Fat bashing....what do you think?

[DerangedAngel]

This is ridiculous.

 

You're right, you didn't quote. You made a false assumption, as in, you assumed what my point was, and you were mistaken. My bad.

 

Maybe we need a new thread?

 

-DA

[honey2005]

I think I would choose Drew Carey over Tom Cruise. It has nothing to do with looks, Drew Carey just makes me laugh.

[DerangedAngel]

Oh, wow.

 

The Drew Carey in the example is no funnier than Tom Cruise. I was merely trying to point out that if the exact same personality was in two different bodies, everyone would go for the most attractive, physically.

 

-DA

[littleflowerpot]

Originally posted by DerangedAngel

This is ridiculous.

 

You're right, you didn't quote. You made a false assumption, as in, you assumed what my point was, and you were mistaken. My bad.

 

Maybe we need a new thread?

 

-DA

 

sounds good to me! how about a thread about how skinny girls need love too?

 

(i'm a skinny girl too, deranged so i'm not picking on you. i'm trying to pick up guys!)

 

[littleflowerpot]

Originally posted by DerangedAngel

Oh, wow.

 

The Drew Carey in the example is no funnier than Tom Cruise. I was merely trying to point out that if the exact same personality was in two different bodies, everyone would go for the most attractive, physically.

 

-DA

 

no, we wouldn't.

 

okay okay okay, i'm teasing ya!

[DerangedAngel]

sounds good to me! how about a thread about how skinny girls need love too?

 

Sounds good, cause we certainly do.

 

-DA

[sinner]

And then we can do a thread about average looking, married middle aged men looking for love.

 

Samson and I will own that thread!

[DerangedAngel]

Originally posted by sinner

And then we can do a thread about average looking, married middle aged men looking for love.

 

Samson and I will own that thread!

 

Of course you will.

 

-DA

[dyermaker]

Originally posted by Matilda

I must agree with littleflowerpot that you are being extremely naive to think that having a prejudice, whether it is expressed or not, is not harmful to others.[

Okay. You've now called me naive.

 

I think it's about time you, and those who think like you do, BACK UP THEIR GAWDAMN STATEMENTS.

 

Your assertion: My prejudice hurts people.

 

Now either prove it, or stop making statements about my character. My prejudice has in no way manifested itself in a harmful manner, the burden of proof is on you to prove otherwise.

I do agree with you that we all have prejudices, whether we admit them or not. I also think it is wise to be aware of our own prejudices

I said, flat out, without provocation or interrogation, that I had a prejudice. How much more aware could I be?

Do you think it's fair for others to prejudge you on the basis of one of your own physical characteristics?

It's happened.

 

I did NOT say I found fat people disgusting. I did NOT say it was okay to discriminate. I did NOT say I act hurtful towards any group of people.

 

what do you think the word prejudice means? are you really arguing that prejudice is not discriminatory?

It doesn't have to be.

 

Discrimination is about TREATMENT, not about THOUGHTS. I've been nothing but nice to fat people.

[littleflowerpot]

i'm sure you have.

[dyermaker]

Then please refrain from making baseless character assessments about me.

[Mr Spock]

Either way, it's just more cushion for the pushin, if you know what I mean.

[YellowLioness]

Either way, it's just more cushion for the pushin, if you know what I mean.

[Matilda]

Okay. You've now called me naive.

 

I think it's about time you, and those who think like you do, BACK UP THEIR GAWDAMN STATEMENTS.

 

Your assertion: My prejudice hurts people.

 

Now either prove it, or stop making statements about my character. My prejudice has in no way manifested itself in a harmful manner, the burden of proof is on you to prove otherwise.

 

Dyer,

 

I know next to nothing about your character, and so it would be difficult for me to make judgments about it. For the record, I would say your character is just fine, although this is certainly just based on the posts of yours that I have read here on LS. I was simply saying that I thought your assertion that unexpressed prejudice does no harm is naive.

 

I also have no ability to prove whether your prejudice has harmed anyone or not. All I know is that prejudice has the potential to be harmful. Certainly being aware of it is one step toward decreasing the amount of potential harm, providing one takes steps to change one's behavior. It does sound as though you are doing just that, so I applaud you for acknowledging your bias and taking steps to correct it.

 

 

Here is my backup:

 

http://www.tolerance.org/hidden_bias/tutorials/index.html (The passage that I have quoted is on the second page at this link)

Biases and behavior

A growing number of studies show a link between hidden biases and actual behavior. In other words, hidden biases can reveal themselves in action, especially when a person's efforts to control behavior consciously flags under stress, distraction, relaxation or competition.

 

Unconscious beliefs and attitudes have been found to be associated with language and certain behaviors such as eye contact, blinking rates and smiles.

 

Studies have found, for example, that school teachers clearly telegraph prejudices, so much so that some researchers believe children of color and white children in the same classroom effectively receive different educations.

 

A now classic experiment showed that white interviewers sat farther away from black applicants than from white applicants, made more speech errors and ended the interviews 25% sooner. Such discrimination has been shown to diminish the performance of anyone treated that way, whether black or white.

 

Experiments are being conducted to determine whether a strong hidden bias in someone results in more discriminatory behavior. But we can learn something from even the first studies:

 

Those who showed greater levels of implicit prejudice toward, or stereotypes of, black or gay people were more unfriendly toward them.

Subjects who had a stronger hidden race bias had more activity in a part of the brain known to be responsible for emotional learning when shown black faces than when shown white faces.

 

http://www.nupr.neu.edu/2-04/prejudice.html

These findings are of import not only for psychological science, but for practical considerations as well. Dasgupta says that such non-conscious prejudices have been shown to affect behavior. “The findings hold important implications by suggesting that anger may increase the likelihood of aggressive or derogatory behaviors in situations requiring rapid judgments (e.g., a police officer or soldier judging an approaching member of an unfamiliar group as representing a threat and acting accordingly),” she says. “It is useful to note that these automatic prejudices can be overcome by exerting time and effort to consider judgments of social groups, but these are luxuries that individuals often do not have.”

 

http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/pr040305.cfm (Another article about the aforementioned study.)

 

http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/8271/8014/341080.html

[dyermaker]

Originally posted by Matilda

I also have no ability to prove whether your prejudice has harmed anyone or not. All I know is that prejudice has the potential to be harmful.

And I definitely agree.

 

Some people use their prejudices as an excuse to ignore their manners. I think some people use it as a reminder to themselves that they should be extra careful to mind their manners.

[littleflowerpot]

but prejudice can sometimes be insidious because it can be harmful in indirect ways. perhaps your prejudice never hurts anyone because you are so extremely careful to be sure of that but i think it's rare and sometimes people's prejudice can be hurtful in ways they hadn't thought of and they might have a hard time recognizing it. so while i'm saying that you may be very concientious and well-mannered but many others are not. i'm not even talking about the folks that are outright disrespectful and are easily recognized as cruel but instead i'm talking about people that are otherwise known to be nice people. for example, matilda mentioned before that often people can't look fat or disabled people in the eyes because they are so uncomfortable with it. something as seemingly innocent as that can still make a person feel pretty humiliated and ashamed.

[dyermaker]

littleflowerpot, Do you believe society should embrace unhealthy conditions?

[littleflowerpot]

Originally posted by dyermaker

littleflowerpot, Do you believe society should embrace unhealthy conditions?

 

if you would please reread what i said in an earlier post, you might notice i said that although we should perhaps not accept obesity, we should accept obese people. i think we should because obese people are more than just what their bodies look like. there are real people with real feelings inside them. they may be wonderful people with a lot to offer in terms of friendship. conversely, maybe they are not good people. but it has nothing to do with the size of their bodies.

 

furthermore, i don't believe at all that most people with fat prejudice are prejudiced because of the fat person's health issues but instead because they don't like how an obese person looks.

[DerangedAngel]

we should perhaps not accept obesity, we should accept obese people. i think we should because obese people are more than just what their bodies look like.

 

Could you please explain this? Or, point me to the post in which you already did? There's just so many I don't feel like looking through them all.

 

Are you saying we should or should not accept (that's a bad word - ignore? still bad.) their physical appearance? Whether or not we accept/embrace/ignore/hate/find it disgusting, we can still think they are 'more than what their bodies look like'. So I doubt that's what you meant.

 

I'm sorry, I just don't follow. An analogy? Everything I come up with doesn't make any sense.

 

Thanks.

 

-DA

[littleflowerpot]

i'm saying that we can dislike the disease but that doesn't mean we should dislike the person.

 

one probably wouldn't like the disease of lung cancer which is often caused by smoking but that probably wouldn't make us dislike a person with lung cancer.

[dyermaker]

100% of obese people are obese. 100% of obesity occurs in obese people. You can't separate the two.

 

That stipulated, should we as a society accept obesity?

 

Not accepting obesity does not imply rejecting obese people. It just means sending a clear message, we as a society don't accept unhealthy conditions, so rather than embracing the CONDITION (example: 'I'm fat and lovely' or 'It's okay to be different') we don't embrace that condition. It's fairly simple.

[moimeme]

does it really matter if shallow people don't like fat people

 

What? Prejudice against shallow people?

 

I don't believe it's invariably unfair to assess others , at least preliminarily, based on their appearance. It's very human.

 

So is diarrhea. Neither is attractive.

 

Appearance is a good preliminary basis upon which to assess someone.

 

No it's not. It's a pretty boneheaded basis upon which to assess someone, since doing so inevitably means you're ascribing personality characteristics to appearance which is ludicrous.

 

We are visual creatures. You and I , lfp, both use personal photo avatars. Why? Are we confident in our appearance and perhaps inviting others to assess us positively at least in part based on our photos? Is this it not a form of self-display--advertising, if you will? "Read my posts; marvel at my picture"

 

It seems some people do feel that way.

 

I think we should always accept obese people (and anyone else) for being who they are. But I do not think we should accept poor lifestyle habits and health conditions when we don't have to. That's settling for less than our best, and that's unacceptable in my book.

 

AJ, you were doing great until that last bit. People do the best they can at any moment in time. They may not be your 'best' or even theirs, but they do the best they are able to do. Addiction to food, like any other addiction, supplies chemicals to the brain that soothes it and satisfies some chemical needs. Addiction to porn, video games, gambling, or anything else does the same. People find it as difficult to break addictions to food as they do to these other things - and those who have managed to overcome their addictions because they are gifted with extra strength ought not look down upon those not so fortunate.

 

Censure - yours, Dyer's or others', will no more help them than it will the alcoholic or the drug addict. They are often unhappy about the grip the addictive force has on them, yet the nature of addiction is that it overcomes one.

 

Which is why all this talk of 'unhealthy lifestyles' and the like is unhelpful. What would be helpful is to support whatever research is being done into the causes and possible cures of this addiction.

 

I just posted a thread about how drinking pop can contribute to obesity and, more importantly, turns out to have a high correlation to diabetes. Now, if you were being the best self you say we ought to be, you'd immediately ditch drinking pop - have you? In fact, I'm guessing maybe a couple of people of all the readers of this board changed their pop intake because of it. If you're hooked on something, even dire threats to your health don't deter you.

 

As for the people who claim they are 'prejudiced' against obese people, be sure you are using the word in its proper meaning. Do you really prejudge large people in that you think they are all lazy, self-indulgent, and have other unfortunate personality characteristics or are you saying you just don't like the look of obesity on people?

 

As long as you don't condemn someone because of his or her appearance (or assume them to be splendid humans for the same reason), you're not prejudiced, you just don't like a certain appearance. However, if you would still get to know a person and welcome him or her into your life despite whatever flaw in appearance that is, it's not prejudice.

 

we as a society don't accept unhealthy conditions, so rather than embracing the CONDITION (example: 'I'm fat and lovely' or 'It's okay to be different') we don't embrace that condition. It's fairly simple.

 

The issue is not that people are saying 'it's OK to be obese' - people aren't - people are saying 'you are a fine human being even though you are obese'. However, you have to accept that people have conditons that may require treatment, which makes them no less acceptable humans. The problem begins when you assume that people are obese by their own choosing and who remains that way deliberately. Rather, what you will find is people who fought mightily to defeat the obesity and found they lost the battle and so decided not to hate themselves for not winning, which is the right attitude. Addictions thrive on self-loathing. Respect for one's self is what often can defeat an addiction!

 

So try on 'you are a great human but I fear for your health' as an attitude and see how it feels

[Beth]

Originally posted by moimeme AJ, you were doing great until that last bit. People do the best they can at any moment in time. They may not be your 'best' or even theirs, but they do the best they are able to do. Addiction to food, like any other addiction, supplies chemicals to the brain that soothes it and satisfies some chemical needs. Addiction to porn, video games, gambling, or anything else does the same. People find it as difficult to break addictions to food as they do to these other things - and those who have managed to overcome their addictions because they are gifted with extra strength ought not look down upon those not so fortunate.

 

Censure - yours, Dyer's or others', will no more help them than it will the alcoholic or the drug addict. They are often unhappy about the grip the addictive force has on them, yet the nature of addiction is that it overcomes one.

 

Which is why all this talk of 'unhealthy lifestyles' and the like is unhelpful. What would be helpful is to support whatever research is being done into the causes and possible cures of this addiction.

 

Just thought I would throw this tidbit in the train of thought:

 

A drug addict can stop taking drugs and they won't die. A smoker can quit smoking and they won't die. A gambler can stop gambling and they won't die. An alcoholic can stop drinking and they won't die. The one thing all of these addictions have in common is that the substance or activity to which people are addicted to can be 100% eliminated from the lifestyle of the addict. A person can stop eating -- and they will die. The smoker who cuts down to one smoke a day, is still smoking and more likely to increase their intake. Same with all other addictions. But a person can not just stop eating.

 

Something to think about.

[Matilda]

Originally posted by moimeme

As for the people who claim they are 'prejudiced' against obese people, be sure you are using the word in its proper meaning. Do you really prejudge large people in that you think they are all lazy, self-indulgent, and have other unfortunate personality characteristics or are you saying you just don't like the look of obesity on people?

 

As long as you don't condemn someone because of his or her appearance (or assume them to be splendid humans for the same reason), you're not prejudiced, you just don't like a certain appearance. However, if you would still get to know a person and welcome him or her into your life despite whatever flaw in appearance that is, it's not prejudice.

 

Thank you moimeme for clarifying the difference between prejudice and personal preference regarding appearance. This is an issue that seems to keep coming up in this thread, but there are so many issues going on here, I didn't address it.

 

And your whole post was great too.

[tiki]

Originally posted by Beth

Just thought I would throw this tidbit in the train of thought:

 

A drug addict can stop taking drugs and they won't die. A smoker can quit smoking and they won't die. A gambler can stop gambling and they won't die. An alcoholic can stop drinking and they won't die. The one thing all of these addictions have in common is that the substance or activity to which people are addicted to can be 100% eliminated from the lifestyle of the addict. A person can stop eating -- and they will die. The smoker who cuts down to one smoke a day, is still smoking and more likely to increase their intake. Same with all other addictions. But a person can not just stop eating.

 

Something to think about.

 

^^^I love this!!! Awesome way of putting it! It's not a sin to eat, it's a necessity!