What you can see

One other thing about that event for wealth-management customers...

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2025/03/retirement-and-responsibility.html

My source said that she was the only fat person there.

"That's because you were the only poor person there."

"I don't like what you're saying!"

I am completely aware that there are thin poor people and fat wealthy people. In general, the wealthier you are the more likely you are to align with worldly beauty standards, including those related to body weight.

There are some factors that seem to offer some explanation, like food deserts or the body entering famine mode, but I suspect there are other factors that we don't understand at this time.

In this case, fat acts as one more factor to help someone feel out of place when they are not in their own financial class. Of course, fat can help people to feel awkward and unworthy on multiple levels.

One direction I thought about going this week was a long list of scriptures about giving to the poor and not trying to think about whether they deserve it or not. I may still do that. 

The overall point I am going with this week is that there are things (which as a group we might refer to as dominator culture) that we use as cues about what someone deserves.

It can be very easy to assume that someone is lazy or stupid or undeserving when we see that they are fat or know that they are poor, and especially if they are poor and fat; how gross is that?

I am aware that it can appear self-serving for me in this case, as someone who is both poor and fat.

I have definitely been the person who has been ashamed and angry at myself for both of those things. 

Having reached a point where I understand that they are not my fault or judgments on my character doesn't suddenly make everything else easy. 

I hope it has made me more compassionate toward others.

Part of that means giving more to others, but another part of it is not just wanting the guillotine for those whose greed causes mounting damage. I don't necessarily respect their status, and I will vote against them politically, but getting hung up on the anger or contempt isn't really the answer. 

Trying to keep all of that in mind, where choices do matter but where there are things that are not a matter of choice -- at least not individual choice, maybe collective choice -- but you still need to live in a way that you can live with yourself... that's a lot.

That is not the only reason I mention all of this, especially that opening story.

Current ascendancy of white supremacy aside, we had been at a point where even if people still had racist attitudes, they were still reluctant to voice them out loud. They might still think that there were issues with the absence of fathers or the influence of rap music, and expect those factors to be in play when they see someone with darker skin, but they still wouldn't say that Black people are less intelligent and Asian people are more intelligent or anything in those terms. That was so racist as to be vulgar.

(I really hate that we have lost ground there.)

However, there were other things that were still acceptable.

For example, you had a lot of gay people be fine with the oppression of transgender people. They are going to find that affecting their own rights too.

Lots of married women were okay with voting for a sex offender and letting single women be mocked. They may find voting harder.

Canadians are supposed to be all liberal and lovely, but if you look into MAID you will see a lot of ableism and some classism where it is eugenics all over again and makes it hard to forgot that a lot of the methods Nazis used to kill Jews were first tried on disabled people.

It may seem that for all of these issues, fatphobia and fat-shaming are way down at the bottom of the list. 

Maybe, but remember that it is tied in with class and economic level. 

Remember that it can be tied in with disability.

Most of all, remember that accepting any part of dominator culture allows it to establish a foothold that can be converted to a stampede with shocking speed.

You can argue that the progress we had made against racism was superficial, but that shouldn't make the latest election results and trends any less disturbing.

As long as you are willing to dismiss a group of people based on a trait -- any trait -- then it is dehumanization.

We must not leave any room for that.