So there was a recent post of some right wingers standing next to a ballot box to intimidate voters. This is clearly bad. They also made questionable aesthetic choices, like wearing dad cargo-shorts and growing goatees. This is also clearly bad.

So, what did Chapeau.Chat focus on? The weight of these men of course!

Let's start with the basics:

--Everyone has a range of weights their body is comfortable at. If you try to go too low or too high in this range, your body will start sending your hunger and satiety signals to keep you within that range. While you can go higher or lower in that range by manipulating Calories-in-calories-out, this range is fairly fixed without medical intervention. In other words, some people are just fat.

--There are other uncontrollable factors that effect weight. In Texas, for example, there are fewer walk-able neighborhoods and more access to fast food than here in Portland where there are more new-seasons than mcDonalds or Manhattan where it's easier to take the train than to drive.

--Socially, weight is co-constructed with fitness and self-control. In the protestant value system (the dominant one in the U.S. even among atheists), self control is one of the most important virtues. Fat implies unfit implies poor self control. Thin implies fit implies good self control.

Protestant morality is, here, at odds with reality. Weight here is co-produced by environment, hormones, eating habits and movement habits. All of those things are only partially under our control, and a Portlander is always going to have an easier time being thin than an Austintonian. Moralizing weight the way this community did celebrates protestant morality over basic reality.

As communists, we are better than that.

Call them fascists, make fun of their ugly beards, offer to shoplift them better shorts, but don't fat-shame them.

      • Nakoichi [they/them]M
        ·
        2 years ago

        Bullshit as someone that has suffered from food insecurity for much of my young life this is a super fucked up take.

        • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Man, for fucks sake, of course I'm not talking about when you're actually not eating enough. But people who are actually not getting enough food are not fat. That's not relevant to this conversation, it's just bad-faith nonsense

          • Nakoichi [they/them]M
            ·
            2 years ago

            Guess what some of my very poor friends in the same situation were also overweight.

            There are extraneous environmental factors here and just saying "hunger pain goes away if you just ignore it" Is the same as saying "it's your fault fatty"

            • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              Yeah you can be obese and malnourished. It's a big problem in "middle income" countries like South Africa.

              Here 25% of the population has growth stunted from malnutrition, whlie over 30% of men and 60% of women are obese or overweight

        • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          I never said it's not difficult to go from an unhealthy relationship with food in which one overeats daily to a healthy relationship with food in which one eats a healthy amount. Of course it's difficult, for a wide variety of reasons. None of those reasons are that you were destined to be fat. Making up bullshit about how some people are just "naturally" fat is harmful to people trying to learn how to get out of these traps.

            • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Making up bullshit about what I’ve never said is harmful to people trying to have a discussion.

              The very first bullet point in the post we're discussing says, "some people are just fat." Try to keep up.

              The point is that thinking of obesity as “It’s all in your head lol” instead of “This is a massive societal problem that requires education, social support, and medical interventions” is kinda a shitty reductive take.

              I'm the one saying that second quote, OP is actually the one saying the opposite, which is that obesity is all in your destiny.

                • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  When people are being assholes to me I will also be an asshole to them :shrug-outta-hecks:

                    • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
                      ·
                      2 years ago

                      Everything any of us do is a waste of time online and offline, you think you're being "mature" and above it all and cool and edgy, but you're actually just being an asshole to me the same way I was being an asshole to those other people :shrug-outta-hecks:

                        • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
                          ·
                          edit-2
                          2 years ago

                          Good fucking god. If you want me to take you seriously for even half a second, please explain how what you're doing is in any way different from "wasting your time in some (the very same, in fact) obscure hole on the internet."

                          There's literally no difference between my comments and your comments. You're being an asshole to me about shit that doesn't matter because you took issue with something I said in a dumb internet comment.

          • aaro [they/them, she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I almost can't believe that this argument is being made in good faith.

            Just to clarify real quick: people being born with "fat"/"not fat" genetics might be a factor to some extent but isn't the majority cause here. Seriously consider what car-centric culture, an over-abundance of fast food, the most advertising dollars per capita of any nation in the world, and prohibitively expensive medical care might do to a poor person's weight.