I am become fatpocalypse: eliminationism

At some point in this saga, I used the phrase “eliminationist”, and was promptly told off because the person I was arguing with never used that word.

I suppose it’s a bit like how someone can’t be misogynist just because they refer to all women as bitches, because, um, unless they use the word “misogynist” their behaviour can’t be described as misogynist.

Anyway, for people genuinely interested in the concept, the canonical post on it is at Shakesville.  I paraphrase:

When you talk about eliminating obesity, stopping people getting fat, waving a magic wand and making everyone a “normal” weight, you are talking about eliminating me.  Because I’m a fat person.  I’m never going to be a thin person – because diets don’t work.  Because there is no scientific evidence to support the idea you can make a fat person eternally thin.

To actually attain your dream world where no one is fat?  You need to find a way to get rid of me.

And given how we know – from PEER REVIEWED SCIENCE!!! – that weight cycling damages people’s health, that “weight loss surgery” damages your life expectancy if you survive in, and that the medical profession will let you die because they’d rather diagnose all your health problems as being about your weight and not your ovarian cysts or your depression or your multiple sclerosis?

I think we can take a good, informed guess as to how that magical fat-free world is meant to come about.

3 comments

  2. lilacsigil

    Yes, Kyle Sandilands (grotesque horror of Australian radio who is himself fat but apparently it only counts in women) proposed that fat people like Magda Szubanski should be in concentration camps. Especially unfunny considering that her father (a Polish resistance fighter) was actually sent to one. But the people agreeing with him really scared me.

  3. Pingback: The Greens hate fat people, too | Ideologically Impure