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.

  • Flinch [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    This struggle session, like those that came before, comes from people who learned to socialize primarily via the hostile debatespheres of the internet, where a reply to your post is only ever an attack, and nobody is acting in good faith. Keep that toxic shit on :reddit-logo: , this is a place to communicate with COMRADES, not win silly little internet arguments via semantics and bad faith interpretations.

    • InvaderZinn [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Well said,

      the whole point of Hexbear is that we don't have to worry about anyone acting in bad faith and we can freely speak our mind.

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

    Good post, OP.

    As an additional point, remember that the chuds in question will never find their pictures posted on an extremely obscure bear website to see themselves get dunked on, but our heavier comrades will see your criticisms of them and will (rightly) feel personally targeted by the extreme negativity that comes with your insults of some chuds that will never know you exist. Even if they did have a chance to see the dunks aimed at them, body-shaming our comrades is not acceptable collateral damage.

      • 7bicycles [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Feels kind of odd to include shaming people for like...shitty shorts and beards then.

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

          Those things are mutable. Weight is immutable (at least for the overwhelming majority of proletarians). This rule is remarkably consistent at deciding whether or not some trait is okay to make fun of.

          edit: Without "pull yourselves up by the bootstraps" logic, how can the average proletarian exert control over their weight? Bonus points if you can explain away poverty being correlated with obesity. If people can just make the choices to stop being obese, why do poor people just decide not to make those choices?

          Another edit:

          Among many other factors, the risk of adult obesity is greater among adults who had obesity as children, and racial and ethnic disparities exist by the age of 2 (6). If nothing else is done in the United States beyond what is being done now, simulated growth trajectories that model today’s children show that over half (59% of today’s toddlers and 57% of children aged 2 to 19) will have obesity at age 35 (7). Early feeding patterns, including how babies are fed and how caregivers use food in response to an infant’s mood, affect acute growth, future eating patterns, and the risk of obesity (8). Similarly, family and caregiver modeling of healthy behaviors, food offerings, and active playtime, as well as characteristics of neighborhoods such as walkability and traffic volume, may affect children’s nutrition and physical activity habits (9,10). (Source)

          • 7bicycles [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Now I'll agree changing a pair of pants is easier than losing weight but having a style of what to change into doesn't come naturally to people either and is permanently changing anyhow. It takes a lot of effort to keep up with this shit.

            What I find especially weird is how this post is about how protestant ethics change perceptions around overweight people, which I do agree, but then making fun of their fashion is okay as if that entire field doesn't heavily involve whats undearneath the clothes. I mean if you're conventionelly attractive enough you can basically pull of every piece of clothing. Being fat and stylish is a lot harder, due to the reasons OP mentions

  • KnilAdlez [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    The obesity epidemic is caused by corn :corn-man-khrush: and I will fucking die on this hill. Corn growth was encouraged heavily in the 1970's by Nixon's USDA and was and is subsidized by the government. This is when obesity really started to jump. This cheap corn has lead to it being used as cheap feed for animals making factory farms profitable flooding the US market with cheap, low quality meat. Moreover corn is put directly in peoples mouths with things like cheap corn based food, such as chips, as well as cheap sweetener with high fructose corn syrup. This is what's making us fat, and I'd be willing to bet that almost any study that says otherwise or suggests any alternative is funded by agribusiness.

    Moreover, all this corn farming is bad for the soil (it's what caused the dust bowl) and CAFOs are one of the biggest polluters in the world, and horribly mistreats animals (even if you're not :im-vegan: I think we can all agree that it's still bad to do). It's not just bad for our bodies, but for our planet and needs to be stopped.

    • Nagarjuna [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      I absolutely agree that industrial corn farming is a key factor. I do not want to ignore other factors like car infrastructure, fast food advertising, obesogens, etc. Most social phenomena are co-produced.

    • 7bicycles [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The drive through is also a product of the 70s and I'm genuinely convinced it did its part

  • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    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.

    lol no

    Look, everybody definitely has a different weight they feel comfortable at, based on the tradeoff of "effort thinking about food / pleasure eating food" vs "how much it sucks to be fat." I'm not going to judge anyone for making different decisions on that scale. But no one is "just fat." They overeat and become fat as a result.

    • Nagarjuna [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      "effort thinking about food" downplays how strong hunger signals can be.

            • 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.

          • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Eye-rolling emojis don't make it untrue :shrug-outta-hecks:

            Hunger isn't a real thing. It doesn't exist. If you make conscious decisions about what to eat based on an informed view of nutrition, you will still feel hungry. It's not some magic signal telling you that you're not getting enough nutrients, it's a dumb feeling that exists in your head. You ignore it, and it goes away. The feeling of hunger cannot harm you.

            • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
              ·
              2 years ago

              The feeling of hunger cannot harm you.

              It is, quite literally, pain. There is no point in talking to you about this topic, you've had this exact argument several times, and you always just have the take away everyone else is stupider than you and feeling hungry isn't a problem.

                • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  ah yes because psychological harm isn't harmful. because blowing your willpower on not eating doesn't take away from your capacity to deal with other stressors.

                  Lady, your attitude is terrible.

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

                  unharmful hunger pains.

                  You have just outed yourself to having no experience or understanding of what you are talking about.

                • GreenTeaRedFlag [any]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  I don't know, I personally feel better when I am physically unwell but in good spirits compared to when I am physically fine but in mental pain. Also, if the problem is you feel hungry, eating is the solution. "Just get over it" is not, it doesn't solve the problem.

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

              Hunger isn’t a real thing. It doesn’t exist.

              Reminds me of this. Please, I beg of you, do better to be in touch with the real material conditions of your comrades instead of trying to intellectualize struggles you don't experience. A leftism without empathy is not leftism.

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

          Lmao I wish that's how it worked for everyone.

          You're technically right that no one is "just fat" but hunger even when you just ate a massive meal a few hours ago, feeling full when you're actually not and just ate 1000 calories the whole day, it never really goes away for some people.

          I still have to consistently "overeat" to keep the weight I put on that keeps my BMI in a healthy range. Even though objectively I'm eating a healthy amount of food, it still feels like it's too much for me. I imagine a lot of folks that have lost weight have to do the opposite to keep the weight off.

          • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I still have to consistently “overeat” to keep the weight I put on that keeps my BMI in a healthy range

            That's not what overeating is lol

              • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
                ·
                2 years ago

                Sure, you can just decide to call something "overeating" when everyone involved in the discussion knows that what you're describing is not overeating, and then you're exempt from people going :jesse-wtf:

                They're just describing eating a healthy amount of food but misusing a negative word to describe it.

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

                  You're completely derailing this post, it isn't about semantics it's about not saying things that are harmful to your comrades that browse this site, and body shaming has been a consistent problem here for a long time.

                  Why are you so invested in defending body shaming? Fascists aren't going to see those comments only our comrades, and to some of them this is actually harmful.

                  "Fat" in the context of the OP just means not conforming to entirely unreasonable western beauty standards.

                  • Catherine_Steward [she/her]
                    ·
                    2 years ago

                    I'd say OP derailed the post by throwing in anti-science silliness that people like me feel necessary to counter. I'm not defending body shaming, and have never defended body shaming, and have not engaged with any part of the post or comments which discuss body shaming in any way whatsoever.

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

                      So they maybe didn't word it perfectly but that isn't the point.

                      You are seizing on a semantic issue and ignoring the substance.

                      have not engaged with any part of the post or comments which discuss body shaming in any way whatsoever.

                      Yes I know you just came in to argue a point irrelevant to the problem that OP is pointing out with the community that body shaming is a problem.

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

                          I'm not going to engage with you further on this because you aren't here to address the problem at hand and just want to argue over something that is barely tangential to the substance of the post.

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

                              I guess this is just funny to me because I never claimed to be.

                              Then you should probably stay out of the discussion.

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

                                  The problem is bodyshaming that is prevalent on this site.

                                  Try to keep up.

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

                                      It was the entire point of the post, and yes some people do have different natural body shapes and that "fatness" in the context of this post (which is different from obesity) is a product of western beauty standards. I'm going to need you to step out of this discussion because you're just shit stirring and derailing the point of the post.

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

      obesity is invariably a marketing issue. i have a friend that has a normal diet until she sees an ad with food on it and she immediately wants to eat. has caused her to get very big. she knows that its capitalist bullshit but she sees something good looking, shes gotta have it. its like an addiction, but imagine if there were billboards for meth everywhere. in fact its pretty interesting that states that ban billboards also tend to have lower obesity rates.

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

      This is ignoring all of the other environmental and material conditions listed in this post that have drastically changed since then.

        • Eris235 [undecided]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Well, yes, but if the obesity epidemic is caused by pollutants that are now near ubiquitous, then obesity would be, in most cases, caused by how your body reacts to those chemicals, which is largely genetic.

          Just like most medications, some people will be affected by it, some won't be, and a small amount will have a 'paradoxical' reaction, which we have seen. Anorexia has increased at basically the same rate as obesity.

            • Eris235 [undecided]
              ·
              2 years ago

              I don't think 'horrible diets' explains obesity going from 1% historically, to 42% in the U.S. today, especially considering that dieting, statistically, doesn't work long term. Some people can lose weight and keep it off, true, but we have no diet that consistently works for most people to lose weight and keep it off.

              People who could eat as much as they wanted, historically, didn't get this fat, now for many if not most, its a constant uphill battle versus hunger to not get fat. It feels obvious to me that something is fucking up the way bodies regulate weight (and I do say bodies, as animals have also been getting more obese in the wild if they live near humans), and it doesn't feel like its something as basic as sugar, as sugar has been around for a while for the elites, and they were, on average, not as fat as the average person is today.

                • Eris235 [undecided]
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  2 years ago

                  I really don’t understand what you think the mechanism for gaining weight is then. I thought you would think that pollutants are increasing peoples’ appetites which ok, maybe. but you think diet has literally nothing to do with weight gain? like you could lock someone in a closet and not feed them for a month and they wouldn’t lose any weight because of pollutants or something?

                  No, obviously CICO will make people lose weight. But the lipostat theory, which I do recognize is a theory but I think is true, posits that the body has mechanism to maintain healthy weight, but something is disrupting it in chronically overweight people. In people who's lipostat is disrupted to 'make' them be overweight, they can still lose weight by dieting, but they will be tired and hungry constantly, like their body 'wants' to be overweight. In studies where people were paid to gain weight, most couldn't, and those that did overeat enough to gain weight effortlessly lost it after the study, as they just weren't that hungry for a few months until they were back to their weight previously. 'just use willpower and eat less!' has been the advice of the past few decades, and the obesity epidemic has only gotten worse. Is it just that people's willpower has gotten worse and worse, or is it something else?

                  there are about a trillion studies that show that whole food plant based diets, for example, work effectively for the long term.

                  Studies do show plant based diets help, but: https://www.nature.com/articles/nutd20173 by about 4kg. That'd shave some percentage points off of the obesity epidemic, but that will not remove it. On top of that, it is explained by the pollutant theory; bioaccumulation is the reason why predator seafood is more full of mercury, and easily could be the reason why the theoretical pollutant is more prevalent and meat. We already know beef has more microplastics in it than, say, corn.

                • Eris235 [undecided]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  Problem with diets is, more often than not, people fail to maintain it and return to their previous weight. Obviously, some people manage to adapt to a new normal, but by an large, standard dieting advice about eating healthier only makes you lose 10 or so pounds. Really cutting calories is what you need to do to drop from obese to not-overweight, and it is very difficult to sustain. Standard advice has been some type or 'use willpower!' 'conquer hunger!', which I don't want to say that never works, but that's been the advice alongside 'eat healthy!' for decades, and for decades the obesity rate has been steadily climbing and climbing.

                  I just don't think 'just bad diets' explains the global, rapid obesity gain over the last 50-100 years.

          • ssjmarx [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Unless you're defining "sugar" as a pollutant (which is not totally inaccurate lmao) I don't think there's much to that as a cause of the obesity epidemic. Much more heavily polluted areas than the US and Europe are much skinnier, and obesity most closely tracks with the prevalence of processed and sugary foods.

            • Eris235 [undecided]
              ·
              2 years ago

              It's posited that the pollutants are in the water, which is why some of the highest % obesity areas are around river deltas, I.E. Alabama and Louisiana in the US, where the water has collected run off from lots of other cities, farmlands, and/or mining, while areas who's water is closer to the source have less obesity, like how Colorado is the lowest obesity state, and the west coast in general has less obesity, along with countries like Japan.

      • Nagarjuna [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        2 years ago

        and environmental factors I didn't list, like Obesogens!

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

      Because the material conditions of the American proletariat changed substantially about 70 years ago.

  • betelgeuse [comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Waiting for hexbears to realize that "some people can't help what they eat" and "there is no excuse to avoid becoming vegan" are mutually exclusive. Then this thread can really take off.

    Do it. Struggle my little posters, struggle. The battle for the soul of the left lies with this comment section. The wrong opinion could stunt the movement for decades to come.

    • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It's ok to have impulse control issues. It's not ok to hurt animals. What's not to get? People don't have infinite self control but we should expect people to have self control when it matters.

      "I can't stop masturbating" -> "thats ok buddy, nobody really cares"

      "I can't stop kicking dogs" -> "what the fuck dude you need to stop"

      "I can't stop eating sugar" -> "ok, that's fine"

      "I can't stop eating animal corpses" -> "yes you can you piece of shit"

      "I can't stop scrolling on the internet" -> "yeah me neither lol"

      "I can't stop calling people the n-word on the internet" -> "fuck off racist"

      This isn't that complicated.

                  • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                    ·
                    2 years ago

                    The fact that I can't legally ship my homemade fruit wines via USPS but it is apparently in fact legal to send actually shit via USPS is simultaneously frustrating and hilarious.

                    • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                      ·
                      2 years ago

                      Sorry, not going to have a discussion about anything besides the fact that you spend your time on this website advocating violence against animals.

                      • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                        ·
                        2 years ago

                        I'm not advocating violence against animals, I've just made peace with the fact that I don't have a controlling interest in what other people eat. I lost that power when I stopped cooking for room mates after grad school.

                        • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                          ·
                          2 years ago

                          Calling violence "fine" is advocating it. Not being able to control something doesn't make it fine and it doesn't mean you should spend your time advocating it. I can't control other people's racism, I don't spend my time logging onto hexbear, finding every anti-racist post I can, and saying "racism is fine, you can be racist and a leftist, stop splitting the left against our racist comrades." If I did that I'd be advocating racism.

                          • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                            ·
                            edit-2
                            2 years ago

                            I mean the subject of the post is that we're all in agreement that it's inappropriate to step into an individuals personal relationship with weight, food, and their body.

                            You wanting to add the carve out "unless you feel morally justified in doing so" kinda deflates the original claim into nothingness given that anyone can morally justify anything to themselves.

                            • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                              ·
                              2 years ago

                              You shouldn't shame people for being fat because being fat isn't wrong, not because putting something in my mouth causes it to enter some sacred inviolate realm of personal autonomy. If I kill and eat you, that's not "my personal relationship with food", that's a relationship of violence with you. If I pay a poor person to kill a chicken so I can eat it, that's not my personal relationship with food, that's a relationship of violence with that chicken.

                              • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                                ·
                                edit-2
                                2 years ago

                                If you think that your eating chicken is a relationship of violence that inappropriately abrogates the rights of a chicken then you shouldn't do that.

                                I'm not going to get tangled in others people's relationship with their body and their diets though. Far too fraught. And that holds even if I'm certain I know better than them and would be morally justified in doing so. Because I'm a moron who is wrong all the time.

                                • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                                  ·
                                  edit-2
                                  2 years ago

                                  Yes you are correct, eating chicken isn't fine. Being a reactionary is not fine and not something we should advocate by calling it fine. Tolerance does not extend to reactionaries. A chicken's body is not your body and not part of your relationship with your body.

                                    • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                                      ·
                                      2 years ago

                                      Cool. I kind of don't believe you. Either way, stop advocating for other people to do it.

                                      • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                                        ·
                                        edit-2
                                        2 years ago

                                        I mean I don't know what to tell you there. And I'm not advocating for other people to do it. I think they should do what they think is right in terms of their dietary choices. Which includes not eating chicken if they think they shouldn't.

                                        • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                                          ·
                                          edit-2
                                          2 years ago

                                          Believe it or not, saying something is "fine" is advocating that thing. Playing enlightened centrist and not drawing any difference between good and bad things, just saying "follow your heart :)" is reactionary behavior. "I think different unions should do what they think is right in terms of racial segregation, which includes allowing black people if they think they should" is patently a statement which defends segregation.

                                          • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                                            ·
                                            edit-2
                                            2 years ago

                                            I'm not saying eating chicken is fine. I don't eat chicken.

                                            I said, more or less, thinking eating chicken is fine is fine. Which of course it clearly is, I know tons of good people who think it's fine and thus eat it.

                                            • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                                              ·
                                              edit-2
                                              2 years ago

                                              "Eating chicken is fine if you think eating chicken is fine" is just a needlessly convoluted way of saying "eating chicken is fine." "Good person" is a nonsense label, we should talk about specific behaviors as right and wrong, not people as good or bad. Racism is wrong, carnism is wrong. Plenty of people throughout history have been bigots, we don't have to judge them as "good people" and "bad people," to spend our time arguing about whether Stalin was a "good person" or a "bad person" based on e.g. the criminalization of homosexuality. We do need to be clear that racism, homophobia, and carnism are wrong, not fine, and things we should advocate against.

                                              • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                                                ·
                                                2 years ago

                                                But I don't interact with behaviors, I interact with people. I can engage in behaviors myself, but as soon as it's someone else's behavior in question it's outside of my zone of direct control, so any modulations of the behavior have to be done through the person and my relationship with them.

                                                    • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                                                      ·
                                                      2 years ago

                                                      Ok, literally killing and eating animals is "just a choice" but discriminating against humans makes you a bad person.

                                                      You are a speciesist. If hatred and bigotry makes someone a bad person, you are one. Fuck off.

                                                      • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                                                        ·
                                                        edit-2
                                                        2 years ago

                                                        I actually think I'm rather swell, if a bit dense. And speciesm doesn't actually mean anything everyone's a speciest, or at the very least a phylumist or kingdomist, in as much as species and phylums and kingdoms are anything beyond abstractions (which they aren't).

                                                        • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                                                          ·
                                                          2 years ago

                                                          You are correct, species are abstractions. That's why using species to draw lines of when violence is "fine" and when violence makes you a "bad person" is bullshit.

                                                            • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                                                              ·
                                                              2 years ago

                                                              You don't have to because the violence is built into society. You can just go sit in the whites-only section of the restaurant and feel smug about the fact that you personally don't care what color your friends' skin is, because the mechanisms of privilege are all ready made for you to take advantage of, and then get mad at all those black protesters because they care so much, and enlightened people don't care about things.

                                                                • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                                                                  ·
                                                                  2 years ago

                                                                  Cool, because the racism isn't something you can put in your mouth you can recognize it as a bad thing.

                                                                    • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                                                                      ·
                                                                      2 years ago

                                                                      I have no doubt there are plenty of racists on this website, and plenty more who come in from time to time. Taking action against racism is how we deal with them. Taking action against carnism is how we deal with the reactionary human supremacists. Spending your time sniping at vegans as you do is the opposite of that.

                                                                      • a_blanqui_slate [none/use name, any]
                                                                        ·
                                                                        edit-2
                                                                        2 years ago

                                                                        I mean I think we can all agree leftism, is at the current juncture explicitly anti-racist in it's construction and I think we can all agree in theory (if not in practice in specific instances) that a leftist doing a racism is either not doing leftism at that point or doing leftism poorly.

                                                                        • sweepy [she/her,he/him]
                                                                          ·
                                                                          edit-2
                                                                          2 years ago

                                                                          All I'm hearing is "There are no good and bad things, only group consensus. Racism became bad when we all agreed it was bad."

                                                                          Edit: Look, all I really want is for you to stop hurting animals and stop punching left at vegans. If you feel the need to play enlightened centrist, punch right and go annoy the anti-vegans who keep stirring up shit, especially on this comm.

      • betelgeuse [comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Don't argue with me, i agree with you. I agree it's okay to judge people's self-control issues based on a personal/group value system. I wasn't the one who said doing so was strictly protestant brainworms. Take it up with OP. People don't have infinite self control and they can't always abide by our values. It's silly to think that our collective ideas about what's right and wrong wag the dog and make people's self-control fall into line. As if they suddenly do have infinite self control when it comes to something that we think is wrong. Therefore it's purely a choice for them and they're doing it all on purpose just to be evil.

        I'm not being funny, we do really agree. I just think it's wrong to chock it all up to a lazy social critique. Like yeah the protestants are definitely the only group who judges people and treats personal behavior as a moral failing. Says the site who does nothing but argue over which personal behaviors are the most egregious.

  • ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    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.

    While this is true, it's not the full story and we risk over-individualizing weight if we don't always remind ourselves that the obesity epidemic in America and elsewhere did not exist until modern times. We are products of our environment, and our capitalist food system floods us with far more sugars than our bodies are designed to handle, and the weight that you settle at as someone who is subjected to this diet is not the weight your body would settle on under other conditions.

    • Nagarjuna [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      I agree, absolutely. Industrial agriculture, obesogens, car infrastructure, fast food advertising, etc. all play a role.

  • ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    i posted earlier but i'm here again for the struggle session.

    ITT: :brainworms:, not surprising given how much social baggage there is around being fat. Shouting "CICO!" at people isn't productive and you shouldn't do it. Your weight is a combination of environmental factors and habits, and you have the power to change some of the habits though many of them (like driving to work if you live in America) and your environment are outside of your control. Also, being overweight is not a moral failing, but a lot of the weight loss rhetoric that we've been exposed to all our lives treats it as one. Lastly, while changing your eating habits is the most effective thing you can do to lose or gain weight, we need to recognize that it's also about as difficult as quitting heroin.

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      we need to recognize that it’s also about as difficult as quitting heroin

      :doubt:

      No one's saying it's easy, but come on.

      • 7bicycles [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I don't think he's wrong. Like you could quit heroin entirely and never do it again, that's not really an option with food

      • ssjmarx [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Generally about 5% of people who diet are successful in the long term. Generally about 5% of people who quit heroin stay off it. Unless I've misremembered these numbers, it's pretty fukken similar.

        • 7bicycles [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Yeah but only for "diets", as in "change your way of eating to some unsustainable bullshit for X Weeks then go back to how you used to eat".

          That's set up to fail. If you wanna keep weight off you gotta actually change your diet, as in "what do you eat all the time" and lifestyle.

    • 7bicycles [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Picking up on the heroin metaphor here: pretending like it's biologically impossible to not be addicted to heroin, like OP purported in the much contestet sentence of some people just are fat, is also not a great way to go

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

    Why is everyone in this thread so intent on defending their assumed right to body shame others? Seriously, everyone here blaming these people for being obese has almost certainly never helped a comrade through struggles through their issues with weight. I've helped comrades through breakdowns, and even heard that the difficulty in fighting obesity and the stigma attached to it has caused them to contemplate un-aliving themselves. It genuinely hurts my heart to imagine any of those comrades happening upon this thread and seeing what you all think about them.

    • Nagarjuna [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      You agree with me! I said

      Weight here is co-produced by environment, hormones, eating habits and movement habits

      and

      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.

      This is an emotional topic and I want to point out that our stances are not as far apart as they might first appear.

  • BigAssBlueBug [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Gonna b reel with chief, "chubby" in america is considered "wildly obese" literally everywhere else in the world. this is coming from someone who is fat and likes fatter bodies anyhow.

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

      Almost as if uncontrollable birth circumstances (such as place of birth) can affect obesity rates. Wonder if there's anything to that.

  • glimmer_twin [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Every comment chain in this thread:

    Poster 1: Diet has nothing to do with body weight

    Poster 2: yes it does

    Poster 1: well of course diet has something to do with body weight, but nevertheless…

  • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    If you are in this thread talking about how it's fine to hate fat people, fuck off. Enter the pit, you're no comrade of mine.