Shameful Behaviour

[ThomCat]

A really good article that starts discussing Slut Shaming, moves into Fat Acceptance, all related through the issue of control over ones own body. With really good links to some other really good discussions on other blogs.

Good enough that I thought it was worth cross posting.

Brings together and summarizes a bunch of separate issues in a really concise way that I'm definitely going to remember and use myself in future discussions/arguments.


http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/09/06/shameful-behaviour/

One of the historic and ongoing aims of feminism and feminist movements has been the attempt to eradicate what’s known in the feminist blogosphere as slut-shaming. Even if you’ve never seen the term before, you’ve almost certainly observed it in action: somebody or somebodies abusing someone else on the basis of their (real or imagined) sex life, where ‘acceptable’ levels and types of sexuality are a) wildly inconsistent and b) liable to change without notice (assuming anyone states them in the first place).
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The principle of bodily autonomy – that it’s my damn body and I will do what I like with it, have sex how I want, and do not have to keep any growths in it that I do not wish to have there, and that it is none of your business whatsoever – is (in theory, at least) a central tenet of modern feminism. It’s the principle behind the drive for sexual liberation and reproductive rights. It’s a repudiation of centuries upon centuries where whole classes of bodies were literally or effectively the property of others. And not just feminism: pretty much every social justice movement has at its centre the idea that it’s wrong to police a particular class of people for having different bodies, or doing different things with said bodies, or both. And that weird, prurient interest – veiled as ‘concern’ – in the bodies of people who are Not You is just that: weird and prurient.***

So how about that fat acceptance movement then, eh?

[ismnotwasm]

1. It's still the patriarchy

There have been times in history when a well padded woman was considered very desirable. Not so much in the US though, where even as a newer, more modern country, control of women was implicitly implied in our constitution by the expedient means of simply leaving them out of it. Plus we are a country of abundance, no matter how unequally distributed. In such societies GENERALLY, thinner women are considered more desirable, where poor countries seem to appreciate padding. Certain countries in South America for instance, where the pursuit of a well rounded posterior has led women to obtain butt implants.

So it's cultural patriarchy; a woman's size, however coached in terms of 'health' or 'self esteem' actually adds up to a value, 'do men want you, and how much = personal worth. (Heh I could make an equation I bet) It fucks women up, sure it does. So I'm all for the fat acceptance movement. I do have a 'but' though

You know I'm a nurse, and I'm still working in transplant. The direct connections toward obesity, diabetes and kidney failure and complications up to and including death are well documented. Not to mention other health issues. When I attended a seminar on dialysis and fluid shifts recently, the nurse lecturer referred to the overweight as the "The 'f' word, 'fluffy people'" I like that. Fluffy doesn't have the value judgment 'fat' does and even if it's one of those cloyingly cutsie words. The medical community uses 'obese' and we still use morbidly obese, that last term is falling out of favor thank God.

So what I think, is if a fluffy woman pays perhaps a bit more attention to diet and exercise than average, the goal being as healthy as possible for the weight she's at, it can only do her good. Weight loss is an individual decision and there is evidence that yo yo dieting causes a great deal of harm.

On my unit (we also care for general surgery patients, and we're also a telemetry floor, so we get off service patients--a lot) we often see the results of the complications of gastric bypass surgery or failed lap bands. (I want reiterate, we see the ones with complications, not the ones were everything went well) These women have been psychologically damaged--you can just see it-- the term 'borderline' is tossed around but usually never diagnosed because these women have less than stellar coping skills, the surgery they thought would 'fix' everything has just made 'everything' a whole lot worse. They rarely have the support they need and in a couple of cases, I didn't understand the getting the surgery in the first place.

[bliss_eternal]

2. I like fluffy, too.

;) ...very cool way to say it, and certainly kinder than some of the other terminology we as a society use to describe people w/some extra padding.