I know how there’s a debate about whether or not being fat makes someone unhealthy, but as a disabled person, I can’t help but think that part of that debate might be a little misguided.
People who use the argument of “being fat is unhealthy” to hate on fat people are ableist. Truth is, random people don’t owe you health. Health isn’t something that’s even achievable for many people. No matter what they eat, or how much they exercise, some people will simply never be healthy. Someone’s health shouldn’t be an indicator of how much you respect them. Yes, even if their lack of health is partially their fault.
Being fat isn’t just a byproduct of laziness. Many illnesses, way more than you imagine, have weight gain as a SYMPTOM. Cushing’s disease, polycystic ovarian syndrome, hypothyroidism, diabetes, and some types of heart failure just to name a few. Many medications also induce weight gain. These people could be hitting the gym and eating salads and still be fat. And they are not healthy. But they are also not just lazy.
Even if being fat is unhealthy, you still have to treat fat people with respect. You have no idea what kind of complex circumstances led them to gain that weight. And if they are truly just lazy and need to hit the gym, hating on them isn’t the way to motivate them to get started. They need empathy and kindness. Fat people should be allowed to simply exist without being burdened by hate.
letter from a mother of a gay man. sent to ONE magazine, 1958.
โ
This post was flagged as adult content and the original poster was deactivated so Iโm bringing it back.
โMrs Rโ was the pseudonym of Phyllis Shafer, a Kansas City local who helped found the Phoenix Society for Individual Freedom in 1966, a full three years before Stonewall. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she and her son Drew operated the Phoenix House, a safe haven for queer people in the city, and a hub of national queer activism. Drew passed away due to AIDS related complications in the 1980s, and his lover, Mickey Ray, spent the rest of his life fighting to keep his memory alive, largely contributing to the creation of the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America.
โWe tend to view American history as this constant march toward progress, which is total crap,โ he says. โYou gotta fight for that stuff. And if you donโt fight for that, you can fall backward. Like itโs not just this linear history.โ
Good quote from the article which may be relevant right now.
“You’re not the main character” also applies to thinking that you’re so uniquely horrible that everyone you meet is deeply invested in judging and hating you. That’s just as much of a cognitive distortion as believing that you’re the center of everyone’s admiration. I promise you that other people got their own lives to live and their own struggles and flaws to cope with.
Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum.
But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.
