Tuesday 2 July 2013

Stigma is not the Responsibility of the Stigmatized

Those who are demonized, debased or otherwise undermined by others, are not responsible for being in the sights of others. It's just not their responsibility. It is up to those who are participating in this  wrong doing to act in accord with their conscience. It is not for their targets to twist and turn to redefine themselves in order that others, including medical professionals may perhaps, condescend to behave properly and remember their manners.

Despite expecting little sense from the mental dessication that is fat hating, never did I expect to see any Black Person claiming dehumanization is a key to humanizing oneself. How's that worked out for Black People?

Alcoholism, that is not a person. Smoking, not a person, drug addiction, not people. 'Obesity' refers to a person. Not a habit, addiction nor thing. Body size, body weight, body mass, the whole of a person qualifies them as disease. And contrary to popular feeling, we are our bodies. 

That basic error, defining people disease, through their bodies, is not our fault either. Even the use of words for their effects should end there. Nor is it up to us to roll over for the sake of professional convenience. The vagaries of the US insurance industry does not constitute medical authority. Words mean things and they should be used to define things that match that definition. Not because use of them may generate such and such purported effect. That's a quick route to Babel.

Public health activists the medical profession scientists and researchers decided to invoke stigma to suppress weight. If they wish to make the greatest strides in ending they are free to explain clearly just how (un)likely permanent weight reduction via calorie restriction really is. They're free to state they made a mistake in blaming fat people for human design. We fat people, many of us as children did. We admitted freely that we/our bodies were wrong.

We had the calm quiet sense of honour to do that. Is everyone beginning to grasp what that meant now?

Then they can acknowledge the millions of fat people virtually everyone of us, who've spent lifetimes saying how high, when they said; "Jump!"

Whilst they're at it, they can also apologize unreservedly for using their influence to turn everyone around us into a bunch of nerve wearying nags. That they aren't doing any of this is indication enough that they have no interest in removing the stigma they're in large part responsible for.

And as for spurring research? What's "obesity research" been about up till now? For the link shy, that's two lists, one of 46443 and 85203 search results for "obesity research" respectively. Not sure of any duplications. What's this that been about? If this has all been so much pretty useless, how's the announcement going to alter its course? Getting paid more for the same old rope.............and you "hope" this will mean research into the body's underlying processes rather than how "deadly" fatness is do you? Just how will this be ensured?

Does anyone hear the distant sound of uproarious laughter? Plus kerrrching?

I should also point out that the AMA, despite trying to keep it apolitical with a small 'c' has made a scathing comment on their own country. No society that defines a third of its citizen's as disease is anything less than a degenerate, disease producing entity itself.

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