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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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A fat-activist does not have any disgust to fat people, and aesthetically values diversity of size, In her world where the problem is solved, there are fat people, but they don't suffer health risks due to improved medical technology, nor beautyism or logistical issues because of social engineering.... I do not think they want everyone to be thin. I think they are willing to implement more difficult solutions (medicine, social engineering) to achieve their preferred aesthetics.

If this was the belief of fat activism then its activism should either be limited until our medical technology reaches this level OR be focused on lobbying for health research and dissemination of the resulting tech.

But this is manifestly not what fat activists do. Instead they idolize fat people like Lizzo today despite the manifestly bad impact on life being fat has. They criticize anti-fat standards as imperialist, racist white strictures and muddy the waters on whether one can be healthy at any size. Fat acceptance involves a significant ambiguity (at best) on whether being fat is bad as such, whereas your hypothetical activist recognizes this and seeks to mitigate it with medical advances that change the biological (not just social) landscape.

You are defending an idea that might be viable and worth looking at in spherical cow land but the dynamics of real world movements differ significantly.

And that difference is important. Because remove that element - focus on medical advances to mitigate the known downsides of being fat- and you have a movement founded on what is fundamentally a delusion : that you can simply think your way out of a medical problem if you call the standard tied to that problem unfair.

Fair enough, you're right that actual fat-activists are not the consequentialists I described in my first post!

I still wouldn't support this hypothetical, steelmanned movement because I find fatness disgusting, but the thought-experiment was novel to me. Maybe I'm just behind.