Posted in Uncategorized on September 3, 2010 by atchka
Yesterday I had an experience that completely defies logic.
There were plenty of witnesses, but I have no clue who the fuck they are. It was at a gas station, so it’s gotta be on camera. Maybe I can go up there and buy it or something.
Anyway, the point is, it really happened even though you’re probably going to say, “Who the fuck does that?”
I should have taken a picture so you could all have seen just who the fuck does that.
So, what happened?
I’m driving home from the station and I stop for gas. As I’m filling up, I look at the pump across from mine and I see the guy putting the nozzle in his SUV and he’s got a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
I’m thinking, “Are you smoking a fucking cigarette at the gas station?”
He walks to his front door and I see that although it is a cigarette, it isn’t lit.
“Whew,” I think. “That was weird. I was going to have to yell at that guy.”
He then proceeds to open a box of matches and strike one repeatedly.
So, I yell, “What the fuck are you doing?”
The guy looks at me like I just yelled, “I want to fuck a pigeon!”
“What?” he asks incredulously.
“You don’t light a fucking match at the gas station!”
(Now, I have to stop here and apologize because I’m going to be blatantly honest about what I said next and simultaneously apologize to everyone it will offend. There are certain terms that are offensive, but are still used fairly common. I do not use them flippantly, but I grew up saying them and they’re still a part of my mental vocabulary. I have no clue how to scrub those words from my vocabulary, but they lie there, dormant, waiting for moments such as this to appear and make me sound like an ass (albeit a startled, angry, confused ass).)
“Are you retarded?”
(I worked a year and a half with mentally retarded/developmentally disabled adults, so I understand why this word is highly offensive. I wanted to report honestly what happened and in the heat of the moment, I resorted to childish name-calling used an epithet that is disrespectful to those with MR/DD, as well as their friends, family and anyone else with a sense of moral decency. Again, apologize to everyone I may have offended. I believe in being honest, even if it reveals that I’m an insensitive jackass. Nobody’s perfect, least of all me. I try and fail and try again.)
He gets defensive. “It’s just a cigarette.”
“It’s fire, you moron! Light a cigarette at your own private gas station, not while I’m standing here.”
“Man, you can throw a cigarette into gasoline and it won’t explode!”
This is true, but an open flame is a completely different situation. And who the fuck wants to take that chance anyway? Seriously, have you ever seen anybody smoke a cigarette while pumping gas?
“Dude, it’s fire! Do you not know how fire works?”
“They put chemicals in it so it won’t explode.”
Now, I’m just livid with idiocy intolerance.
“What, do you think engines work differently now? It’s combustion you jackass!”
“They’re pressurized!”
I have no clue what the fuck he’s talking about anymore and I’m tired of sharing air with this dipshit, so I get in the car and pull out.
“You’re a fucking idiot!” I scream as I leave.
Now, tell me, am I wrong about this? If you saw someone lighting a match while filling his tank with GASOLINE would you flip out?
Later, as I was thinking about it, I wished I had asked him if he was a teabagger because I was getting a distinct teabag vibe him. And then I thought, ya know, this situation is a lot like what is happening in this country politically.
There are a handful of angry, bitter dipshits who are so stupid that they don’t realize that it was primarily Republican policies that have caused all of the financial problems we are facing today, and that if we put them back in office things will only get worse.
And with redistricting on the line, Republicans know it’s worth saying and doing anything to get elected this fall (and so we get dipshit candidates like Sharon Angle (I’ll provide a link later… naptime’s over). So, teabagging candidates are the gasoline and the teabagger votes are the matches, and if we don’t do something they’re going to blow us all to hell.
Posted in Uncategorized on August 18, 2010 by atchka
Today I took a sick day, so I haven’t been able to get on since I left work yesterday and, wow, wasn’t expecting the response, but I’m loving it because if there’s a subject I love to discuss more than Fat Acceptance, it’s morality and it’s frequent co-topic, theology.
Please don’t read this as meaning that only religious people have morals, but with my Catholic upbringing, the two are inseparable to a certain extent. I think the main difference between my view of morality and a non-religious-based view of morality is that I believe that if there is some cosmic scorecard tallying moral vs. immoral behavior, then the only person who would have a more accurate guesstimation than I would be God.
Without religion, the only person capable of grading our moral performance in life is me (assuming absolute honesty with oneself, which is no small request). And yes, by “me” I’m referring to me, Shannon Russell. I’ve got detailed records on all of you assholes, so you best watch your shit.
Okay, so, I want to respond to each one of you, but I’d rather write one long response than 22 separate small ones. If there’s a response to you (and KellyK was the last response I’ve read), you can Ctrl-F and search for your screenname, or read the whole thing… you know, whatever.
I get what you’re saying about social morality, but I disagree that majority rules — just look at the fight for civil rights or Prop 8. I think majority definitely determines what is socially acceptable, but as a priest once told me in confession, “Not everything that is illegal is immoral and not everything that is immoral is illegal.” (And I bet you’re wondering what sin inspired this response.) I agree that our fatness is not immoral, but I still think that engaging in a behavior, or series of behaviors, when you know it is impacting your health (let’s say in the case of unhealthy eating and a sedentary lifestyle) is self-destructive, unless there is a legitimate reason not too, such as the wheat allergy we’ll get to later or financial difficulties or upbringing or whatever. But it’s not just what you eat and whether you exercise, but whether you smoke or exceed the speed limit or don’t get enough sleep or get drunk and so on and so forth.
This is not about singling out one type of unhealthy lifestyle, it’s about discussing the morality of fatness, and it’s surrounding issues, in the context of all morality. Saying poor diet and exercise is immoral by itself doesn’t tell us much. Poor diet and exercise are on the same table as smoking, drinking, stress, speeding, sexual promiscuity with inadequate protection… it doesn’t matter what behavior we’re referring to, if it is inherently self-destructive, there is an element of immorality in the willful engagement in such behavior.
It’s not good fatty vs. bad fatty. On the subject of morality, it’s good behavior vs. bad behavior.
And again, we ALL have our weaknesses, our vices, our secret indulgences. There’s nothing inherently shameful about being immoral. Hell, even St. Paul said, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” You can easily secularize that and say, “We’re all a little stupid.”
Now, in Catholicism, morality is divided into Venial Sins (no big deal) to Mortal Sins (your soul is on the line). This makes me believe that there is a hierarchy to morality. And if God is the Divine Scorekeeper (I don’t think he is, but God would certainly be capable of doing so), then I’m sure he has some incredibly complicated calculus he uses to tabulate our Morality Score.
Into this calculus would go intent, harmfulness to self, harmfulness to others, harmfulness to family, harmfulness to offspring, harmfulness to environment, and pretty much any other ethereal metric you could imagine and a million more you’d never come up with.
I think drinking and driving would be so high up on the scale of immorality that including a child would make it worse, but not noticeably so in the grand scheme of things.
Now, all that being said, I agree with the end of your comment completely regarding not judging your parents as immoral. I tried to get that across in the post as well. The fact that the only accurate judge of our ultimate morality is me and/or God means that there’s no point in either me judging the personal morality of others (barring socially immoral conduct, such as drinking and driving) and there’s no point in me letting others’ assessments of my morality bother me.
It’s definitely dehumanizing and I think that’s why people do it. People who like to judge the morality of others are engaging in the same sort of hateful confidence building as grade school bullies who pick on others to cover their own self-esteem issues. Those who preach morality loudest are often the ones most in need of the preaching. And you’re absolutely right about not being able to tell behavior from outward appearance. In a way, I feel that “Health is not a moral imperative” is just another way of saying “Don’t judge me by the way I look.”
What an excellent rebuttal to Constant. I’m just a Wikipedia scholar, reading what I can in the time I have, but wish I’d had more time for school. I love the topic of philosophy and the reason why I would never partake is because there’s never any answer where nobody says “You’re wrong, and here’s the many reasons why.” But it’s fun to listen to them rip each other to pieces.
As far as taking up space on a blog, I disagree. The subject is worth exploring because many of us use the morality argument in our discussions of Fat Acceptance, as in the Mantra. All behavior has third-party impact, but how much and how negative are the differentiators.
Finally, I disagree that the influence of lifestyle on obesity is thoroughly discredited, although if you want to make the case, please do and share your resources because if you have an excellent argument in this vein, it would be immensely valuable for FA. I think there is a segment of the population for whom diet and exercise habits will have little effect, while others are capable of physically altering their weights through changes in diet and exercise habits. It’s just my gut feeling on this subject at the moment, but as with anything, should I read evidence to the contrary, I’m willing to see things another way.
Bri is that you? That’s a really bizarre story. Religions are constantly trying to control us through our sexuality (take it from a Catholic ;) ) You would think that church’s would be the last places to judge the morality of others since Jesus’ whole thing was “Judge not lest ye be judged.” But I guess only certain red letters are worth keeping.
Welcome to FierceFatties.com. No need to take issue with my Kantian ethical theory. I have no Kantian ethical theory. :) I’m just a schmock with access to Wikipedia and a curiosity of the origins of “moral imperative.” I agree with your assessment. Health is a personal issue, as are the ways in which I pursue health (if I choose to pursue health). Hell, ignore the fact that we have physical differences, just trying to find out what “healthy” eating is today is damn near impossible. Don’t eat frozen vegetables, don’t eat any meat, eat some meat, don’t eat butter, eat nothing but butter, don’t mix your foods, and so on and so forth.
Again, I have a deistic perspective which tells me that God will ultimately judge me and based on Jesus, I think God is a fairly compassionate, fairly reasonable judge and will take our personal circumstances into consideration. And if there’s no God, then I’m the ultimate judge and I KNOW I’m going to be compassionate and reasonable in judging myself. :)
Maybe we should tally the mortality rates of various benign activities and compare to various lifestyle choices and see how they stack up. :) Having a discussion on morality is like striking a pond with a stick… you never know how far the ripples will reach. Great points on the dangers of driving. I’m not sure where that would fit into the scheme of things, although I think that if you are driving carefully and doing everything you can to contribute to overall driving safety, then are acting morally within the context of driving. What can I say, I’m a moral relativist. It’s the difference between crossing the street in heavy traffic and crossing the street in heavy traffic while drunk.
I love your point about no dessert vs. sanity. Balance is key and understanding how to balance your health and your life is key to not taking something good (like eating healthy) and turning it into something as dangerous as not eating healthy (like orthorexia). I like your point about parental martyrdom. It is a lot of pressure just to try and turn out some relatively sane, relatively kind, relatively polite little people without your mortal soul being at risk. I do still think that as a parent, my morality is just like any other parental attribute: our kids will pick it up.
So, if I smoke in front of my kids, I increase the odds that they will smoke. If I swear in front of my kids, then I increase the odds they will swear. If I rob banks in front of my kids…
Therefore, I think parents have a special responsibility to give careful consideration to their behaviors, regardless of what they are, because it can be passed down to their children. It is that responsibility, rather than the mere absence of a prematurely deceased parent, that is the real danger and real weight of my choices and my morality.
Conclusion
I hope I haven’t offended anyone or freaked anyone out with my mention of God. I’m not an evangelist, but I do believe in God and on a subject such as this, I feel I need to put my own beliefs in context. I am not by any stretch of the imagination putting myself up as a moral model. Being a lapsed Catholic, I do indeed have a Morality Scorecard, issued to me by Sister Mary Platypus, which is in danger of total red ink saturation.
This is not meant as an exercise is determining who is and is not moral. That fact is between you and your personal deity, or not. But, again, if we’re going to use the Mantra, then it is fair game for detailed discussion, which I will be happy to host.
Incidentally, if you’re wondering about the title of this post, it just happened to be the song on Sonic Tap when I was thinking of a title for this post.
Posted in Uncategorized on August 11, 2010 by atchka
I try not to get too excited by things I perceive as (relatively) major shifts, but today I had yet another experience that ushered in relief and joy, much as the effect that the HuffPo Senior Moderator’s email had on me the other day.
A week later he comes back with a dismissive article about the “exotic” excuses for why some people are fat and others aren’t. This led me to refer to him as Dr. Dickhole.
Recently my boss asked me to review the situation you describe on your blog regarding commenting on Huffington Post, and to let you know how things work back here behind the scenes.
I’d like to first agree that the comments you identified as offensive were indeed offensive. They were removed as soon as they were drawn to our attention, and we would very much not prefer to publish such comments in the future. I’d also like you to know that I agree that culturally, you’re right–that bashing people who are overweight is still seen as acceptable in large segments of our society, and it shouldn’t be.
I see a couple of likely explanations that do, in fact, apply to much of what you’re seeing in terms of what was published and what wasn’t. First, moderators attempt to remove any comments wthat would be disrespectful of any group, but we are limited in what we can do. It is not economically feasible to have human moderators review each submitted comment, so roughly 6 comments in 7 are initally handled by automation–with our paid moderators, our community moderators and other members of our community then cleaning up anything that gets through our filters and expert systems (primarily through flagging of such comments)–this process can sometimes take hours, but usually cleans up the vast majority of what we think should be removed. Because of this, and the need to set priorities when you can’t be everywhere at once, a high profile story (like, for instance, something on the Israel-Palistinian conflict) might get attention before a lower profile story, but all comments would be addressed as soon as we are capable of doing so–no matter what the subject.
Secondly, I think you should realize that should comments be flagged (& we’d appreciate if you’d flag any comments you find offensive)–we will go and remove those comments (if they’re offensive). However, because of the way our database works, when we remove one comment near the top of a thread–all replies to that comment are also removed. It looks like at least some of your comments disappeared for this reason–we removed an objectionable comment that you were repplying to, and yours went as well.
Lastly, I’d like to encourage you to contact us at this addresses, should you see similar situations in the future. It is not our intent nor goal to silence you, nor to allow offensive opinions free play.
Thanks much,
Rob S.
Senior Moderator, Administrative
Huffington Post
My favorite venue for fighting fat hatred is The Huffington Post, hands down.
Where else is there such a diverse group of readers interacting on stories about obesity?
Think about the alternatives… you’ve got the fatosphere, where most of the readers are either Fat Acceptance advocates already or interested in learning more. Or you’ve got sites like AOL’s That’s Fit where everyone thinks fatties are gorging themselves in bed 24×7.
But HuffPo is where those two groups meet, along with everyone in between, and the dynamic is fascinating.
First of all, I’m most interested in reaching out to those in between the opposing choirs of thought. It’s just like politics… a quarter of the population is hardcore Republican, a quarter is hardcore Democrat and half of us are fairly flexible in our beliefs.
Well, if you really want to change the opinions of a nation, then you need to convince those people in the middle that either one extreme or the other is utterly wrong and insane.
Plus, I have an opportunity to test drive my rhetoric on the opposition.
Over the months I’ve found that most of the diehard fat haters have disappeared. A new one pops up from time to time and I get to smack ‘em around a bit and then they disappear, never to be heard from again (at least under that screenname).
Name one doctor or one study that supports your absurd comments about obesity. And it is not just diabetes, it heat disease. You have your head in the sand, I fear.
And when she insists that I’m defending a “unhealthy behavior” I get to break down into as simplistic chunks as I can, which is not so much for the benefit of Lippp as for anyone else who may be reading through.
This ancillary education is more important to me than simply refuting an idiot. The idiot is merely the diving board from which to launch an explanation of 101 concepts.
And so, to all the morons who continue to embrace an outmoded opinion on obesity, I am eternally grateful.
[Aretha, we love you. Please stay away from those Coney Island foot longs.]
To which I responded:
Boy, you sure are a stupid moron.
[marigynymitch, I love you. Please stay away from the entire human race.]
Of course, this was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY to offensive for HuffPo moderators. I mean, commenters should be free to make hackneyed fat jokes at will under any circumstance, but mocking a fat hater is right out.
Fat haters have feelings, ya know.
All we can do, though, is try to respond forcefully and within the arbitrary HuffPo boundaries regarding respectful dialogue and flag them as abusive.
And I’ve come to accept that this is the extent of our ability to “control” fat hatred on HuffPo. At least it gives me an opportunity to hack and slash some fat haters, ya know?
But the other day something happened.
I noticed the following picture and immediately sensed a new battleground for the obesity debate:
Sadly, this is about all that’s needed to predict that caliber of commentary that will follow.
I encounter a lot of doubters when I comment on The Huffington Post.
A LOT.
People are constantly calling me into question, accusing me of supporting unhealthy lifestyles, suggesting I’m simply rationalizing my fatness… you know, the same shit we all deal with when talking about Fat Acceptance.
I’m used to it and I see it as an opportunity to educate, not the critic, but the many others who are reading the exchange. I’ve created a little file with all the data and research I link to the most. I’ve even started saving standard responses to common questions to save myself some time.
Efficiency is my middle name.
But imagine my chagrin when I received a complaint, not about my arguments, but about the legitimacy of my two blogs: Atchka.com and FierceFatties.com.
Typically, I include the links at the bottom to promote my writing and has never been an issue, until now.
I’ve been following these discussions for a while. I don’t know much about whether or not diabetes makes people less smart but I have read a lot of your comments. How transparent are you? There is a website that shows if blogs use cloaked software. This sends one page to readers and another to computers. You say alot about this and have your links on comments.I looked your sites atchka.com and FierceFatties.com up with http://www.webtoolhub.com/ and they both cloak. With all the bad stuff on the internet I don’t want my kids going to a site that may have who knows what on it. This goes to the topic right here because if you said the Dr. isn’t being honest. what about you? I’m not a computer techie or a doctor, just someone whose interested in how you repond here. More people would believe you if you explain that so please tell us are you honest?
Now, at first, I basically responded that I had no idea what cloaking was or why my sites were doing so, but that I would look into it, which I did and got nowhere. In the meantime, he responded (but his response was deleted) that I could not be trusted and that I was hatching some insidious plot to lure people into my online sex dungeon, or something. I followed this up by asking stoughton if he had any idea how to turn off cloaking and if not, then there was no way I could appease his paranoia.
Then last night I got to thinking… if I had no idea I was cloaking, I wonder if other sites use cloaking as well.
I decided to check.
Lo and behold, what do I discover, but The Huffington Post itself is cloaking!
Oh the humanity!
Stoughton, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! You’ve been cloaked, my friend!
But don’t worry, I’m sure there are plenty of safe sites you can still visit like Facebook, right?
OH SHIT!
I wonder if the New York Times has caught wind of this insidious practice of cloaking. Let me just check…
OH HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL!!! Not the New York Times too! Okay, maybe what we need to do just forget about this dangerous practice and go see a movie or something.
IMDB is cloaked? But why? I guess I can just depend on RottenTomatoes.com.
I guess it’s too late for Hollywood. The only thing left to do is have McAfee, the virus software giant, protect me from all this cloaking.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Well, surely the site that is tracking the cloaking practices of its searches, Google, has got it all under control…
Wait, what’s that say? Can’t process this URL? You mean Google’s cloaking status is… CLOAKED!!!
Thank you, stoughton, for finally exposing me for the fraud that I am. I will take great pains to remove myself from the internet to live forever beneath a cloak of silence.
The following is a comment that keeps getting censored by HuffPo moderators and it’s pissing me off. I don’t know what is censor-worthy in this comment:
Oh good, let’s start promoting the concept that being fat makes you stupid.
You say that these findings were “across the board.” Does this “across the board” assessment include taking the child’s socio-economic status into account? And I didn’t see anything that suggests their performance was observed over time… meaning, was the performance of the students tracked from before they were obese or before they began showing signs of insulin resistance until after they developed diabetes? Or was this just a cross-sectional study?
Because you mention “these same youth showed smaller brain volume for the entire brain and the frontal lobes, where much of our reasoning occurs.” So, do they know if it is obesity that causes smaller brain volume or vice versa?
Also, why haven’t you provided a link to the study in question? If it has yet to be released, is it fair for people to be interpreting the results without peer reviews and critical analysis? Otherwise, this just seems like yet another obesity panic puff piece to me.
Really Brian? I’m a “dieter” with “hostility toward fat acceptance”?
I have to go pick up my son, so I don’t have time to hash this out with a person who can’t address the issues I raise, and instead redirect a worn and thoroughly discredited attack against me AGAIN. Instead, I’ll just post the comment you deleted and I’ll deal with you later, dipshit.
This: “And frankly, that should be clear. The only dieters I’ve ever called out are those who promote it to others.”
Bullshit. I guess you don’t recall your response me for posting this? Let me refresh your memory: I posted a podcast off the Fatosphere (with a link on my podcast with a trigger warning and an explanation of content) that didn’t promote dieting in the least, but added context about a discussion of theoretical dieting due to my family history of heart disease. I was then kicked off the Fatosphere and in the comments on this post on Bri’s blog and your own hyperbolic post, you accused me of not agreeing with Fat Acceptance, that I “side with the majority” on dieting, called me a “wanna-be martyr,” that I was “playing the victim,” that I have “such little respect for [Fat Acceptance]“, and that I am, somehow opposed to the “bulwark against hatred and stigmatization,” that my viewpoints are “functionally opposed to fat acceptance.” You essentially painted me as not Fat Acceptance, as opposed to Fat Acceptance, as hostile to Fat Acceptance, all because I was having an honest dialogue about MY health, MY choices, and, most importantly, MY conspicuous NON-dieting lifestyle. I was discussing how I believe that if I CHOSE to go on a heart healthy diet due to my genetic endowment, that I would probably lose weight. You twisted that into an intellectually dishonest assessment of my FA credentials. I’ve now formed my own site, FierceFatties.com, where people are welcome to discuss their own experiences with dieting… we even have a blogger who is a member of the Weight Control Registry.
And yet we are still fat positive, still promoting Fat Acceptance, still anti-diet. I’m not trying to dredge up old issues. Bri and I have buried the hatchet and we are working together toward promoting Fat Acceptance. But for you to suddenly come out and claim that you’ve only ever been against weight loss evangelism is complete bullshit, as you spent quite a bit of energy to “call out” my “false” Fat Acceptance.
Peace,
Shannon
*UPDATE*
Veronica’s going to get Methuselah, so I have a bit more to say about this.
How was your weekend? Mine was pretty good. My parents came and built an outdoor playhouse for our girls, we went to a new swimming pool that was pretty neat, I was banished from Facebook and we celebrated my father-in-law’s birthday.
As you may have heard, I’ve started this petition to pressure Facebook into removing Yay-Rapist groups, but since they have done nothing for the past 110 days to remove this group, I decided to do a little reverse trolling.
What I didn’t realize is that these poor, oppressed Yay-Rapists are actually very, very sensitive. And I must have hurt their feelings because they reported me to Facebook and I was banished because my behavior was “identified as harassing or threatening to other people on Facebook” according to the explanation FB provided me.
Now, granted, I was definitely harassing them, but the people I harassed were mocking, trivializing and condoning rape.
I was pissed.
Seriously pissed.
So, here’s what I wrote:
Damn, that last one got cut off! Argh! That was a good one too.
Poor Yay-Rapists, with their sensitive feelings. They just couldn’t take the heat, so someone reported me and Facebook banished me to PROTECT THE RAPE GROUP from my harassment.
So, for 110 days, Facebook has done NOTHING about a group that mocks the destructive impact of rape, yet one person attacks these callous asswipes and they jump right on it.
