posted
No. I AM open to other viewpoints, and can in fact be convinced by things that are persuasive enough.
I just reserve the right to dismiss people's answers as either irrelevant, unconvincing, or incomplete. I don't consider any one individual's personal life story, told from their perspective, to be authoritative or even necessarily accurate in its entirety.
If they're offended by that, it's entirely not my problem. I wouldn't expect anyone to hear one of my anecdotes and say, "Oh, wow! Just because Tom had bad experience X, I'm clearly wrong about the likelihood and prevalence of phenomenon Y." If we're using words like "stigma," words that speak to a broader set of data, single points of experience are useful for emotional reference but are not the end of the conversation.
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posted
You ask for experiences, then dismiss those experiences. You dismiss them not only as not representative of the norm, but you even discount that they happened as the person says they did. That means the original question is disingenuous.
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To be fair Tom, You have stated that you have concluded that Mrs. M does not appreciate the advantages she has obtained because of her looks. If you have made such a conclusion, despite her protestations to the opposite then you have some obligation to either defend your conclusion. Your claim was rather specific to Mrs. M, so your defense needs to be rather specific to her as well.
I have never claimed that you personally have an advantages from being a white male. I freely admit that is some cases, and perhaps yours could be one, it might be a disadvantage to be a white male even though statistically this is unlikely. Your analogy lack substance.
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quote:If we're using words like "stigma," words that speak to a broader set of data, single points of experience are useful for emotional reference but are not the end of the conversation.
Tom, you've stated that your weight is something you could fix if you had time. (Note, I'm not trying to generalize this, but Tom has stated this is true for him: "In order to lose weight, I've discovered that I need to seriously -- not just casually -- work out for at least half an hour a day, or an hour every two days.")
If it's so damn bad, why haven't you started exercising every day? Because it's not so bad that you don't think the benefits of the other ways you spend your time outweigh the negatives of your weight. You, if what you say is true, have chosen to receive those benefits at the cost of the downsides of being overweight.
Therefore, being overweight isn't a net negative for you. Whatever that amount of stigma is, it's not enough to cause you to reallocate your time.
I'm sure you wish you could have those positives without facing the negatives from your weight. But that doesn't change the fact that you get an extra half hour a day that someone who exercises to stay thin doesn't because of your decision.
posted
The thing is, you can look at someone's life from the outside and assume that because they are beautiful, or talented, or wealthy, or seem to have a stable home life, they ought to be happy, and it's easy to condemn them for not being so. But from the inside, it isn't always like that.
My own experiences this year have really brought this home to me. From the outside, I have a lot of advantages, which I do appreciate: I have loving parents, I've achieved academic success, I have good friends, a job that challenges me, and I'm getting married soon. And yet, I was diagnosed with depression this year - this was partly to do with my struggles in my first year of teaching, but mostly to do with how I interpret what happens to me. There is neither a contradiction nor a moral weakness in having all these advantages and not being happy. Just as I would no longer blame myself for being depressed in spite of all the good things in my life, so I could no longer blame others for this.
However, I do see it as something of a moral weakness to be insensitive to or dismissive of others' pain. It's clear that Mrs M's feelings are genuine. She was genuinely uncomfortable and unhappy about some of the things that you see as advantages. That's her perspective, and since she has privileged access to her feelings, we from the outside cannot claim that she did not in fact feel those things that she says she did.
Not only that, but she has clearly stated on this thread that at least some of those feelings of unhappiness have been caused by the dismissive attitude that others have had to her (eg her friends telling her that she shouldn't complain about anything because she has a husband). The response from some people on this thread has been to display precisely that attitude, which I can't help but feel is thoughtless at best, and malicious at worst. I know that we all have the right to air our views, and that that's part of what Hatrack is about, but on these very personal topics I think it would help if people really stopped and thought about how their comments might affect others.
I do agree, though, that the fact that Mrs M had those feelings and experiences does not entitle anyone to draw general conclusions about the experience of all beautiful, wealthy and talented people. Just because one person responds in a certain way to an experience, does not mean that everyone else will respond in the same way to the same experience. For example, in my school there are teachers who have had more severe issues with behaviour management than I have, and who have been on the receiving end of more unpleasant behaviour from the students, but for whatever reason it doesn't seem to affect them as profoundly or as negatively as it affects me (at least, not from what I can see, or from what they say about it). It therefore seems unreasonable to assume that all fat people or all thin people will respond in the same way to comments about their looks.
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quote:You dismiss them not only as not representative of the norm, but you even discount that they happened as the person says they did. That means the original question is disingenuous.
Only if I have no intention of ever accepting their account. And believe it or not, I take most things people say at face value. The more incredible I consider the claim, of course -- be it "All my plants have doubled in size since I started salting them" or "I talk to God regularly and get answers" -- the higher my standard of evidence. I didn't realize you had bought into stephen's whole microcluster bit, or had been convinced that you too should be eating heavy metals to protect your organs in the same way he had experienced.
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quote: Therefore, being overweight isn't a net negative for you. Whatever that amount of stigma is, it's not enough to cause you to reallocate your time.
Nor have I ever said it should be. I'm not sure why this is relevant.
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quote:you can look at someone's life from the outside and assume that because they are beautiful, or talented, or wealthy, or seem to have a stable home life, they ought to be happy, and it's easy to condemn them for not being so.
I can't see a single instance of that on this thread, actually. I maintain that most of the people with their dander up are shadowboxing.
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I don't believe you, not when it comes to the answers you get to questions you ask. The evidence is to the contrary.
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My problem with Mrs. M's post is that I know plenty of girls who were gorgeous/ugly and large-breasted in middle/high school that loved it. They got positive and negative attention, but much more positive than negative.
I think whatever negativity Mrs. M drew from being large breasted and attractive has more to do with her attitude and self-esteem than society's assumptions about whatever.
In the argument of which-is-worse, there's no question that it's better to be attractive than unattractive. It's also better to be thin than fat. And when it comes to breasts, women want MEDIUM sized breasts--not too small, not too big. Thus, having a flat chest and having a "back-problems" chest are equally bad from what I've heard.
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quote:Nor have I ever said it should be. I'm not sure why this is relevant.
Because, when deciding that Mrs.M's problems are really just "jealousy, resentment, misunderstanding," remember that anyone judging your losses knows that, however bad they may be, they're not worse than an extra half hour commute.
And, frankly, Mrs.M's problems sound a bit worse than that to me, your assurances that they're not really that bad to the contrary.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
You'd be amazed how many answers I get that you don't snark and whine about, Katie. I conclude that you only snark about the ones you're upset that I didn't accept.
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quote:remember that anyone judging your losses knows that, however bad they may be, they're not worse than an extra half hour commute
That's not entirely fair, Dag. You're assuming that people expense out their lives -- and free time -- logically. Tell me again how you could be spending your free time helping young orphans instead of surfing the Web. That kind of calculus happens at an irrational level, or else no one would ever eat a McDonald's burger.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:My problem with Mrs. M's post is that I know plenty of girls who were gorgeous/ugly and large-breasted in middle/high school that loved it. They got positive and negative attention, but much more positive than negative.
Why is that a problem with her post? Did she say that there was nobody who liked being large-breasted? No.
She said:
quote:All my life, I’ve been the object of scorn, ridicule, or envy because of the way I look or the things I have. People have been very cruel and ugly to me and have felt completely virtuous and justified doing so. Frankly, I’m getting tired of it.
<paragraphs of examples>
My point is this: neither my looks nor my husband nor my Ivy League education has protected me from misfortune. My figure didn’t make my father not abuse then abandon me. My Ivy League education didn’t keep my mother from having a brain tumor. My marriage didn’t make me not be infertile or save the 3 babies I lost or keep Aerin from being a micropreemie. I would trade everything I am or have so that Aerin could be healthy. Everyone has sorrow and adversity in their lives and everyone is entitled to sympathy and compassion – even people who have things you think you want.
Which part isn't true?
quote:You're assuming that people expense out their lives -- and free time -- logically. Tell me again how you could be spending your free time helping young orphans instead of surfing the Web. That kind of calculus happens at an irrational level, or else no one would ever eat a McDonald's burger.
Good. I'm glad you get that.
Now stop trying to sort out Mrs.M's pain logically and show some damn sympathy.
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quote: Now stop trying to sort out Mrs.M's pain logically and show some damn sympathy.
Is that the purpose of this thread? To demonstrate that we're all capable of sympathy?
quote:The cases I've noticed are already too many.
One person a year who dies because of toast is too many. I would not conclude that toast is a deadly killer.
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quote:Is that the purpose of this thread? To demonstrate that we're all capable of sympathy?
What was the purpose of your first post in this thread, Tom? Especially, "But yours, even by the spoiled standards of the people on this forum, is not a story of woe."
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posted
Mainly, to head off what I felt was an attempt to draw an equivalence between the misfortunes of the attractive and the misfortunes of the unattractive in a way that, by using personal anecdotes, could not avoid becoming personal unless the alternate route -- that of the sacrosanct -- were taken. And while I understand people have a tendency to treat all personal pain as sacrosanct, I consider that tendency regrettable, too. So I ripped off that scab and didn't look back.
I was snarkier in my initial post than Mrs. M deserved, both because I originally missed some elements of her first post and because she's got a personality type that, at least online, grates on me enormously. But the point of my initial question -- whether there's any evidence of a widespread stigma against thin people in our society -- was, I felt, largely unaddressed by her personal anecdotes, and I was inadequate to the task of explaining why this was so without also appearing to incautious readers to "dismiss" those anecdotes.
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Treating pain as sacrosanct isn't the same as not being callous.
You asked if there was stigma. After someone said she had faced it, you asked her to detail her personal experiences. You made a point of expressing concern about it being too personal. If personal anecdotes are meaningless to you, don't ask someone to make themselves publicly vulnerable to provide them - especially when you know in advance the enormity of what you're asking.
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It's not that personal anecdotes are meaningless, Dag. It's that the personal anecdotes in question don't demonstrate anything resembling a societal stigma. Had she been refused a role in a school play because she was too thin to be a believable female lead, sure. Had she lost a job because her employers didn't want a thin person representing their agency, sure. Schoolyard teasing and jealous sniping isn't -- and I said this on the other thread -- the kind of thing I was asking for more details about.
Perhaps it's the definition of the word "stigma" that I'm using. Or perhaps people don't understand why a widespread stigma is worse than having random, isolated people feel jealous of you.
I don't know how often I have to repeat this before it's understood.
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quote: It isn't even close to being as hard as what I go through daily. Period.
And I'm speaking here as someone whose wife is very thin, so thin that people have assumed her entire life that she has an eating disorder, that she's practically unable to find clothes anywhere -- especially now that they've actually made Size 0 (for women) bigger to accomodate expanding waistlines. I'm not exactly unfamiliar with the "thin" experience.
I'm saying -- and I'm saying this completely unapologetically -- that thin people, even very thin people, have it far easier than fat people, and especially very fat people.
Can anyone on this thread seriously question that statement? Not just say "Oh, that's a rude thing to observe," but actually claim that it's wrong?
I do. I have little pity for someone who admits he chooses not to change his lifestyle but then complains about how hard his life is because of his weight. I have a lot more pity for the few people who actually DO have a thyroid disorder (rather than the many who claim to have one), like my aunt, and gain weight DESPITE lifestyle changes.
Same goes for very thin people, at least those who are unable to gain weight and are at the point where it is potentially dangerous. The ones who constantly being lectured over nd over again about how they are setting bad example for others, just because of the way they look.
That sounds a lot like some of the comments I heard about overweight people, Tom, but I guess you just don't see it that way.
I realized you were a big guy when I met you, Tom, but it didn't mean that I wasn't going to give you a chance, or that I thought less of you. I realize that some people might, but that is their problem....and it is a problem that everyone has experienced at one time or another. We have ALL been judged by appearance at some point in our lives, and unfairly.
I don't have to like everything about a person to like them, or consider them a friend. Or even more. What matters is that their physical condition is only one part of who they are, and that we all have flaws.
But I have little or no respect for someone who thinks they have the right to dismiss everyone elses pain and suffering, just because they aren't overweight.
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quote:Isn't that what you want with all your complaints about being fat, Tom?
Amazingly, no. In fact, I don't recall having once -- on any thread -- asked for sympathy for my weight, or requested (as was the original topic) that fat people be granted some sort of special status, etc.
In fact, where I have commented on it, I've said that the worst thing about the stigma against the fat is that it's almost certainly justifiable, and perhaps even useful.
Like I've said, the people arguing on this thread are protesting some imaginary, shadow version of me who's been saying the things they want to have not wanted to hear. As an example, please indicate where I've "dismissed" the pain and suffering of people who aren't overweight.
You're batting at a straw man.
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quote:I don't know how often I have to repeat this before it's understood.
Until you realize that you basically set up Mrs.M and Rabbit and then played gotcha with them. This isn't about you scoring points in a discussion.
Go back and reread Mrs.M's post. She's very specific about what she's saying. She made two points, I quoted them right above on this page.
Sure, it was in response to your use of the word stigma. But it's clear - absolutely clear - that she's making a specific, limited point. She even moved it to a different thread to take it out of the discussion that triggered it.
Let me go back to this post of yours:
quote:Is that the purpose of this thread? To demonstrate that we're all capable of sympathy?
You made the purpose of this thread into something it wasn't. You defined the terms of the discussion and twisted what was said in a different thread into a response to your particular framing of the issue.
Mrs.M's purpose seemed pretty clearly to be 1) recount several painful experiences linked by things largely considered - even by Mrs.M - to be good fortune, and 2) state that there are troubles unrelated to wealth and attractiveness.
You were dismissive - see below - in the service of your point - one not being contested by this personal revelation.
quote:You're batting at a straw man.
No, you're living in denial. See "schoolyard teasing and jealous sniping." See reply #1 of this thread, and not just the bits you left out. See your response to Rabbit's recount of her experiences.
It's not just that you say one set of problems are worse. It's that, to do this, you continually recast the others' description of their problems in terms specifically chosen to trivialize them.
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quote: Mrs.M's purpose seemed pretty clearly to be 1) recount several painful experiences linked by things largely considered - even by Mrs.M - to be good fortune, and 2) state that there are troubles unrelated to wealth and attractiveness.
If I had felt that this were her thesis, and had not felt that her thread were instead an attempt to answer my question, I wouldn't have posted on it at all. I basically said as much in my first post on this thread. I don't, in general, post in sympathy or "this is my life" threads at all, and I would have been completely uninterested in a thread that boiled down to "even people with advantages have problems;" it's a rare day I even post in a congratulations thread. In general, when I feel it's necessary, people get emails.
If I misunderstood the purpose of this thread, and it was not an attempt to answer my question regarding stigma, then I'm glad that the other posters here who've written to affirm Mrs. M's emotions have done so.
quote:It's that, to do this, you continually recast the others' description of their problems in terms specifically chosen to trivialize them.
No, not "trivialize." I'm attempting to identify motive, which is specifically relevant to stigma. If someone is teasing you because you're a kid and you're different, it doesn't particularly matter in which way you're different. If someone is rude to you because you're an adult and they're jealous of you, that's specifically a different sort of treatment than if they disapprove of you.
I don't mean to make value judgements on these things, except to point out the relative severity of an actual stigma as opposed to poor treatment based on these other motivations.
And this isn't the only time I've said this, either.
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posted
Except they're inaccurate summarizations. They clearly do not adequately summarize either Rabbit's or Mrs.M's experience.
You're purpose is immaterial to the fact that you're not being accurate and the inaccuracy is trivializing.
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quote: You're purpose is immaterial to the fact that you're not being accurate and the inaccuracy is trivializing.
Except that I think I AM being accurate, of course, or else I can't imagine how we would've gotten into this conversation in the first place.
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quote: If someone is teasing you because you're a kid and you're different, it doesn't particularly matter in which way you're different.
Which was one of my points for the get go.
I read her thread as a way of pointing out how people tend to dismiss others pain just because of their attractiveness, and belittle their achievements.
To point out that even some of the very things seen by others as advantages can cause pain and raise issues that last a lifetime.
I feel this to be as much, if not more, of a problem as the stigma attached to being overweight. If an overweight person is motivated to lose weight, it results in something good.
What does the other set of prejudices cause other than pain and insecurity?
I know a lot of people treat overweight people unfairly. I am NOT saying that that is right, or that they have an easy time of it. I know they don't most of the time.
But there are a lot of reasons for that that are justified. I have sat next to a person on a plane who was so overweight that he really did take up all of his seat and most of mine. He also smelled horrible.
I didn't care WHY he smelled, or why he was so overweight....I just wanted to be able to sit down in the seat I had payed for, and not gag.
Not everyone who is overweight has poor hygiene, or is that overweight. Not every person who smells is overweight.
But I have played in a dart league against a guy who was 400 lbs, and when he came out of the bathroom he reeked of feces so bad that I had to leave the area.
I don't care why he was so large that he couldn't wipe his own butt, I just didn't want to play darts anymore. Not there.
And I refuse to be ashamed of that.
I judge people on who they are, and how they act around me. Weight is a small part of that, but it is a part. So is physical appearance, and cleanliness. However, no one has ever said that I have to agree with every decision my friends make in order to be friends with them. I don't care how much someone weighs as long as they can keep up with me....and since I am not so physical that I go mountain climbing or kayacking all the time, weight usually isn't a factor.
I also wouldn't ask Lance Armstrong to bike with me. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Except that I think I AM being accurate, of course, or else I can't imagine how we would've gotten into this conversation in the first place.
Well, Tom, you consistently leave out the physical stuff when you give what, in context, seem to be intended as comprehensive summaries: the groping which at least one person mentioned and the justification of the attempted rape based on Mrs.M's appearance supposedly meaning that she wants to be forced to have sex.
It's not just the fact that someone tried to rape her - something that happens to people who are not attractive, too. It's the very specific additional harm of trying to make the victim think she deserves to be raped and tying that dessert to an attribute that others then commented on relentlessly for the next 8 years.
That's not mere teasing and jealousy. That's being constantly reminded that you deserve to be raped because you're stacked.
Even without the rape, I don't think being constantly referred to as slutty can possibly qualify as mere teasing. It is a stigma - one which you might not consider bad, but is probably significantly more painful to an observant Jew.
quote:
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
quote:
quote:You're batting at a straw man.
No, you're living in denial
It really has appeared to me that an awful lot of the of the posts leveled against Tom have argued against things which Tom didn't actually say.
I don't remember any of yours being that way though.
MPH, I'm not sure what you meant here. I can see this as either a compliment (that I haven't attacked things Tom didn't say) or as mild chastisement that this post is attacking something Tom didn't say, in contrast to earlier posts of mine which didn't.
(And I won't be offended either way - my mind is just flipping between both interpretations and I can't settle on one.)
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*whisper* This is why I haven't been arguing with you, Kwea, except to point out that whomever you're arguing with, it isn't me.
quote:If an overweight person is motivated to lose weight, it results in something good. What does the other set of prejudices cause other than pain and insecurity?
Well, assuming that being "excessively" thin is also a health risk....
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quote: That's being constantly reminded that you deserve to be raped because you're stacked.
There's something I'd like to say in reply to this, but it really is more judgemental and pop-psychy than I'm comfortable being in public. If you can't guess what it is, please drop me a line and I'll elaborate on my thinking.
quote:MPH, I'm not sure what you meant here. I can see this as either a compliment (that I haven't attacked things Tom didn't say) or as mild chastisement that this post is attacking something Tom didn't say, in contrast to earlier posts of mine which didn't.
For several pages, I've been thinking to myself that there's a lot of fighting against straw men, with people getting mat at Tom for saying things that I can't see that he said. I've almost written a couple of posts saying so.
So when Tom said "You [guys] are batting at straw men", I posted to say that, at least to one other person, it does appear that way.
Then I realized that it could be read as "You [, Dagonee,] are batting at straw men," and I felt the need to say that I hadn't noticed that being the case.
So, it's a mild compliment toward you (I haven't noticed you doing this), and a mild chastizement at others (who I have noticed).
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Tom, I think you implied in some of your earlier posts some of what I was saying. I did notice that you cleared some of that up in later posts, and if I was misinterpeting you I am sorry.
You WERE very dismissive of a lot of Mrs. M had to say, though, and I don't feel it was well done at all. I don't know if you realized HOW dismissve and insensitive you were being, but I think you do.
It seemed deliberate, at least to me, and I think you admitted it several times as well.
Being excessivly thin IS a heath risk, and being enderweight places you at risk for a great many diseases,and mnakes recovery from seroius diseases problematic at beast.
Also, most of the people I know who were underweight like this had already tried to gain weight but were unable to. My mother in law lost 65 lbs in 4 weeks, and was unable to keep food down at all. They couldn't find out what was wrong, and nothing worked. Aftr she has surgery, and almost died, people actually had the nerve to say she shoudl be GLAD it happened, as she was thinner than she had been in years.
True, it was a medical condition, but I have known people who would have given almost anyting to gain another 20 lbs.
I know it is hard to sympatise with them, but trust me, it sucked.
One of them lost a baby because of it, or at least partially because of it. Perhaps that is why I reacted so strongly to this, because I have seen the pain it can bring. I realize this is an extreme, but so is the 400 lb man. Most obese people aren't THAT obese....he was only about 5'7'' tall.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:In the argument of which-is-worse, there's no question that it's better to be attractive than unattractive. It's also better to be thin than fat. And when it comes to breasts, women want MEDIUM sized breasts--not too small, not too big. Thus, having a flat chest and having a "back-problems" chest are equally bad from what I've heard.
All of these things are very much in question. I have met people whose attractiveness has caused them plenty of trouble - both from unwanted attention and from it's capacity to distort one's personality. It is not unreasonable to think unattractive people end up better off, or could end up better off if they approached it correctly. I, for one, have found the correlation between physical attractiveness and happiness to be pretty weak in the people I know.
This is especially true when you consider the impact across time of certain things. Attractive people tend to not remain attractive their whole lives, for instance, and seem to take it harder when they lose that quality. (And if you extend that argument to the afterlife, consider that Christians believe that the most troubled in this world will benefit in the afterlife. Eastern religions have some similar ideas.)
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quote:I think that every adult in America understands that its rude to ridicule fat people to their face. In the circles I live in, it is absolute taboo comment on a fat woman's weight. On the other hand, nearly everyone felt free to tell me and my husband that I'd be better looking if I gained weight.
They may know it, but it sure doesn't stop them. Or maybe it's just Canada, I don't know. I had an awful lot of people lecture me about being fat (try this diet, this exercise, you need discipline, don't you know you can have a heart attack, your cholesterol is too high!) or call me names or yell other insults at me because I was fat. Knowing something is wrong and refraining from doing it are two very different things.
quote:Thus, having a flat chest and having a "back-problems" chest are equally bad from what I've heard.
I could argue about the difficulty, nay, impossibility, of finding bras that are, oh, say 32DDD or 38DDD or such. I could argue about how expensive they are once you find them ($75 and up - I once paid $135 for a bra that only sort of fitted because it was the closest I could find).
In all honesty, I have friends who are so flat they don't have any kind of landscaping on their chest at all, and they've shared their pain with me, and even though we're at opposite ends of the extreme, the experiences were pretty similar in some ways. Self-image problems, clothes not fitting properly, stressing about attractiveness to men, the desire for augmentation/reduction surgery...
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quote:Attractive people tend to not remain attractive their whole lives, for instance, and seem to take it harder when they lose that quality.
Harder than people who were never attractive at all, you mean? So you're basically admitting up front that there is a merit to being attractive that, when lost, is recognizable as a cost?
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posted
"Aftr she has surgery, and almost died, people actually had the nerve to say she shoudl be GLAD it happened, as she was thinner than she had been in years."
See, this kind of sounds like it supports the idea that being fat is the worst fate ever in society's eyes. "You had surgery and almost died, but be glad! You are less fat!"
(Btw, sorry, I don't know how to do the fancy quotes around portions of a post; I just recently starting quoting full posts, and I'm feeling all techy and stuff.)
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posted
I feel like I shouldn't have posted earlier because everyone else here is a lot smarter than me. I've wanted to post something intelligent and insightful and failed.
Just thought I'd let you all know that.
Dag and Tom, you guys are amazingly over my head.
But I always tend to understand Tom better than Dag.
Anyway, Mrs. M, I'm sorry for the pain you've felt.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: No. I AM open to other viewpoints, and can in fact be convinced by things that are persuasive enough.
Leaving the current discussion aside, I have been on Hatrack for three years. And I would hardly claim to have read every thread you have been involved in (or even close). Perhaps this is merely due to my faulty memory, but I cannot think of a single instance where you have conceded on anything but minor factual corrections (like mine early in this thread).
When was the last time on Hatrack when someone convinced you of something significant -- made you change your POV on an issue you had had a definite opinion about?
(And I specify Hatrack simply because we cannot see when this happens elsewhere. My point is actually not whether you can be convinced, but whether people around here have ever seen it happen.)
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posted
Tom, what exactly is your working definition of "stigma?" Someone asked this before and you didn't answer, I'm asking again because a lot of the thing you say don't amount to a stigma sure seem like it to me.
Also, this may be presumptuous of me, but I'm going to follow your example in this thread and not let that stop me. What is it exactly that you have to endure "on a daily basis" on account of being overweight that is so much worse than the hardships others have described from being skinny/attractive? I'm not asking because I disbelieve you could have those experience, just because I don't really have a frame of reference for what you're alluding to. I have never been overweight myself, and the people I know who are don't complain about things like that (at least not to me) so it would really help me understand to have some details on what exactly you're talking about.
Posts: 134 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Sharpie, it does support the fact that people consider being thin better than being not thin.
It also shows that people don't understand that too thin, or getting thin the wrong way, can be as dangerous as being grossly obese.
Both ends of the spectrum have similar traits, to be honest.
I never said being grossly overweight was easy, or healthy. I just refuted the assumption that thin (even too thin) was always better off, and had little or no negative consequences. It depends on the situation, and the people involved.
I think the problem with both situations it they often assume the other side of the fence has it easy, partially because their experiences are so opposite that they can't imagine being the other person. The phrase is "the grass isn't always greener on the other side", after all.
Tom complains that his future employment is affected by his weight. Mrs. M says that people rarely saw how competent and how smart she was because they saw her as pretty and as a sexual object, and that affected her work experiences.
In both cases the mistake being made is judging people solely by appearances, and I think the two have more in common than Tom was willing to admit.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: It's not that personal anecdotes are meaningless, Dag. It's that the personal anecdotes in question don't demonstrate anything resembling a societal stigma. Had she been refused a role in a school play because she was too thin to be a believable female lead, sure. Had she lost a job because her employers didn't want a thin person representing their agency, sure. Schoolyard teasing and jealous sniping isn't -- and I said this on the other thread -- the kind of thing I was asking for more details about.
Perhaps it's the definition of the word "stigma" that I'm using. Or perhaps people don't understand why a widespread stigma is worse than having random, isolated people feel jealous of you.
I don't know how often I have to repeat this before it's understood.
I was refused the chance to play the romantic lead in school plays because was too thin and flat chested to make a believabel female lead. I was always cast in character parts and childrens parts. When I was in college, I didn't get several jobs because being thin made me look to young to wait tables.
It isn't simply a matter of random isolated people feeling jealous of me. It is a consistent pattern that has persisted over decades with thousands of people I've interacted with.
Stigma's come in many forms. Mrs. M was considered 'stupid' and 'permiscuous' because of the way she looked. Slut is stigma.
I was considered not only ugly, but psychotic, because I was so thin. Those are stigmas.
And it isn't random isolated incidents. It is a societal pattern.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: When was the last time on Hatrack when someone convinced you of something significant -- made you change your POV on an issue you had had a definite opinion about?
Years ago, Tom shifted his position quite dramatically on the abortion issue, IIRC as the direct result of a discussion here. I think this was before you registered.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Tom complains that his future employment is affected by his weight. Mrs. M says that people rarely saw how competent and how smart she was because they saw her as pretty and as a sexual object, and that affected her work experiences.
I'm not sure Tom has actually voiced such a complaint, but it he has the statistics don't support the claim. The employment bias against fat people, is only valid for white women. Studies show that there is no such bias for men. Interestingly, it is short men who are discriminated against both socially and in the work place not fat men.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: When was the last time on Hatrack when someone convinced you of something significant -- made you change your POV on an issue you had had a definite opinion about?
Years ago, Tom shifted his position quite dramatically on the abortion issue, IIRC as the direct result of a discussion here. I think this was before you registered.
You recall incorrectly, Tom did dramatically shift his position on abortion but it was as a result of a personal real world experience not a hatrack discussion.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
There's an undercurrent in this thread that I wonder if anyone else has noticed, or even cares about. People have faced some things that, for them, were pretty crappy and that have affected their lives negatively. When this stuff happens, the natural first response, being humans and all, is a mix of anger, disappointment, and really a bit self-destructive.
And to a person, it seems, the ones who truly master the situation later in life have found ways to get over it. They find other things that are of more value than the opinions of others. They realize that their lives are blessed despite their particular burdens. They even learn to VALUE the things that make them different.
And some pretty horrendous stuff gets "swept away" from being important anymore when that shift happens.
And when that doesn't happen...well, the stuff and self-loathing feed on each other, don't they? And the person becomes embittered, resentful, and lives a life of self-fulfilling prophecies of failure.
The bottom line is that for most of us, the stuff we deal with IS surmountable, and while we still may face discrimination from the world around us, it matters less and less as we find other things we care about.
And isn't that the biggest blessing in all of this? That we actually live in a place and time where those early societal views of US don't have to define us for the rest of our lives. That we have options. That our conscious choice to move beyond is actually an effective coping strategy that has an impact on our surrounding environment.
Imagine how much worse ALL of this stuff would be if that weren't the case -- if we were the people who didn't have an opportunity to take some measure of control. Or if we were among the unfortunate folks whose environment reinforces the idea that they are hateful AND who can't get out of that environment, or who can't somehow change that environment.
Tom mentioned something about this in calling the norm here kind "spoiled." In a way he's right. The tragedies for most of us aren't near what other people in other cultures (even here in the US) suffer with every day and have no reasonable way out.
But in a broader sense, we aren't spoiled, just fortunate. And also blessed.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote: Tom mentioned something about this in calling the norm here kind "spoiled." In a way he's right. The tragedies for most of us aren't near what other people in other cultures (even here in the US) suffer with every day and have no reasonable way out.
Regardless of how much any of us share on this board, none of us can truly know all of the tragedies we've weathered. To summarily lump every poster together under the description of spoiled serves no purpose other than to belittle and dismiss their issues as being relevant.
posted
The generalization bob made wasn't to belittle or dismiss anyone's problems. It was a fact that needed to be pointed out about the posters here. We all have access to computers.
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The more incredible I consider the claim, of course -- be it "All my plants have doubled in size since I started salting them" or "I talk to God regularly and get answers" -- the higher my standard of evidence. I didn't realize you had bought into stephen's whole microcluster bit, or had been convinced that you too should be eating heavy metals to protect your organs in the same way he had experienced.![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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Or maybe it's just Canada, I don't know. I had an awful lot of people lecture me about being fat (try this diet, this exercise, you need discipline, don't you know you can have a heart attack, your cholesterol is too high!) or call me names or yell other insults at me because I was fat. Knowing something is wrong and refraining from doing it are two very different things.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
My point is actually not whether you can be convinced, but whether people around here have ever seen it happen.)
