a more indirect and insidious form pressing upon science and moreso medicine, bringing a quasi religious quality.

Rather than a tool, it becomes the master that needs to be answered to. Someone once said something similar about the human brain itself. That it must always be the servant never the master.

Which is apt because it's our careless over veneration of the conscious mind and the pretense that we are or can become creatures solely made up of reason rationality and logic. We cannot, we were not designed that way. In fact one of the many reasons we are stuck in this circular caricature of rationality; calories count or you defy the laws of physics et al, is itself the belief that the conscious mind is a good vehicle for the control or in this case repression of necessary impulses.

Let people have their religion without shame. It keeps those impulses out of science. 

As an atheist, I salute Calhoun's honesty and her being true to her own feelings.

Why am I not more scienterrific?

I've asked myself this question a few times, especially since getting on the fatosphere. In the past, I read scientific studies in books and in reference libraries. I waded through so many that I actually began to develop a really good understanding of how to read them.

Then pretty much phutt! With regard to obesity anyway. Why? Because it became clear that quite a lot of them were shit, made up of three people and a dog, hopelessly contradictory and frankly in the main, more interesting by reading between the lines, than what they said or their so called conclusions.

The bad design, the ways they framed questions that didn't even to me seem to be the best or most interesting way to go about finding out something other than what had already been decided. Above all, the refusal of many researchers to stop pretending that formulating the questions that form the basis of any study is somehow a scientific process.

Rather than often a question of judgement, intelligence and knowledge of that and perhaps other fields. You need a stimulus. Many of them couch the things they study in modish language that is wholly inappropriate, such as when obesity is spoken of as a "disease" caused by an imbalance of chemicals. And pursued in that vein.

This is assumption, based on the reaction to fatness in a social context, rather than what has been observed. This kind of mindset has possibly lead to a lot of the Fen Phen type debacles where the 'belief' that it's sluggish metabolism that needs to be artificially speeded up when this is no more than an old quack's tale.

And yet you are asked to build a case against this unreason which is usually dismissed as 'cherry picking' anyway. Whenever anyone professesing to have an 'evidence based' understanding of a subject that you disagree with, asks what your evidence is.

If they are not 'cherry picking' themselves, why would they need to ask me? Why wouldn't they have reviewed "all sides" themselves? Really they should say what they think is wrong with any contrary evidence or conclusions.

I can't get over the idea that all knowledge must be passed through certain classes. As if it's not real or cannot even be considered unless it has appeared in print. The idea that in order to justify a thought, it has to have been thunk, first by someone who's been through the education system repels me to the point of disgust.

What does that leave for the rest of us, are we supposed to just give up thinking? Certainly that would help with the fantasy certain folks have about the supposedly innate higher intelligence of certain stratas.

If only their thoughts register, they set the terms and the rest of us have to just follow, frustrated and unable to engage with knowledge on our terms. Ones that enrich and increase the sum total of human understand, of that there is no doubt.

Having to make others look intelligent, reveals this cannot be done without the help of others playing stupid. It's similar to the way many wish fat people to play, diseased, whatever they've decided that is.

Apparently one man and his dog, showing that x group have more y = science, even if observation consistently shows the opposite. And that's really the crux of it. When I was into the endorsed lifestyle choice, I took it as unshakable that science has to explain reality.

Not the other way around. That happens in belief systems.

The rubicon was crossed years ago when significant numbers of a certain type began to justify their every point of view, using any old science paper. Before that, there was a range of support, anything from axioms, philosophy, literature and yes even from religious tomes. 

My immediate thought at the time was, this is just like those people who quote biblical verse to underline every thought. It introduce that sense of sureness, which made discussion harder. There was a false sense of conversation ending finality about this or that findings. Which seemed to coincide with an increase in mickey mouse studies.

I knew immediately this was a bad route to go down, and felt safe in the knowledge that if I knew it, others would too. They would react the same as I and be more vary of dovetailing all thought in this direction.

Apparently not! Imagine my surprise that this has totally taken over, indeed, it has extended to the point where no-one can seem to think anything without it being validated by a sort of Brahmin class who apparently have no self interest except pure altruism and goodwill to all.

If they seem biased, hateful, lazy, entitled smug and above all, stupid, well, you must be wrong. Indeed, the quantity of science, however dubious is cited as some kind of gravitas. Reason why you should shut up and behave yourself. Or be accused of being a primitive flat earther type. 

I wouldn't say I never read obesity research, but I rarely find it the slightest bit interesting. Increasingly it seems to be a boondoggle of turning round and round in a cycle, not actually going anywhere.

I can't invest science with religiosity because I've no desire for that, if I did, I'd find a real religion, I wouldn't want to hide that from myself. Having a religion does not make you a lesser person. I have not sold myself that vanity. There are times when I think the endless hyperbole produced by misusing science in this way will implode its credibility.

When people keep finding out that the stream of grim and overblown prognosis's don't turn out to be correct.

The anorexia weight cure

I found reports about a boy called Matthew Hosker show just how shrill people feel the need to be when it comes to fatness, even when it comes to children. He is unusually big for his age (12) 24 stones which is about 336 pounds.

We don't know his height though, which I'm sure isn't average either.
His doctors say he'll be dead from a heart attack in five years
The usual instinct is to protect them from or prevent panic. To calm and soothe them. To tell them whilst there's a problem, all will be well, they're going to make it etc., The lack of respect for fat children appals. Even if there is a problem here, these kinds of easy death threats are not necessary. What's wrong with saying, in the interests of your present and future health, we need to stem your weight?

Would it kill them to restrain themselves that much?

It feels so much like an expression of the sheer impotence of the useless irrelevancy that is weight loss dieting.

Speaking of that, he's off to Rhodes Farm. For those of you that don't know, this is a residential facility run by a woman called Dr. Dee Dawson. It specialises in getting anorexics to eat their dinner.

I once watched an excruciating documentary, where they went into great detail about the lengths they 'had' to go to, due to the lengths anorexics would go to, not to eat. And to hide evidence of weight loss or lack of gain.

It was all about weight gain, that's all that seemed to matter. I couldn't help feeling sorry for the inmates as they were made to do the very thing they felt least able to. I couldn't help almost screaming, there has got to be a better way than this.

Adjusting their appetite so that that led to instinctive re-feeding, might have been an option if we weren't stuck with this useless calories in/out model of biology.

Anyway, Rhodes Farm is branching out;
Matt will be the biggest child she’s [Dawson] ever treated in over fifteen years of interventions.....he’ll be living cheek-by-jowl with dozens of young anorexics, offering him a totally different perspective on body image issues and food obsessions.
 Leave it to the experts. 

Saturday 19 December 2009

If there was a magic pill.....

To those who keep asking "What would you do if there was a magic pill which made you slim?"

If there was a magic pill, you'd have nothing to moralize about. Morality is about right and wrong, not what scientists do and don't have a pill for. If there was a pill would you go jogging purely to maintain your weight? Would you still maintain the pretence that exercise is virtuous?

Would you try going hungry to maintain your weight and claim that it made you a better person? If there was a pill, what would slimness mean, what virtue would it have? That's right, none. That means you'd have to find the self respect you've gained from the virtue of thin, elsewhere, where would you find it?

Who would you knock over to get it this time?

If there was "magic", everyone would be after it, no matter how thin.

Monday 14 December 2009

Eating yourself to death

One of the more wearying aspects of the obesity crisis, is coming into contact with its flatulent aphorisms. One prize blowoff, of this ilk is the phrase, 'eating yourself to death'. Of all the ways someone would go, they would choose to die by food, according to these perceptive ones.

Uselessly borrowed from some other poor benighted group, alcoholics. I've often felt saddened by the way they have to put up with what passes for astute populist 'analysis'.

On top of everything they must contend with the institutionalized concept of 'abstinence' and its fetid industry. Any fat person who thinks the obesity industry is unique in its self serving ends should check out the 're-hab industry for illicit drug users and alcoholics.

They make the diet industry look like amateurs, (this may be an inspiration). It definitely showed them the way with regards to thinking of fatness as a disease

Eating is a vital life giving, life enhancing process, put there by design. 

If you believe the eating is solely about the pleasure then you might presume this would stop people from ending themselves.
Nor is the original version as convincing as it may seem. I'm one of those people that believes that most of the time most people are just trying to do their best, no matter how strange, seemingly self defeating or arcane their behaviour appears to be (or is, it's sometimes harder to tell than we assume).

They aim to do something positive, to aid themselves. If they overdo it, then that's likely due to the overwhelming nature of what they're trying to overcome in order to achieve their ends. That is not a death wish. It is an obstacle or obstacles that are too much for them to solve with the means at hand.

Watching this from the outside and sneeringly claiming that this is a desire to damage oneself is clearly an attempt to distance oneself from feeling disturbed by that sense of being overwhelmed. In case its contagious.

To imply, that's just mindless says to oneself, that would never be me. I'm too thoughtful, careful, whatever.

What's clear is people are actually trying to survive in the hopes that they will discover at better way at some point. You've got to be in it to win it. That makes more sense in the scheme of things, it's called a plan B. And I think you'll agree that it's an excellent one, given the alternative.

People do not 'drink themselves to death', except the guy who wrote 'Leaving Las Vegas'. And if the film is anything to go by, if you really want to drink yourself to death, it doesn't take as long as the most alcoholics tend to make it last. Unless they are very unlucky, genetically speaking and run out of the time before their palliative has had time to do irreparable damage.

It is unfair and demeaning of those not in that bind to further add to a difficult situation with idiotic comments that serve to lower morale. Perhaps making a person feel even more trapped. Rather than indicating that their chosen or instinctive palliative, needs a little assistance.

Not that people who indulge themselves on this kind of rotty non-thinking, give a rat's arse about that, as long as they feel better about themselves. They are on the side of good, and have reaffirmed their identity as normal. Job well done. After all if you can't help some poor sod, why not help yourself?

No, no-one is eating themselves to death. And this kind of underhand hype serves no one who does have problems with their eating. 

Friday 11 December 2009

Catch a tiger by the tail

One thing shocked that no one has anything to say about his ordeal. No one. Don't like golf. Don't like people who are ashamed of their humanity in general, their blackness specifically. It's not even necessary.

I do not care for Tiger Woods, or how he comes across, but his existence does not offend me. On an animal level, a cursory look at him in action marks him out as special. He has an intense free and yet contained physicality that is present in so many how are gifted athletically, whether dancers or heck just movers.

Imagine if Tiger had been the woman. As far as we can tell, he was struck inside his own home fled to his car. Pursued by his spouse brandishing what could be a lethal weapon, which she allegedly proceeded to use to hit the car. This caused him to become, understandably distracted and crash into something hard and unyielding-at speed enough to injure/ concuss him apparently. Is this an acceptable pursuit, regardless of the so called provocation?

I get the impression that he was absolutely terrified. Some people may find that amusing, that he was terrified of his wife's anger, That it's somehow OK, for a man to be in this position, but unconscionable if reversed. I don't think so.

The extent of his fear meant that he could have sustained greater injury. This from a woman who apparently on finding out of previous infractions was moved to re negotiate her pre-nup. Classy. It's interesting that one of the ladies Tiger dallied with, apologized to his wife, as if she's a big chief that must be palliated and paid tribute too. Extraordinary.

Gastrectomy

Reading about Ravindra and Meeta Singh, two sisters who've had preventative gastrectomy-stomach removal, felt illuminating and strangely clear headed. They both carry a mutation of the CHD1 gene, raising their chance of the occurrence of stomach cancer to a lifetime risk of about 80%.

I couldn't help but consider that this is the type of reason to remove a stomach, if not for a mind boggling adherence to a certain hypothesis.
It is possible to live without a stomach because it is mainly used for food storage and is not essential for digestion. However, because of the small amounts they can eat, they are expected to lose 20 per cent of their body weight.
The adaptation required is clearly set out. 
Ravindra has six meals daily of ten mouthfuls each. However, doctors say that after a year a small 'pouch' will form in place of her stomach allowing her to eat larger
meals and regain much of her lost weight
.
The difference is stark isn't it? No blame, shame, or aggressive hooey, just facts about how your body functions and what you can expect to happen. 

Seeing numerous members of your family die would create an overwhelming desire to relieve yourself of the burden and stress of such an overwhelming chance of having an aggressive form of cancer, no doubt.

In other cases a wearying burden of fear, guilt and shame is substituted for that. 

Moving joyfully

Speaking of moving your body joyfully, take a look at Tú Sí Que Vales, Spain's equivalent of X country's got talent. Sarah "Paddy" Jones who's 75 and her partner wowed the judges and audience alike.



Inspiring. 

Thursday 10 December 2009

Fighting fear

Why am I so pissed off with the whole obesity establishment? Why do I say, it is not made of  greatness?

Here's a lesson on how to do some interesting research from a group funded by the US National Institute of Mental Health. They wanted to understand how to erase fear, so what did they do? Well they thought of the most erroneous asinine stereotypes around fear and tried to crowbar some research into proving themselves correct.

Sorry no, I mean they decided that because previous attempts had centred around drugs, there must be no other way, let's find some new drugs.

Nuh-uh, not that either.

No they thought maybe if you study the way the brain creates fear, you can use the way the brain works to reverse that effect. Without drugs. Oh, my, gosh.

That's what I've been trying to say about human metabolism in a nutshell. If you know that human biology can efficiently bring about an effect, and we know bodies can be slim and remain thus without much effort. Then why not find out how it does it and find a way to use that or some part of it to achieve the effect?

Warning, it might work though. Perhaps that's the real issue

Food addiction, rules OK

Oh shizz, it's our old friend food addiction. Now I know better than to expect (un)common sense to prevail on this one so I'll confine my comments to my own playpen. And though people see things in different ways. The way our mind works is the way it works, not the way we want it to.

If anything's a true sign of decadence, it's any society that simply will not grasp what is necessary to human existence and place in proper perspective. How hard has it become to remember that eating is necessary to life? How can innate necessary form the basis of addiction?

Addiction is an acquired necessity, it can be no more than that. So it cannot reference inborn necessity as if it supersedes it as defining biological function.

When we take a substance say, heroin which causes the body to respond by sending the supply of its own version of happy chemicals into decline. When that decline is not wholly reversed, this creates the symptoms of physical lows felt after the drugs have worn off and eventually symptoms of withdrawal.

Food is not about addiction. The only exception (there always is at least one) is ALCOHOL and that's only because it's capable of becoming a toxin, or can poison at certain levels, well as being a food, in that it contains a lot of energy.

There is something facile about the mere presence of an overwhelming urge being taken for addiction, in women. Yet for men it requires heavenly and transcendent highs, a multiple orgasmic level pleasure.

Please show me the footage of "food addicts" off their faces, intoxicated, laughing themselves silly, crashing their cars whilst under the influence of peanuts before you start talking about addiction.
Do you think you wouldn't have noticed loads of people staggering about under the influence of cake, hanging round any place you can find food, with dilated pupils and such?

Speaking of peanuts, you know those averse to nuts get alarming symptoms? Well the equivalent reaction from booze, is what makes people feel drunk. Seeking to get drunk is seeking to poison yourself to some degree with alcohol, at a certain concentration in your blood, it can kill you.

This is why you haven't seen this addiction, you had to be told about it because, it isn't there. It's true that the body can produce it's own alcohol, at minimal levels. It produces it's own opiods/opiates too as a natural part of your body's cycle of existence.

It can even suffer from non alcohol related cirrhosis of the liver. Even so, problems with food best fit under the banner of obsessive compulsive.  Because it is the imbalance of natural cycles that are necessary to life, therefore cannot be avoided. Or are benign in aspect, such as dealing with probability or taking chances, which can be be diverted to become the basis of a gambling compulsion.

And a lot of the things that provoke that disruption are either barely perceptible, complexly multi factorial, or the result of what we think of as good behaviour. It can be very indirect. It can start with the desire to distract oneself, noticing that strong feelings do that. Repetition then creates a strong link between relief or diversion of emotions /stress. Then this develops a compulsion. For others, it just becomes a bad habit that they overcome at some point.

That doesn't need to be dressed up as addiction which obscures potentially effective approaches for treatment and solutions. What we call things can be the start of recovery if they're accurate, they can illuminate.

One day we will have to learn to remember that we are animals who like others have our limitations. This is not depressing, far from it, that's how we learn what we can do.

How healthy can healthy eating be?

If as we are told healthy eating can see off such diseases as cancer, heart disease etc, then why can't it see off fatness if that in itself is supposed to be a vehicle for these things?

The effect of the failure of healthy eating to make people slim has meant some fat people who follow healthy eating regimes believe they're healthy because of that. This is in keeping with the healthist idea that diet and activity are the primary means to regulate health.

Many slim healthists instinctively recoil from the idea that healthiness doesn't necessarily equal slim, even if you eat and exercise according to shared dictates. Rather mean and pompous of them ,but the whole situation raises an interesting point. Either one can be fat and healthy and therefore healthy eating is health promoting.

Or one can only be slim and healthy, in which case, weight is the key factor in health, not what you eat.
 

Wednesday 9 December 2009

Obesity intelligensia, strike again

A nutritionist, that most great and wonderful addition to the list of professions, is on the hustle again this time ploughing one of the profoundest ideas to come out of the crisis-encouraging obesity.


Feel the genius

So who's in the frame? Why Dawn French, that much loved comedian, no, human being, who's appeal spans every gender, weight category, probably even species for all I know.

Apparently clinical nutritionist, Ms Mary Strugar has said she is encouraging people to accept their obesity. No, absence of their being any viable alternative, plus the inability to suspend overlook this, encourage acceptance of the reality- that you are fat.

She has become a role model for what liking yourself looks like, along with Kate Moss, another person who's recently been in trouble with the weight police. Funnily enough, the latter got into trouble for suggesting that it's good to be thin, she's thin, Dawn French suggests it's good to be fat, do you see the similarity?

People who like themselves, tend to accept themselves and/or should that be vice versa?

The only thing DF encourages is celebrating yourself as you are, and snogging people, especially (other)celebs. What exactly has her critique and her ilk added to the gaiety of nations? Apparently DF has said big is beautiful, although I don't remember her using that term nor has Ms Critical come up with one, the closest I could come to was;
“If I was alive in Rubens’ time I wouldn't have to be a comedienne for a living. I’d be celebrated as a beautiful model.

I'm afraid there is some skinny/thin shaming in there, which is not good, but it's hardly an exhortation to be fat.

Not everyone has a natural gift for it.

So what should she be doing?
' I wish she could use her profile to raise awareness of how to go about the process of change as well as giving information about the health risks associated with obesity.'

Ha, ha, you missed it! She lost weight for her wedding and found it so awful, she decided, never again. I heard this numerous times from people of all weights all through the time I was trying to lose weight, it didn't stop me for a second.I daresay it's failed to stop millions of others doing the same.

Regardless of what happens in the future, I'd really hate to see DF become an Oprah like crusader for weight loss dieting insanity.

Tuesday 8 December 2009

We're all built to leave well alone

The view amongst a lot of fat people with regards to their fatness and the fattening of society is we are just fat, don't go there. I'm more curious about how our times affect us and what this tells us about ourselves as beings, as well as our times for that matter.

So I can't agree. But that feeling of leave well alone is no different than we have toward so many other things that affect us. We have chemical imbalances, we take need to take medicine for it, leave it at that.

I'm not and never have been convinced that will work or that it's even a good idea or necessary to achieve what it is supposed to, the allaying of stigma. That is a must, stigma adds to distress and gets in the way of cure and restoration.

It's something to do with not wanting to examine effects, in case we have to search for the cause which is likely to lead to deeply unpleasant memories and experiences. We are so primed to avoid this that it is often the major obstacle to dealing with our unresolved angst.

We might have to change deeply entrenched habits, ones that we see as integral to our sense of self. Or our position or role in the family.  We're okay, let's stick with what we've got, it's not perfect, but we can live with it.

We're loathe to dig or pry into ourselves, it hurts.

This view is often validated by the establishment. They're definitely attracted to the idea of a pill for our every ill. It gives them the power and a sense of omnipotence.

Pretending this impulse is unique to fat people-which then pathologizes it- is part of the tangle of underlying themes in fat hate.

We then become the incubators of these sorts of thoughts and feelings society fears and doesn't want to deal with. Yet cannot satisfactorily suppress and disengage from.

Carrying other people's errors

I once remember having a discussion with a manager at work, he was wrong. I was right. This was proven to him in front of everyone, to painful effect, on his part. I did not gloat, I was relieved to be right, for once-I always felt wrong all the time.

My supervisor, who was not much older than me having witnessed it all, told me off.  I was speechless. She told me that she knew I was right but because I was a mere trainee, I could afford to be wrong, whereas in his position, there was more at stake for him.

I couldn't quite take it in at the time. But I didn't accept it, I didn't think less of him because he was wrong and I thought she was great. 

This seems to be how a lot of people see doctors and medical professionals when it comes to the errors they're making regarding fatness.  It's not their errors that are the issue, it's their reckless disregard for doing harm to those they've decided not to like. Their abuse of their power and influence, may I say, the cheapening of their office by doing the opposite of what they're supposed to do, heal.

When it comes to obesity professionals, I simply cannot tune into futile gestures of self sacrifice, they're doing nothing to deserve it. They are not helping those who need help and they're hurting those who do not.

Smoking bad crashes into fatness bad

A while ago, I had a discussion with someone about addiction. I said then that fatness will unsettle and has the potential to overthrow some citadels, whether we want it to or not. It so happens many of us don't. Then again others such as myself feel that just because a person is fat, doesn't mean they must be invested in ploughing the same troughs that others are. Out of some kind of weight based deference. Or urge to pacify upset as was the default position for fat people in the past.

Smoking's an interesting one. It has now become clear that the will be a pile up between the real/purported risk of fatness and  those attributed to smoking sooner or later. It was okay when just smoking was the baddie, risks could be presented to best advantage for the intentions of health agitators, shall we say.

When fatness joins that, its obvious that some restraint has to occur in or fatness will overtake smoking in terms of risk and smoke yourself thin will become an openly viable idea. Now I'm sure not even the most rabid haters of fat want that.

So it's been interesting to contemplate enforced restraining of the urge to talk up fatness. It seems yet again though that I've underestimated the sense of reason of those involved in fat fighting. As they seem to be prepared edge the issue. The article takes the line of numbers, falling number of smokers versus the amount of fat people.

A lot of smokers have picked up on this blurring, already insisting to fat non smokers that we cost more than they and are more unhealthy. It's easy to see the self saving aspects of that but the way the risks-or otherwise- of obesity have been sold makes this inevitable.

It will be interesting to see if anti-smoking activists are exercised by this potential sullying of the purity of their line of reasoning. the fact that obesity make put a stick in their shift, because increasingly it is being said that being fat is as harmful or more so than smoking. So if you can show stopping puts you at great risk of a large weight gain, increasingly, it's becoming possible to claim that you'll be no better off either way.

People could even state their preference, death by cigarettes or just, you know being. Mind you, it's no different than any other desicion about health, divorce, being lonely, living alone and oh so much more is pretty bad for your health too, but that doesn't stop people. The article tells us that advances in health care, such as better nutrition may stem the flow of the obesity scurge, but if that is the case, why woudl that itself not see off obesity?

If approved nutrition can see off heart attacks and cancer, why can it not see off fatness if that is intrinsically a causal agent or factor of these and other things? Now, when confronted with this sort of thing, veracity and accuracy over the true health implications of weight have never been at a greater premium. It threatens to give new meaning to the title of Julie's blog. conditions and disease of longevity, not civilisation. Conditions that tend to rear their head the longer you have to experience sufficient wear and tear, or...........😵

Monday 7 December 2009

Internal balance

I've been thinking about this for a while now, although I haven't quite got to the point of posting much about it. I've bee thinking that men and women hate and love themselves, differently-or tend to.
Women hate themselves more on the surface, and deep down inside, think they are good.

Men love themselves more on the surface but deep down, think of themselves as bad. That badness feels like the space men need to be male, which requires greater moral leeway.

I've always just assumed men liked themselves through and through, even though I've been aware of certain mystifying facts. Like the fact that so much misogyny just ends up reflecting an underlying assumption that men are somehow, toxic.

There's the obvious slut shaming, which says that if women have sex with men, they are degraded by it and should therefore be ashamed of their contact with men.

Women who sleep with women are merely frigid or are evilly refusing to make themselves available for men to void their toxic (over)load. 'Forcing' men to be poisoned by it. No wonder they are taught to behave as if they will die if they don't have sex.

No wonder they are disgusted by homosexuality, two men 'polluting' each other. They too accord low status to men who are seen in the passive role.

It's always assumed this is straight out hatred of women, forms of misogyny . But in this equation, it's as much anxiety about managing their sense of internal balance.

Tuesday 1 December 2009

Obesity acceptance

I do not accept obesity.

Whilst still in the shock of discovering that fat people have a point of view about their own bodies and lives, then the part of that is called fat acceptance. One of the first things some people like to do is to 'spontaneously' re-name it, "obesity acceptance".

Revealing instinctively the precise sense of ownership fat people are trying to break free from.