#fat liberation is a class issue

[aliosne]

I keep seeing people spout Weird Shit about fat people on this site and im just so fucking tired didnt we litigate this shit back in like 2013

[fatliberation]

I totally understand and can empathize with fat activists when it comes to medical fatphobia. But I do think its important to provide nuance to this topic.

A lot of doctors mention weight loss, particularly for elective surgeries, because it makes the recovery process easier (Particularly with keeping sutures in place) and anesthetic safer.

I feel like its still important to mention those things when advocating for fat folks. Safety is important.

What you're talking about is actually a different topic altogether - the previous ask was not about preparing for surgery, it was about dieting being the only treatment option for anon's chronic pain, which was exacerbating their ed symptoms. Diets have been proven over and over again to be unsustainable (and are the leading predictor of eating disorders). So yeah, I felt that it was an inappropriate prescription informed more by bias than actual data.

(And side note: This study on chronic pain and obesity concluded that weight change was not associated with changes of pain intensity.)

If you want to discuss the risk factor for surgery, sure, I think that's an important thing to know - however, most fat people already know this and are informed by their doctors and surgeons of what the risks are beforehand, so I'm not really concerned about people being uninformed about it.

I'm a fat liberation activist, and what I'm concerned about is bias. I'm concerned that there are so many BMI cutoffs in essential surgeries for fat patients, when weight loss is hardly feasible, that creates a barrier to care that disproportionately affects marginalized people with intersecting identities.

It's also important to know that we have very little data around the outcomes of surgery for fat folks that isn't bariatric weight loss surgery.

A new systematic review by researchers in Sydney, Australia, published in the journal Clinical Obesity, suggests that weight loss diets before elective surgery are ineffective in reducing postoperative complications.

CADTH Health Technology Review Body Mass Index as a Measure of Obesity and Cut-Off for Surgical Eligibility made a similar conclusion:

Most studies either found discrepancies between BMI and other measurements or concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support BMI cut-offs for surgical eligibility. The sources explicitly reporting ethical issues related to the use of BMI as a measure of obesity or cut-off for surgical eligibility described concerns around stigma, bias (particularly for racialized peoples), and the potential to create or exacerbate disparities in health care access.

Nicholas Giori MD, PhD Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Stanford University, a respected leader in TKA and THA shared his thoughts in Elective Surgery in Adult Patients with Excess Weight: Can Preoperative Dietary Interventions Improve Surgical Outcomes? A Systematic Review:

“Obesity is not reversible for most patients. Outpatient weight reduction programs average only 8% body weight loss [1, 10, 29]. Eight percent of patients denied surgery for high BMI eventually reach the BMI cutoff and have total joint arthroplasty [28]. Without a reliable pathway for weight loss, we shouldn’t categorically withhold an operation that improves pain and function for patients in all BMI classes [3, 14, 16] to avoid a risk that is comparable to other risks we routinely accept.

It is not clear that weight reduction prior to surgery reduces risk. Most studies on this topic involve dramatic weight loss from bariatric surgery and have had mixed results [13, 19, 21, 22, 24, 27]. Moderate non-surgical weight loss has thus-far not been shown to affect risk [12]. Though hard BMI cutoffs are well-intended, currently-used BMI cutoffs nearly have the effect of arbitrarily rationing care without medical justification. This is because BMI does not strongly predict complications. It is troubling that the effects are actually not arbitrary, but disproportionately affect minorities, women and patients in low socioeconomic classes. I believe that the decision to proceed with surgery should be based on traditional shared-decision making between the patient and surgeon. Different patients and different surgeons have different tolerances to risk and reward. Giving patients and surgeons freedom to determine the balance that is right for them is, in my opinion, the right way to proceed.”

I agree with Dr. Giori on this. And I absolutely do not judge anyone who chooses to lose weight prior to a surgery. It's upsetting that it is the only option right now for things like safe anesthesia. Unfortunately, patients with a history of disordered eating (which is a significant percentage of fat people!) are left out of the conversation. There is certainly risk involved in either option and it sucks. I am always open to nuanced discussion, and the one thing I remain firm in is that weight loss is not the answer long-term. We should be looking for other solutions in treating fat patients and studying how to make surgery safer. A lot of this could be solved with more comprehensive training and new medical developments instead of continuously trying to make fat people less fat.

[truthconveyer]

I hate when you naarm fucks get tumblr and post about your life in some shithole 800$pw sharehouse in the north east and think ur so creative because you paint kurt cobains face with watercolours and scribble in grey lead and dress like the mannequins at st.vinnies that are aimed at 82 year olds and think because you wear some RETARDED big ass “Staple Vintage Rare Cut” necklace with it that it somehow makes it so unique and creative when you just look like you have autism and dont understand the societal standards of dressing yourself. You all have parents that make 175k per year and then you do work experience at iga in year 10 then study at tafe for a year and repost infographics about climate change onto your instagram story with a spacey jane song added and try and act like youre lower-middle class and care about international issues effecting minorities then you and your obviously drug fucked but hides it under an indie aesthetic mates all move in together to study liberal arts and psychology at deakin whilst you smoke rollie cigarettes in your rotting fake leather jacket because you aim to come off as organic and raw but you just look like you stink of mould. whilst you play animal crossing on your nitendo switch and eat a banana on the vline thinking you look so interesting with those big fuck ass headphones sitting on your unbrushed and damaged hair texting your ftm gerard way kin virgo gofundme androgynous polyamory housemate about the new sex toy you got and how excited you are about the festival lineup you just saw on your Hi stalker 🧿🧿🧿 Amethyst Rose quartz Kmart Witchcraft books “noo youre not fat youre just chubby dont listen to what they say girl❤️” Stop reflecting xx Zoloft Seroquel Best friend from Fitzroy recent Threads post but we all know the truth about You People……

Are you from Adelaide

[beardedmrbean]

An upcoming class at the University of Maryland will ask students to examine how "fatness" relates to "Blackness" and is a "social justice issue."

"Intro to Fat Studies: Fatness, Blackness and Their Intersections," is being offered as a General Education course to students for the spring semester. The three-credit course can be taken to fulfill the university's Distributive Studies or Diversity course requirements to graduate, according to the university website.

The course description says it "examines fatness as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination that intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and ability."

"Though we will look at fatness as intersectional, this course will particularly highlight the relationship between fatness and Blackness," the description continues. "We approach this area of study through an interdisciplinary humanities and social-science lens which emphasizes fatness as a social justice issue. The course closes with an examination of fat liberation as liberation for all bodies with a particular emphasis on performing arts and activism as a vehicle for liberation and challenging fatmisia." 

The course is being taught by Sydney Lewis, who is a senior lecturer at the university's Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, according to her university bio.

All 20 spots for the class are full, with eight students on the waitlist.

The course drew criticism from a retired professor at a nearby university. Richard Vatz, a professor emeritus at Towson University, mocked the idea that the subject would prepare students for the real world, in comments to The National News Desk.

"I don't think if you went into a job interview and the interviewer said 'what have you taken recently?' and the respondent said, 'Well, I'm taking a course in fat studies, but the intersection of a Blackness and fatness,' that this would put you in a position to get much of a job, so the utility of this and the job market is probably pretty questionable," Vatz said.

"I have to be honest with you, this is kind of a laughable, laughable subject," he continued. "This stuff is just ludicrous."

Fox News Digital reached out to the University of Maryland and Lewis for comment.

Over the summer, Brown University offered a pre-college summer course on the "Politics of Fatness," providing students with the opportunity to explore "how fatphobia intersects with other systems of oppression."

[thisisthinprivilege]

Fatness is not a "food access" issue, it's a human rights issue

Well-meaners of the internet, you are hella sus when you nod your head along with a fat liberation text or meme and then start spouting shit about food access and food deserts.

Food access and deserts are important issues. But you're still equating fatness with behaviors around food and not-so-subtly expressing your belief that it's good to reduce the number of fat people and that reducing the number of fat people should be the goal of any conversation about fatness.

Meanwhile, fat people are dying from third-class medical care, surgical experimentation, mental and physical abuse by pretty much every authority figure in their lives, and are iced out of all major areas of normal society.

And you're over here, fanning the flames of the moral panic over the existence of fat people.

You're not helping.

-ATL

[genderkoolaid]

I'm interested in what others think of this video.

On one hand, it discusses fatphobia in a very easy-to-understand manner. It covers the racist, eugenicist, unscientific history of BMI, how it was used by insurance companies, the construction of the obesity epidemic using poor science, talks a good bit about men with eating disorders, calls out the "calories in calories out" model as well as the individualization of health rather than looking at systemic issues, and talks about anti-fat bias as a fact which harms people.

But on the other hand... I was disappointed by how lukewarm it felt. Like, the bring up that the deaths attributed to obesity were grossly inflated, and that doctors are negatively biased against fat patients... but they never connect the two? Like, they never say "hey, maybe the reason why fat people have poor health is in part because doctors are killing them via gross medical neglect"? Or questioning what exactly is counted as a "death from obesity"? Instead, they kind of say "the obesity epidemic is inflated, and might not be an epidemic, but also we aren't saying for sure its not a problem at all."

And they also never bring up the science of diets & how they don't work! They discuss diet culture and are very critical of diets, but they don't discuss how diets have been shown to fail by many studies. And they also don't bring up Health At Any Size & how that tactic has been shown to improve health regardless of whether or not there's weight loss. Their advice for how to deal with this problem is basically "don't fatshame people," which isn't wrong but its also doesn't really encourage people to confront internalized & systemic fatphobia on a meaningful level. I don't think they ever say the word "fatphobia."

Its just... disappointing! Like on one hand, you could say this video is good as an introduction into how the fatphobia industry has been built for people who have very little knowledge on it and are resistant to anti-diet culture ideas. On the other hand, its annoying that even leftist media is still so hesitant to actually engage with more radical fat liberation- most people don't even know that its been a movement since the 1960s. It just feels like a missed opportunity. It feels like the left is stuck at "don't be mean to fat people!" and refuses to move on to more radical notions of fat people as an oppressed class.

@fatphobiabusters do you have any thoughts on this?

[mysandwichgiver]

OPINION

Our democracy is much more frail than Biden

by Will Bunch | Columnist

Published July 2, 2024, 12:04 p.m. ET

Do newspaper columnists know that democracy’s closer to death than Biden?

One of the first things they teach doctors in medical school is the imperfect but necessary art of triage, the technique used on a battlefield or during some other mass-casualty event to determine who is most gravely wounded and who needs immediate attention during a crisis when the system is overwhelmed, and clear-headed thinking will save lives.

Clearly, this is not something that is taught in journalism school.

Over the course of a remarkable weekend, I saw the best minds of my boomer generation destroyed by madness — newspaper columnists and other big shots convinced they were cosplayers in a real-world episode of The West Wing, saving America by giving chief of staff Leo McGarry the best words to convince an ailing President Bartlet that it’s time to step down.

The soft clacking of these keyboard commandos turned into a stampede as the nation’s pundits, its editorial-page poobahs, mega-rich but anonymous donors, and Democratic horse whisperers competed to outdo each other on The Daily Rip or in “the paper of record,” or wherever they thought the actual frail president, Joe Biden, might be paying attention.

Dropping names — Whitmer! Shapiro! Warnock! — like a groupie backstage at a heavy-metal concert, floating wildly implausible scenarios, stretching so hard for historical analogies that several probably blew out a hamstring, America’s pundit class managed to achieve a level of groupthink that surpassed the brainwashers of The Manchurian Candidate. All argued that for the good of the country he loves, Biden — hoarse, barely audible, and visibly confused a few times during Thursday’s Atlanta presidential debate — must immediately end his candidacy.

Meanwhile, in the actual America that less resembles The West Wing than the disaster flick Don’t Look Up, two comets simultaneously bore down on America in the hours leading up to its 248th — and possibly last — birthday as a democratic republic.

First, there is Donald Trump — desperate to avoid his sentencing for his 34 felony convictions, firing off racist insults about “Black jobs” and “bad Palestinians,” and carrying around a 900-page blueprint for American dictatorship called Project 2025 — streaking into the cosmic void of our troubled republic.

Meanwhile, don’t look up but a thoroughly corrupt and compromised Supreme Court is blazing a second trail toward American autocracy. In a flurry of body punches over the last several days, the nation’s highest court gutted the federal government’s ability to regulate fat-cat corporate polluters or stock swindlers, but said poor folks who sleep outside because there’s nowhere else to go can be arrested. Then, with a fierce right hook, it issued a 6-3 partisan ruling that will help Trump — who appointed three of them — evade justice while placing all future presidents above the law.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the three liberal naysayers, read her blistering minority opinion from the bench Monday morning, arguing that the court’s finding that a president performing official acts can be immune from criminal prosecution “effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding.” She ended with the words, “with fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

I wish Justice Sotomayor had the bandwidth and the energy to work a second shift as editorial page editor at one of our major newspapers.

At Time magazine (yes, it still exists), the cover of its new issue contained just one word, “Panic” — not at the prospect of an American dictator with the seeming power to have the military assassinate his enemies, but at Biden’s health. At the New York Times (yes, it still exists), an editorial board that considered it pointless, or whatever, to call for Trump to leave the race after those 34 felony convictions — as well as the civil rape and financial fraud verdicts and the two impeachments and three other pending indictments — made its grand pronouncement that it’s Biden who must go. Other papers jumped on the bandwagon, including the swing state Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which in the 1950s and ‘60s won Pulitzers for its courage in taking on Southern racists before deciding instead to appeal to their grandchildren.

And look, I’m not going to argue that Biden’s health is not an issue. His debate performance was troubling, but I also think those of us determined not to see Donald Trump become president again should take a deep breath — even if that’s not the clickbait headline that many are eager to write. Biden needs to do more to assure the public about his energy level, and we also need to see the polls. Any decision should be based on the paramount thing — the thing that should be getting 72-point headlines: stopping dictatorship. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote Monday in her dissent, this is a “five-alarm fire that threatens to consume democratic self-governance.”

The power of Monday’s dissents by Jackson and Sotomayor form quite the contrast with the speculative flights of fancy about a brokered convention in Chicago, which, it’s worth noting, have largely come from white male boomer types. Many Black and brown and female voices, on the other hand, are urging Biden to stay as the only realistic hope — warts and all — of beating Trump in November. Maybe people who in one way or another know the horror of being treated as a second-class citizen understand the risk of dictatorship in a way that white dudes who’ve always been OK do not.

Most journalists want to be seen as savvy (or not naïve, essentially the same thing) and influential. Many editorial writers and columnists are still hurting from the fact that Trump was elected in 2016 with zero major print endorsements. They think calling for Trump to drop out would make them look foolish now that the Republican Party has devolved into a dangerous cult. But a demand for Biden to drop out might actually happen — so that’s savvy, right?

Except maybe the dangerous cult is the more important crisis, especially when it carries a printed guide to dictatorship and holds six justices in its back pocket. To focus on the actual threat we are facing, I wish America’s top pundits would spend less time watching reruns of The West Wing and maybe pick up a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

The reality of what’s happening in July 2024 — that an authoritarian-minded president, with help from a politicized and unethical Supreme Court, is on track to lead a nation where all power is being vested in him, his MAGA movement, and the corporate polluters — is THE story, and Biden’s health is a subplot in that drama. The current president is walking slowly, but it’s the American Experiment that’s on a ventilator. Journalists aren’t doing their job: performing basic triage and focusing on the sickest patient in the room. With fear for our democracy, I dissent.

[bfpnola]

Fifty years ago, 15-year-old Sonia Yaco ran for the school board in Ann Arbor, Michigan, one of the youngest people in the country ever to run for a seat on the Board of Education. A member of a group called Youth Liberation, whose platform was founded in 1970, she believed schools would be best run by the people required to be inside them for about seven hours a day, 180 days a year.

Youth Liberation developed a 15-point platform that was far-reaching in its vision. In addition to calling for an end to sexism, sexual discrimination, class antagonism, racism, colonialism, and what they called “adult chauvinism,” the group wanted to form communities outside the structure of the nuclear family, live in harmony with nature, abolish juvenile detention centers and mental institutions, establish global solidarity with youth all over the world, be free of economic dependence on adults, and have the right to their own “new culture,” which included everything “from music and marijuana to free clinics and food cooperatives.”

The 20 or so young people in the group, ranging in age from 12 to 16, wanted “a nationwide movement for youth civil rights, akin to the Black Liberation movement and the growing women's movement,” one of the founders, Keith Hefner, later wrote.

Backed by the radical socialist Human Rights Party, Yaco tells Teen Vogue she delivered stump speeches in a hand-sewn, black ruffled skirt and a black leather jacket. At the time, Ann Arbor, birthplace of the Students for a Democratic Society, was a political hotbed. Youth-led organizations had helped rally support for the 26th Amendment, which was ratified in 1971, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. With popular books like Children’s Liberation (1973), Escape from Childhood (1974), and The Children’s Rights Movement: Overcoming the Oppression of Young People (1977), the idea of youth liberation was gaining force. Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor distributed their message through an underground newspaper, which was a collection of news items, how-tos, and stories from youth all over the country. Yaco informed her parents that, given her political commitments, having a curfew wasn’t going to work, though she did still do the dishes. She talked to PTA forums and rock concerts of thousands, all with the message of youth empowerment. Each time she arrived to speak, she remembers, there was the question of whether or not she would be allowed on stage. She tells Teen Vogue that a school board member once told her to “shut [her] fat lip.” At another event, she says she encountered labor and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, who told her, “I’ve been hearing about you.” The resistance against her candidacy was so great that the Board of Education prohibited Yaco from running, instigating a Supreme Court case which she ultimately lost. Still, with 1,363 votes, Yaco says she got the highest number of write-in votes ever received.

When we think of ageism, it commonly refers to older adults, not the other way around. Though many don’t tend to think of young people as oppressed, a recent study published in the Children and Youth Services Review argues that young people are, in many ways, similarly vulnerable to exploitation. Though young people under 18 can be tried in adult court, they are generally not allowed to vote or hold federal office. They are surveilled and policed in schools, medicated and institutionalized without consent, and paid less for their work. In some states, they cannot get vaccinated without parental permission. Many of these issues are particularly acute for youth of color — some as young as preschoolers — whom research has shown are viewed as older and not as “innocent” as their white counterparts. “You're actively teaching children how to deal with an active shooter, but you can't let them have a say in budgeting, you can't let them discuss curriculum,” says Yaco. While rhetoric about the need to “save the children” is rampant, much public policy in the United States — from the struggling childcare system to gun violence in schools — reveals otherwise. The U.S. is the only country in the United Nations that hasn't ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a historic human rights treaty.

The same justifications historically used to deny other groups their basic freedoms are still applied to youth, explains scholar Mich Ciurria. “The popular narrative about children — as spoiled, ungrateful, and mentally ill — mirrors the popular narratives about 1960s housewives, Black working mothers, and disabled people,” she wrote in a recent essay. To be “childish,” after all, is a derogatory term. As psychologist Robert Epstein argues in an article for Scientific American, what is commonly chalked up to an innate “irresponsibility” or “laziness” — the idea of the unformed teen brain — may simply be a response to living under the repressions of modern society. A 1991 study reviewing research on young people in 186 preindustrial societies — more than half of which had no word for “adolescence” — revealed little evidence of the kind of antisocial teen behavior found in the West, according to Epstein’s summary. In his research for the piece, Epstein found that, based on surveys he conducted, “teens in the U.S. are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many restrictions as incarcerated felons.” Young people have long been at the forefront of liberation struggles. Youth played a big part in the Civil Rights movement, which would inspire other movements that followed. In 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks became famous for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, a 15-year-old named Claudette Colvin was arrested for the same action. Galvanized by the Civil Rights movement, the National Indian Youth Council, formed by a group of young people in 1961, organized “fish-ins'' in support of land-use rights. The 1963 Birmingham Children’s Crusade saw more than a thousand young people, some as young as seven, attacked and jailed after taking to the streets in peaceful protest. In 1972, the Gay International Youth Society of George Washington High School, a group of students of color in the Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights, formed one of the first gay-straight alliances on the basis of student civil rights.

By 1979, Youth Liberation of Ann Arbor had disbanded, and the idea of youth liberation gradually faded from popular consciousness, but activists today are still organizing around age as one form of discrimination in a larger system of interlocking oppressions. For Margin Zheng, the former president of the National Youth Rights Association (NYRA), a group founded in 1998, youth liberation is deeply intersectional. “Young people are BIPOC, young people are queer, young people are of various genders and of no gender, young people are disabled, young people are poor, young people are immigrants and migrants — just like older people,” they write as part of their principles of anti-ageism. Zheng, the child of conservative Chinese immigrants, felt constrained both by their family life and their experience in school. “I secretly longed to be homeschooled and have the freedom to do my own thing, but my parents did not believe in nontraditional education,” they tell Teen Vogue. They attended their first school board meeting in ninth grade and soon began to question why students didn’t have more of a voice. “People think that they can make sweeping generalizations about people of a certain age, but you can’t generalize about youth just as you can’t generalize about people of a certain race, gender, etc.,” they say. Ashawn Dabney-Small, who ran for Boston City Council as an 18-year-old and former vice president of NYRA, became involved in youth activism to address the issues that affected him. “It's not about advocating, it's about speaking from your experiences,” says Dabney-Small, who has experience with the foster care system and the effects of poverty. “That's why I got involved in certain issues, policies that revolve around my life because it's literally my life.” As an activist, Dabney-Small worked on campaigns against gun violence. Recently, he advocated for Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley’s bill to lower the federal voting age to 16 — a move that could revolutionize American politics. “Schools and families are the places where we (young people) begin to feel that we have to struggle for our freedom,” Youth Liberation Acnn Arbor wrote in 1972. (One of the indirect results of Yaco’s campaign was the founding of the alternative Community High School that same year.)

Indeed, many activists today — in movements from unschooling to family abolition — see the institutions of school and family as structures that should be radically reimagined. From Indian Boarding Schools to the school-to-prison pipeline, unpaid domestic labor to assaults on queer chosen families, critics say schools and certain family structures have long been used as tools of oppression for women, queer people, and people of color. In a utopian world, Zheng says, people wouldn’t be judged and set apart by age. Instead, they envision more intergenerational spaces where younger and older people — of all races, genders, sexualities, and abilities — can learn and grow together. “Just as young people would be empowered to cultivate and apply their strengths to work they find meaningful, older people would be embraced in their own personal growth, knowing that learning and unlearning are processes that happen all throughout the lifespan,” they say. Each person would be recognized for their own unique potential. The vision is not unlike the original platform outlined by Youth Liberation more than 50 years ago. As Zheng says, “There would be no prisons, no police, and no schools, only communities of lifelong learning, caring, and joy.”

[oldguardleatherdog]

let me start by saying, I'm okay to agree to disagree on this, and I respect you greatly as my queer elder. I hesitate to even send this because I don't think this cause is worth dogpiling (and not even the fun way) on anyone against and , like , I will continue to follow and admire you as a mutual who has been through a lot of the hell that I'm going through right now and got to a place I want to someday be. (for context, I am currently housing & food insecure and am trying to live in a queer-accepting city)

Posting will never be praxis, you are my brother in arms no matter what you call trump or cops or whatever. There are some fat liberation blogs that take issue with calling cops "pigs" for a lot of the reasons I bristle at calling Trump a fatass, and like, if someone is actively fighting cops who can and will actively hurt me and my found family, I don't care what names they shout while doing it. So I see where you are coming from and I'm glad you fight for me. I fight for us too, in what little ways I can while I keep me and my found family afloat. I do better work in the community just by existing around people as a living breathing transgender than I could do in a million posts on this website.

I do think that this is a valuable conversation to have, though, even though you are completely right that this is a trivial thing and not at all the bigger, more real issue at hand. I think it's still important, on online platforms such as this, to talk about how we refer to the other people on this planet.

Think about why you didn't call Trump a "retard". You certainly could have, it doesn't *not* apply to some of his behavior. I know people of our generations once used that word a lot, and we don't anymore. Why and when did we change that? I honestly don't remember. For me, my aunt was medically classified as "retarded" and she was the best person I'd ever met, so I decided that word shouldn't mean bad things. The first time I ever hit someone was over them using that word in a derogative way. it wasn't about "mental illness positivity" it was about humanizing the people that word has been used against - people who have been stigmatized and oppressed with that word.

Right now, hopefully, the same thing is happening to the word "obese". Fat people are less likely to be hired, granted loans or secure housing. they can be kicked out of airplanes and fired from their jobs because of their body size. There have been laws proposed to take fat children away from their parents and "treatments" proposed to wire children's jaws shut and starve them to make them thinner. They are often medically mistreated and misdiagnosed. I once went to a doctor with an ear infection and instead of antibiotics, he prescribed me *bariatric surgery.* I have been refused transgender top-surgery because of my BMI, which keeps me at a passively higher risk for self-injury and worse.

I do not care about body positivity. Honestly, between being fat, trans, and poor, I'm at a point where I've given up on ever feeling good about my body again. All I care about is getting jobs and meds and keeping a roof over my family's head and food on our table. Normalizing the idea that fat is a bad thing that anyone can change continues that stigma. When you use Fat as an insult, you are saying fat=bad. Fat is a neutral thing that some bodies can be, like short or tall or lean. The revolution needs to be intersectional, and body size is another axis of oppression that needs to be acknowledged, just like sexuality, gender, race, class, disability, etc.

If you've gotten this far, thank you for hearing me out. I'm sorry that others are just performatively parroting the same things over and over. Civility is bullshit, and if you still want to use body shaming as one of the ways you fight against bigotry, it doesn't really matter to me. Just as long as you acknowledge anti-fat bias as part of that bigotry too.

Thank you for writing and sharing your life experiences with me, and for your solidarity as well. You're striving to make your way as part of a despised minority in a world that's turned unspeakably harsh toward you in an aggressively mean way seemingly overnight, and I admire you for the life you have lived, for your courage and perseverance during this difficult time where resources are scant and your housing and food security is uncertain at best.

(FWIW, after I was bombed out of my Lower Manhattan home on September 11th, my income went from six figures down to nothing overnight, and I was homeless and destitute for years. Twenty years ago, I was where you are now, and I can tell you that what you're enduring today will not last forever, that there is light and hope and blessing in your future, that you're not as alone as you might think, that you must never give up.)

What more can I do to make the point that "fat" has nothing to do with this? As I've said, I grew up obese, and it wasn't until I enlisted in the Army at age 17 that I was able to free myself from my violent and abusive family and unlock the potential of the body that had been hidden under layers of fat and shame all my life. I know that my path is not for everybody, that many others are not so fortunate, and I ceased long ago to think that fat equals bad or lack of character or any other pejorative attitude that society has attached to it for generations. I hope I've made that clear and that you take my word as truth.

I am not saying "let's fat-shame Donald Trump to make him feel bad." I am saying that I'm deeply troubled by the LGBTQ+ community prioritizing hurt feelings over the very real damage that's being done to us right now all over the country by Trump, his minions, his proxies, and his cult of bloodthirsty followers and worshippers. Trump's accomplices in Congress and state legislatures and Moms For Liberty are taking over school boards all over the country, banning books and emptying library shelves and harassing teachers and librarians to the point where they're being run out of town, where the State of Missouri has defunded its entire public library system rather than follow a court order to restore books banned just for featuring LGBTQ+ characters.

DeSantis and Abbott have put in place policies that are unspeakably brutal, that are forcing trans people in Florida to slowly and brutally revert to their pre-transition state, that have given health care providers in Florida the right to deny treatment to you and me and all LGBTQ+ people because we are gay, lesbian, non-binary, trans... but God forbid we should call Trump mean names!

We've seen what happens when we buy into the "when they go low, we go high" fantasy pipe dream. This is not the way the world works, it has never been, and we need to put this loser idea in the trash bin where it belongs once and for all.

We're being attacked and harmed in unspeakable ways that are happening now. This is not theoretical or hypothetical. It's happening to us, to those we love, this minute and every minute of every day. And worse is in the pipeline - they're writing laws that will place us under virtual house arrest, that will regulate where we're allowed to go in our own cities and towns, when we're allowed to be seen in public, when and where we can shop, how we're allowed to dress, even what we're allowed to say and SING, for Christ's sake!

And I'm supposed to be concerned about some minuscule hypothetical percentage of my own people being OFFENDED because I'm somehow being insensitive and violating some trivial picayune social justice warrior philosophy, because there's a possibility of some fragile flower taking it personally, and that I should shut my mouth and let the MAGA nutjobs run roughshod over us? Oh, come let Daddy kiss it! while our brothers and sisters are suffering in real time. Sickening.

Anyone who has a problem with my stance doesn't have to follow me or emulate my proven effective tactics as an activist with 37 years of successfully defending our rights under my belt if they're so dainty and delicate and easily bruised. Everyone else that sees this for the strawman bullshit it is, get ready to hit the streets with bullhorns and whistles once again. We've got work to do.

Your arguments are strong and well-reasoned, and I accept and acknowledge everything you're saying. We can disagree on this, certainly, and still work together to turn back the progress that the MAGAs are making, restore our rights, and protect ourselves and each other. But that will require the snowflake contingent among us to get their collective head out of their collective ass, stop whining, and get with the damn program. Calling me names and telling me I'm being a bad gay activist is a waste of time and energy that should be spent fighting the fascists and the haters who are out to kill us.

And to you, my friend and fellow traveler with a radiantly beautiful soul and spirit, I urge you to hang in there, to keep the faith, to keep caring about life, to work with me to secure our own future and the future of our kind. I send to you my very best wishes, energy, and prayers that you will find your way to a place of health, security, stability, and love for yourself and for this precious community to whom we've both dedicated our lives, who mean the world to us.

Yours In Service, Animal J. Smith

[fallenangelontheceiling]

Leverage 1x07

I’m starting to buy the tension between Eliot and Hardison. Eliot just learned basic photoshop lol. Love Hardison's attempts at awkward bonding, I buy that way more than they straight up dislike each other.

I’m sad we don’t get to hear Gina Bellman do a Jersey Mafia Wife accent.

Aww Sophie has a friend!

Yeah, why is Hardison being so down on himself??

At first I was like, I hope they let the daughter be a Mafia Princess Bitch. The cynic in me just does not have a lot of hope for sociopathic families. But the minute she was like, “Uh, Mom… I think releasing the doves is a bit much…” - “Shut up, Maria,” all my Say Yes To The Dress instincts perked up. Screw Mom! This is YOUR wedding! Seat your college friends wherever you want!

Parker telling the bridesmaid that yes, the dress does make her look fat, and not even picking up the social queues after the fact, is the first real Awkward Social Situation I’ve bought from her. Most of the stuff prior could be read as charming (I’m not like other girls I don’t like shoes, haha I taught this kid how to pick a lock). I absolutely see how Parker could become isolated.

Also REALLY buying the Parker/Hardison tension in the bridesmaids’ dress. “You really think I look good?” “You look perfect.” Stawp.

Side note that’s only relevant to me: I’m a little fascinated by the mob wife. I think she’s so picky because she doesn’t really know what she wants or what’s “high quality,” she just knows there’s a nebulous, upper class ideal she’s desperately aiming for. Explains why she would marry into money, despite the cheating and general immorality. (And sorry not sorry, I legit know so many women from Long Island that are like this.)

“I didn’t do anything wrong for her [my high school sweetheart] to dump me. I liberated Croatia.” “Do you think the Butcher of Kiev will recognize you?” Ooh, I’m suddenly very invested in Eliot’s backstory this episode! Fun B movie vibes 🥰☠️

“And that bride - what’s her name? - I’m not gonna let her down either!” I’m dying 😂

Between that, the incompetent FBI, and Eliot’s cooking, this is the funniest episode.

Omg of course the step mom is wearing white to this wedding. I kinda like the 80s prom look for the bridesmaid dresses tho ngl.

I hope this marriage is still legit despite the fake priest officiating lol. (Pretty sure all that matter is the certificate).

Nate/Sophie - I love mess 🥰 They're just projecting their own issues all over this damn wedding. Real Parent Energy. I love that for them.

“A wedding’s just a big con, huh?” “I never said there was anything wrong with that.” The ROMANCE this episode, istg!

[goetzjpvis]

3/27/24 "Sensoron" and "Neo-Nationalism and the 'Liberal School of History'" JPT3391

Phew! Today's was definitely a read! I had a very difficult time discerning this text from irony. It actually took Prof. Smith straight up telling me that this text was right-wing Japanese propaganda to realize! Up until then, I was too naiive to believe that was even a possibility of reading in class.

Effectively, this manga comments on the greater Japanese 'social issue' of the postwar peace movement. The creator of the manga likens China to.... a man taking too long shitting in the toilet? He argues that he is right to treat his employee like 'a roach', just like the Japanese were right to 'do what they did' during the war...

He then proceeds to raise the strawman: 'what about Japanese war crimes?! here are some 'edited' or 'mislabeled' photos to show what we did wasn't all that bad!'. He showcases images of the Rape of Nanking, as well as Bombing of Chongqing and argues that these images were either doctored or forged. While I agree that doctored and forged imagery are a plight upon the spread of truthful information, the author argues that because the images shown have evidence of forgery.... these heavily documented events of arson, rape, and murder were either orchestrated by an 'inside group' of Chinese civilians, or made up by American's in order to make the Japanese media feel 'war guilt' for their ancestor's crimes. Why? Because according to him, everything is anti-Japanese propaganda. China, Korea, and America hate Japan.... so the 3 use disinfo to subjugate the Japanese into peace.

This type of text is also applicable to the American alt right, and is something I see frequently. Many Jews in America are terrorized by the 'free thinkers' who claim the holocaust didn't exist, and much of the evidence (you can also claim this for 9/11) was misrepresented.

Furthermore, the manga is argues individualism is bad, because it's an American brainwashing technique. From previous discussions in class, I was already aware that Japan's 'highly-collectivist' society are their alt right's claim to fame. That being said, they claim that Japan's individualism doesn't exist, and any sight of it is just people brainwashed by American individualist propaganda.

This manga capitalizes on people's fear and hunger for justice. it argues that half of the information (photos, texts) that people have been terrorized with since birth are FAKE!! That's a scary thing to hear! And instead of teaching those that it's important to learn about history to single out the facts from a set of information, the manga instead takes the reader's newfound fear and liken's their 'oppressors' to the occult, to evil, and makes the readers into victims. This is a very slippery slops I've seen people around me fall into. It turns fear into hyper-protective skepticism: "I think the LGBT is harming our youth! Time to wipe them out." "I think [insert minority] is biologically inferior and dangerous, time to wipe them out". etc. etc.

I added this smug loser in at the end because I found it funny how (in the manga) the brainwashed Japanese are portrayed as ugly, fat, etc., while the main character himself is drawn as an attractive, young man. Really makes you think!

[grayve-mistake]

I realized I subconsciously don't talk about my identity or experiences much outside of really specific circles because I've known the judgement people will often pass about it for as long as I can remember. I also think that said judgement is a load of bullshit and I shouldn't be shy about it

So if you've been following me for a while and never pieced it together somehow, hi, I'm Gray, I'm genderfluid and bisexual. I use they/them broadly online because it's easier than updating my profile every day lmao. I consider myself on the nonbinary spectrum because my identity is not strictly confined to a binary label, but this does not mean I don't sometimes identify as a man or a woman. I'm just not restricted to it all the time. I lean more transmasc lately but that could and probably will change with time. Sometimes I don't have a label for what I'm feeling at all and we just gotta roll with it.

Yes, I consider myself both (or either) achillean and sapphic (can we use achillean more it fucks so much harder than the Multi Level Marketing acronym) depending on how I'm feeling. Be normal about it or I'm beating you up with hammers

I'm in a qpr with two (2!!!!!!) acespec ppl and they mean the world to me and I love them very much

I am a working class goth in the south struggling for my survival every summer.

I've also been drawing anime girls for the past 12 years for some ungodly reason so if you want to see that or something go follow me on @sophisticatedpjparty

I have some chronic mental health issues that aren't diagnosed yet but I'm working on it 👍keeping my symptoms and speculations to myself to protect my peace but it does intersect with many aspects of my life and experiences. On a side note do you guys on main like omori do you wanna talk about omori with me do y--

I don't really know what the point of this was, it's 6 am, I guess I just wanted to say it out loud. Don't get to do that too often. If you don't know how to interact with this post just like tell me how ur day was or something. I'm gay as fuck and if any more cis people assume I'm one of them and that I'll side with them on transphobia I'm also beating them up with hammers, and the hammers telepathically speak to you all the things your bullies used to call you every time they hit you. They also say it in your favorite person's voice. Implanted directly into your noggin. Yup

Oh also I'm fat and I stand with the fat liberation movement and if you don't like that. You know the drill. 🔨🔨🔨🔨🔨🔨🔨🔨💥💥💥💥💥💥💥🧠💢

Uhhhhh women and men and enbies and all the weirdos inbetween are hot and you should love yourselves ok bye

[wovetherapy]

Body Image and Mental Health

Body image is a complex topic that is often simplified into the vantage point of: you are either happy or unhappy with the way your body looks. In reality, it is not a black and white topic, although historically race has been and continues to be inseparable from the topic of body image… amongst other intersecting identities.

What is body image?

“Body image” is somewhat of an umbrella term, encompassing any part or whole of one’s body, from weight to face to skin, etc. There are four aspects to body image:

Perceptual - how you perceive yourself… what you see can be different from reality or how others see you.

Affective - how you feel about your body image… this can differ regarding various parts of your body.

Cognitive - how you think about your body… this includes how you incorporate your body image with the rest of your life (e.g. “If I was thinner or more muscular, I would be more popular or have a better dating life.”)

Behavioral - how you act in regard to your body image… this encompasses more or less healthy behaviors (i.e. due to their body image, people may choose to exercise more, socialize less, change their diet, etc.)

Body image movements: distinguishing between body positivity, neutrality, and liberation

Body Positivity encourages unconditional love and positive regard for one’s body, no matter how one looks or feels. The body positivity movement originated from the fat acceptance movement of the 1960s, led by a group of fat, queer, Black women. They were integral in the recognition of the intersectionality of race, class, gender, sexuality, and weight stigma. Body positivity looks much different than its original roots. Critics contend that the movement has been “gentrified by white-centered politics” (Griffin et al., 2022), with efforts centering thin and relatively thin white women.

Body neutrality is about acceptance, focusing on the capabilities of one’s body rather than looks. It approaches body image through a neutral lens, acknowledging that people may not love their bodies all the time. Body neutrality promotes non-judgment of one’s body, accepting and respecting however one’s body exists.

Body liberation is “the freedom from social and political systems of oppression that designate certain bodies as more worthy, healthy, and desirable than others”. It provides space to move past a body truce and explore what it means to give oneself permission to live life unapologetically as oneself. Body liberation encourages people to feel all of the emotions that may emerge due to societal biases and discrimination, and it does not urge acceptance of what may not feel acceptable. It also creates space for a multicultural lens, expanding the suffocating ideals of Western beauty standards.

Body Image and Mental Health

Body image and mental health are often closely intertwined and cyclical in nature, such that they can be difficult to individuate. One’s body image may impact their mental health, and vice versa. Body image can show up in one’s self esteem, personality, interpersonal relationships, and overall physical and emotional wellbeing. Examples of mental health concerns related to body image may include: anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, eating disorders/disordered eating (see previous blog post on Eating Disorders from an intersectional lens), feelings of shame or guilt, financial strain, negative self talk, poor self esteem, preoccupation with weight/body type, interpersonal issues, etc.

Body dissatisfaction, or negative body image, can be described as negative thoughts and feelings associated with one’s body image. Research has found that higher body dissatisfaction is positively associated with poor quality of life, psychological distress, and the risk of unhealthy eating behaviors and eating disorders (Mental Health Foundation). Body image does not always impact one’s mental health in a negative manner, although, especially for minoritized individuals, body dissatisfaction regularly begins at a young age. Half of elementary school aged girls have weight concerns or are worried about becoming fat, according to the National Eating Disorders Association. Being bullied at school for their appearance or growing up in a household where weight is an issue are known risk factors for body image issues in children, and common experiences for BIPOC individuals amongst those with other marginalized identities and bodies. Although body dissatisfaction often begins at a young age, it can continue throughout adulthood, especially if left unaddressed. However, there are absolutely ways to approach improving one’s body image as an adult.

Improving body image as an adult

Identify and challenge negative thoughts - Recognize internal and external dialogue regarding your body image. Think critically about what comes up automatically or what is being said. Where are these thoughts coming from? Are they realistic? What are they rooted in? How are these thoughts serving you? By tuning into these thoughts, you can develop agency and choice in the direction you want to move in.

Find community -In all the complex layers, struggling with one’s body image can feel isolating due to various internal and external factors. Body image satisfaction, like most topics, is not a dichotomous subject. Additionally, satisfaction with one’s body is not a requirement for positive mental health. Discourse has shifted to include the concepts of body positivity, body neutrality/body acceptance, and body liberation, which have been associated with higher levels of overall wellbeing. By gaining understanding of each of these movements, one may identify what they resonate with and find community and better relationship with one’s body image and mental health.

Pay attention to your social media consumption - Recognize your agency in who you follow and what comes up on your social media feed(s). Be cognizant of comparison culture and try not to compare yourself to others. Be intentional in removing content which no longer serves you, and be active in expanding and curating a diverse online space that feels more aligned with your own values or the values you would like to embrace or incorporate into your life.

Observe nature - Nature provides countless examples of beauty in diversity and spectrums of existence. Spend time noticing the myriad shapes, colors, sizes, functions, sexualities, abilities, existences, and relationships in the natural world. Perhaps you would be open to allowing yourself to be imaginative and playful in this space, and perhaps you could see ways to translate this or incorporate these observations into other spaces in your life.

Work with a therapist - If you are struggling with body image, it may be helpful to speak with a mental health professional. The collaborative space could be helpful to process your thoughts, experiences, and relationship with self and others and to elucidate how you would like to relate to your body image and what it would look like for you to achieve this.

[cascadianights]

I've been trying to put this into words for a While now

I think a big reason a lot of white people have an issue with acknowledging their very real Privilege (beyond the obvious) is that... ok, its the presence of benefits and perks & the absence of barriers and obstacles. But the default assumption of white privilege, of what those benefits or obstacles ARE, is essentially the archetype of a WASP - generally a male one too. This nebulous, theoretical group of perks & lack of barriers that people often present as white privilege (when in reality then tend to be talking about CLASS) fails to capture the lived reality of a VAST, HUGE majority of poor white people.

They're going to be hostile to the idea that they had opportunities to advance in the workplace that others didn't, when they worked the same shit job at the mill their entire short life. The idea that they had alumni family to help secure them a good spot at a college their parents paid for, rather than being the first person in their family to go to even community college just to have to drop out and take care of siblings. The idea that they lived life with financial and food stability, when they grew up in a family of 8 siblings having a slice of bread each for breakfast and lunch because their mom couldn't access birth control and their dad was an abusive drunk. These aren't theoretical exceptions! This isn't the minority of white people, this is the reality for MILLIONS of people!!

There are absolutely things that apply across the board when talking about white privilege - situations a white person will never face because they are white, that a black person will face because they are black. But is that divide, based on race instead of assumptions about class, really the image conjured by/for many people when we talk about white privilege now? Especially in current liberal circles, where any level of privilege can be used to discredit and dismiss someone's reality - to declare them exempt from a huge swath of dangers, and benefit to a theoretical upper class lifestyle of relative ease. The logic follows that if the speaker is white, or white-passing, much about their life can be assumed and much can be written off that they could not possibly understand or have experienced - they must out and offer another aspect of their identity (disabled, queer, fat, etc) to show they have any right to speak on marginalization. Being white protects you around cops, until the moment you're dirt poor, or disabled, or visibly trans, or just the right queer body they were looking to teach a lesson to that night. Being white protects you in our current government, until you're a felon with no vote, or a disabled person declared unfit to make your own decisions and sterilized.

All this to say, liberals cannot keep clinging to the idea & narrative that white equals automatic access to a huge amount of privileges and protections that are actually Hugely reliant on class and a lack of intersecting identities. Dirt poor people who hear "white privilege" used almost exclusively to describe WASPS, from the mouths of the Liberal Left who have ignored the plight of the rural poor for decades, who are ACTIVELY making jokes about stupid southerners and how we should just cut off parts of the country and let them drown, will not result in them listening! They will not go self introspect about their own biases! They will not look up the real nuances of white privilege and class privilege and how those are linked but not inextricably. They will not think about how to eliminate barriers and create opportunities for other people. They WILL be further alienated from the left and being able to actually look into their very real privilege in the future though!!

[johannestevans]

no, predictably in my life the people who show the proper concern or compassion for me when I say that my weight is difficult, or show concern about me getting enough to eat, are fat people! they're aware most of all of the effects that not getting enough to eat have on anybody most of all, bc while not getting enough to eat doesn't necessarily make you lose weight (and for many people actually contributes to weight gain in the long term, bc the human body perceives periods of starvation as recurring trauma and can change its metabolism to accommodate this), they do know that it can make you dizzy and sick and sad, bc they're pressured most of all into trying diets!

fatphobia harms EVERYBODY, and fat liberation benefits everyone - although fat people receive the vast majority of societal bigotries in our institutions, such as not being able to get things like adequate seating, clothing, medical care, work, etc, society's veneration of thin people and thinness ends up intersecting with ableism and other forms of bigotry that end up harming thin and fat people in ways like this

in different ways, because of the way that our society venerates thinness and loathes fatness (or even just weight, which can be muscle mass!), illness and disability are rendered further invisible through people's biases around weight and size

doctors MIGHT listen to a thin person's descriptions of symptoms, but they will ultimately punish any form of significant weight gain, even when caused by necessary medications, because thinness is seen as a corollary to ultimate health and therefore societal value, even when a thin person is demonstrably more sick whilst thin than fat or just average-sized for their body; a fat person's concerns will be dismissed except - and sometimes without exception - in regards to the most serious of symptoms, because their fatness and weight entirely eclipse any concerns as to their actual HEALTH or their ability or their quality of life

and of course, because fatphobia and weight-based assumptions are intriniscally linked to white western society's ideas and assertions of culture, class, gender, race, sexuality, and other vectors for marginalisation and institutional abuse, a lot of these aspects of bigotry are then further concentrated or issues of concern rendered further invisible by societal and institutional bias

i've been listening to a lot more fat liberationist stuff recently and like...

so obvs i already had some backing in a lot of the basic theory, stuff like institutional anti-fatness in medicine, fashion, travel, etc, but like

so as a really thin guy who's always found it impossible to gain weight, its been unbelievably emotionally and mentally liberating to hear people talking really casually about the disability that's associated with thinness

so like being really thin, you lack additional joint and bone support - if you fall, you have less padding and less STRUCTURE to protect your bones from breaks and fractures, right?

obvs theres plenty of fat people that do have issues with bones and joints, im not saying thsres not, its just that normally i feel like im the lone person saying "being this thin is bad for me and is part of various health problems i also have"

and idk its just like. my whole life i was such a sickly child lmao

like i couldnt stand for long periods except "long period" would often be like. any period. i didnt understand how my peers were just standing for so long and just weathering that, bc to me it wasnt possible at all - i breathed badly, my joints were fucked etc

and looking back and realising as i get more disabled like the extent to which i was similarly disabled in my youth, and how i lacked the language to verbalise or sometimes even recognise my own pain and struggle

but also like

the treatment of me as so evil and lazy because i wasn't exercising, or because like. a PE teacher would pick me out as an example because i was so thin, and then be furious that i wasn't remotely physically fit, and that i was disabled

i remember multiple times esp from cis female teachers just. frothing rage at my diet and the things i ate, or when i wrinkled my nose at talk about diets, bc i was so thin so i had to be doing The Right Things, and if i was that thin and doing bad things i had to be punished

and its bc a lot of these ppl thought of fatness and being fat as a punishment, a target for abuse that people deserved, and bc i was a young disabled trans guy like. i deserved punishment for my laziness and nonconformity, and it became a lot about my weight

like expressing that i wanted to gain weight, that i was cold all the time, that i had no energy etc, that eating was hard but that i enjoyed food, all of that was met with such fuckin aggression and really sharp policing, esp from PE teachers and esp from women

and obvs all that is to do with the way that diet culture particularly targets women and those perceived as women, and the desire to engage in lateral violence to police others into complying with gender roles etc as they were upholding them

but idk like. fat liberationist politics is imo inherently tied up with disability liberation, because of the way that "health" is weaponised as a symbol of being good or deserving, and how fatness and disability are both used as targets and symbols of evil and punishment

MOST OF ALL for fat & disabled people

but for nondisabled fat people disability is often threatened as punishment - if you don't become less fat, you'll (deserve to) become disabled

and for disabled thin people, if you don't act less disabled, you'll (deserve to) become fat

and its not a punishment to be fat or disabled or sick. its just how some people are. its not BAD to be this way - and what makes things hard for us is not something inherent to the badness of our bodies, but instead the lack of kindness and accommodation anybody is willing to extend to them

[lizardbytheriver]

"The Goode Family" Observations Part 2

The Father is practically wearing a fedora. It is so awful. Kind of hate the jokes that a (Working Class) Butch Lesbian Couple is "disgusting". Not a great look that it came from both the "Progressive" Characters and Conservative Character. The show really does feel like its simping for the Upper Class. Mostly comes from the mother, who's unresolved daddy issues keeps manifesting into a call for acceptance from folks who will barely tolerate her. I kind of hate the character who's just there to make "lonely woman" jokes. I get it, she doesn't f*ck much, she's fat, and she has no kids. Move on. I think I hate the Mother the most. She does represent performative activism. She can never just do a good deed, she needs to announce it to everyone and she is desperate for praise. Wow an Animated Sitcom made by Mike Judge where the Mother is the worst character... how unsurprising. *Cough* Peggy Hill *Cough* The show has two modes for the family, them recycling or them being racist.

The family is fine with prescription pills, but not pain killers... A few episodes in, and there's already no consistency. I know the easy deflection is "the Left is inconsistent", but tbh this just feels like an oversight. The mother does not want her daughter to "leach off the system". Which. I just think the phrasing is very Conservative. Okay... so the "Progressive" Father is.... anti-graffiti and pro-abstinence. Its interesting, because these writers have Conservative Leanings and want their show to still endorse Conservatism to a degree, so you get the Reasonable Members of the Liberal Family repeating Conservative Talking Points... even though they are still supposed to be the loony liberal. This show is really really really trying to do "the minorities have it easier". Between the Anti-Affirmative Action and the Graffiti Episode (where they imply that if the White Woman was a Person of Colour her sentence would be less severe). Damn. This is not the characters being racist. This is the show being racist. Damn. The Father and the Daughter are snitches. The Father was going to call the police on the graffiti artist, but stopped when he found out that it was his wife. And the daughter called the police on her friend, who was misusing government funds. Scumbags. The father loves Che Guevara, but only practices nonviolence. Okay. The whole family besides the dad believes protesting is "useless" and "stupid"... which... This show is interesting moral wise, because a lot of the family's activism is very individualist. Being Vegan, Composting, Recycling, Gardening, the Solar Panels, etc. Almost everything they do is hyper-individualist. So to see attempts at collective action to be met with "its useless" is interesting. Again. Conservative Writers. Making a show about the Left, but still uplifting Conservative Beliefs (whether knowingly or unknowingly) such as the hyper-individualism that plagues the United States. I do not think there is a single person on this show who has said anything nice about indigenous people. They either call 'em "backwards" or they are bringing back the phrase "noble savage".