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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32961 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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My personal take was that transactivism was just the next, inevitable step in the march to atomization in liberalism. And it probably still is. But there may be bridges too far, even for liberals. I hope.

Similar here, I figured that the high water mark before the tide receded would be somewhere in the vicinity of HAAS Fat Activism and the push for acceptance of "Otherkin." I hoped dearly that it would be be WELL before we hit the "MAP is a valid and acceptable sexuality" movement.

My suspicion is that the very visible entrance of Trans women into female sports leagues combined with the push for gender reassignment of prepubescent children is what snapped normies into a posture of resistance.

Note that I don't think the resistance is particularly well organized or even coherent, but with NYT taking the position that "it is in fact acceptable to consider the implications of these policies and one is not required to accept activist claims at face value" at least there's some room to breathe for those who actually WANT there to be a discussion on the matter.

But the left has no option to just retreat on this point, and as we've seen even the most milquetoast of defiance is treated as a nigh-existential threat, so generally I just find myself wondering which angle of attack they will implement next.

It feels very weird, though, to be on TheMotte talking about a culture war issue where the right is seemingly the one with momentum and the left is now on defense. Only took the combined might of the most popular author on the planet, the largest newspaper on the planet, and some of the more popular GOP governors and pundits.

The Cathedral as a whole appears to be proceeding with it's general plans quite unhindered, mind.

My suspicion is that the very visible entrance of Trans women into female sports leagues combined with the push for gender reassignment of prepubescent children is what snapped normies into a posture of resistance.

That, and the high-profile sex crimes cases. It's very hard to argue that "trans women are real women and just want to be left alone" and even more "Rowling is a monster" when, for Scotland, they have had three recent cases of "men who are sexual abusers/rapists deciding that they're really women" (Isla Bryson, Tiffany Scott, Amy George).

You're an average person, you see those stories in the media, you see that the crime Rowling is accused of is saying "maybe don't put people with dicks into spaces with women", which side are you going to come down on? The people defending "when the accused committed the rape, she did it as a woman with her feminine penis" or the people saying "don't put rapists in women's jails"?

You're an average person, you see those stories in the media, you see that the crime Rowling is accused of is saying "maybe don't put people with dicks into spaces with women", which side are you going to come down on? The people defending "when the accused committed the rape, she did it as a woman with her feminine penis" or the people saying "don't put rapists in women's jails"?

Yeah, I don't know if that's the actual thought process used, but basically when the "TERFs" are warning vociferously that allowing penis-havers into female exclusive spaces puts females at risk, and these stories come out, and the trans-activists continue to bash the TERFs for being, it seems, correct, I expect the average person is swayed to the TERF side.

And of course the vestiges of feminism are still hanging around telling people that women are an oppressed class, so what the hell are you supposed to think when you see women being harmed and ousted from the sports leagues set up for specifically for them, by biological males? Seems likely it's just too much whiplash for people.

I figured that the high water mark before the tide receded would be somewhere in the vicinity of HAAS Fat Activism

The fat activists have been pretty successful. The fact that "fat shaming" is regarded as something that shouldn't be done is really quite remarkable.

I've been listening to the Maintenance Phase podcast recently, if only for the entertainment of hyper-woke individuals spewing typical Fat Logic, and I've noticed a sort of Holocaust Denial vibe. They'll do very good episodes about how some diet or some other piece of health apocrypha is bullshit, complete with what at least seems like a fairly rigorous review of the scientific literature, which is fine and what makes it entertaining. But the conclusion you're supposed to draw from the series as a whole isn't that certain things in the diet ecosystem is bad, but that you shouldn't worry about your weight or anyone else's and that doctors are unnecessarily turning obesity into a health problem it's not. It reminds me of how people like David Irving will focus on minutia like whether a particular facility was used as a gas chamber and, regardless of the quality of the scholarship, expects you to draw the conclusion that the Holocaust never happened. Being obese is really unhealthy; any doctor will tell you that.

Two groups tend to be left out of the whole "fat acceptance" culture, though. The first is fat men. Fat women never had much of a problem getting fat men to date them. I suspect that a lot of this fat acceptance bullshit is really just trying to guilt thin men into dating them; you don't ever hear of any obese young women standing up for some fat Trekkie who's being made fun of. The second group is old people. I see a lot of stuff on the internet about being "healthy at any size" but it's always women under the age of 45 who seem to be the poster children for this stuff. You never hear about older fat people in this context, despite the fact that magazines love to profile active seniors who talk about how their lifestyle has prevented health problems. Of course, none of these people are ever fat, because there aren't many fat older people who do things like walk 9 holes every day or take ballroom dance lessons. Most of them are at home in front of the television, dealing with diabetes, or heart problems, or arthritis, or any number of other disorders that obesity increases the risk of.

I see a lot of stuff on the internet about being "healthy at any size" but it's always women under the age of 45 who seem to be the poster children for this stuff.

Phase one is beauty and fashion and dating instas.

Phase two is complaining about unfair beauty standards.

Phase three is assertions that chronic health problems have nothing to do with weight.

Phase four is turning into a shut-in due to immobility.

  • The first is fat men.

Fat men that are tall or built do well. Those that look like Jason Alexander do bad though on the market.

The second group is old people. I see a lot of stuff on the internet about being "healthy at any size" but it's always women under the age of 45 who seem to be the poster children for this stuff.

People the size of some of the hard to miss (300 lbs+ for women) fat activists die between ages of 45-55, which is probably why.

Being obese is really unhealthy; any doctor will tell you that.

More critically, your own two eyes will tell you that.

The fat activists have been pretty successful. The fact that "fat shaming" is regarded as something that shouldn't be done is really quite remarkable.

Good for them! We shouldn't be fat shaming people. The problem with fat activists is that they are celebrating unhealthy behavior or even denying that its unhealthy at all.

And I suppose from an aesthetic perspective it's awful as well, much like the deliberately ugly statues, public art, and brutalist buildings we are now forced to endure.

The problem with shaming is it ignores the role biology plays too. Long-term results for most dieters are abysmal. Trying to lose weight long-term means having to make restrictions that are possibly infeasible. Some people who have bad genes are quite literally unable to stop eating, or have really slow metabolisms, or bad balance of ghrelin vs. leptin, etc. These people are screwed

I am increasingly adopting this belief. Willpower didn't just collapse, nor did activity levels. There is something in our food or environment that is making people having a higher set point. In the 1970s or in modern-day Taiwan most people don't struggle to maintain a healthy weight. But in the modern day U.S. most people will be overweight because it is very difficult to maintain a weight lower than one's set point. Not impossible, of course. Just not worth it for many people.

On the other hand, semaglutide and other weight loss drugs will fix this for wealthy people within in the next decade, so I expect being to fat to become even more of a low class signifier than it is already.

weight loss drugs are the future. i see no other way out unless we get better fat substitutes. most of the calories come from fat

Physical activity did collapse, though. Combine high caloric intake with very low physical activity and voila, everyone is fat.

Can't find the citation, but I believe that's not actually true, at least for U.S. adults since the 1970s?

Iterestingly, the average BMI of Japanese people doesn't show (Top left graph is men, top right is women) any sort of change in direction or strength of a trend during the 1970's, but does paint a steady increase in BMI of men of all age groups, and quite a complicated picture for women.

If I'm reading these graphs correctly, Japanese men have been getting fatter since the early 1960s while Japanese women have generally not. Interesting dichotomy. Potentially there is more social pressure for Japanese women to be skinny? Certainly, in Japan, the standards for feminine beauty are far above what they are in North America.

Nevertheless, Japan does not have an obesity problem. With only 4.3% obesity in 2016, it is in fact the LEAST obese of any developed country in the world, and less obese than almost all the poor starving countries as well.

So even though Japanese BMI has apparently been increasing since about 1960, it's not having nearly the effect it is on other countries. I wonder what their corn product consumption looks like?

And yet the obesity rate was much lower in living memory, and people who follow the procedure of ‘just shoving fewer groceries down their maw’ lose weight. Yes, that entails being hungry sometimes and passing on dessert most of the time and probably learning to drink water. But pushing people to actually do those things is a plausible justification for fat shaming.

Yes, that entails being hungry sometimes and passing on dessert most of the time and probably learning to drink water.

Isn't this what a diet is. yet the stats are pretty miserable. ppl lose weight and then regain it

Don't you know people with healthy diets? I have relatives who eat muesli and yoghurt in the morning, a salad with some prosciutto berries for lunch, some potato chips (that is to say fairly traditional ones with just potato and salt) and cheese in front of the television, then beef, rice and vegetables for dinner. Or maybe salmon or lamb instead of beef.

They're not fat and never have been. It's not dieting so much as having a healthy diet. If we started people on that sort of diet rather than American style plastic food, there'd be no problem. These people have no attraction to McDonalds or whatever, they look upon it with disgust.

I know lots of people who maintain a healthy weight. I know many fewer people who were once obese but then slimmed down and maintained a healthy weight by dieting. It's far from clear from the data that "trying to diet" or "telling people to diet" is an effective intervention once they are already obese. It seems like something intrinsic to metabolism and appetite regulation is irreversibly broken at that point, and the only permanent solutions are gastric surgery and (now, hopefully) semaglutide and its analogues.

not so much healthy but rather eat little. I know someone who would often go something like 9 hours without eating anything. Dinner + small amount of food in morning...that's it. Stayed thin forever. No snacking, But steak for dinner and pastry in morning, so not particularly healthy anyway. Plus daily exercise.

People have been trying to figure this out for a century. Think of all the federal and state dollars spent on raising awareness about health, school lunches, etc. As an HBD and libertarian leaning person, I am inclined to believe this is infective. A bunch of factors come into play: Something as basic or fundamental as food is still largely a mystery. I think the solution will have to come from the private sector to provide better drugs to combat obesity and better substitutes for food, like low calorie food that better mimics high calorie food.

How can it be a mystery? It's like Scott's example of the Russian periodic table with room-temperature superconductors and antigravity. There are some healthy diets in the world. There's the upper middle-class pious diet with home-cooking, multigrain bread, fruit, fish and so on. There's the Japanese diet with fish and rice - there's zero problem with obesity in Japan. The Mediterrenean diet isn't bad either. Only as countries westernize, only as McDonalds and Coca Cola expand into new markets does obesity emerge.

The most obese countries are Pacific Islanders, which is genetics-related, followed by oil-rich Arab countries who are ultra-Westernized and then the US.

According to wikipedia, Ethiopia has a higher proportion of obese people than Japan! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate

I'm confident that if the US government shifted its vast agricultural subsidies program towards pumping out sushi rather than corn and beef, there would be quick improvement. I agree that raising awareness does nothing, what's needed is serious movement on the ground. Dissolve Coca-Cola, retrain fast food cooks to produce sushi, ban HFCS and things will turn around quickly.

n=1, but I pretty much only eat pizza and other take-out food, and have for the majority of my life (I'm in my 30s now). I'm not fat and haven't been since I was a kid. It's not my metabolism or genetics, either - I quickly gain pounds if I let myself indulge snacks too much for a few weeks. In that eventuality, I just eat slightly less for a few weeks and go back down. I know the CICO observation is trite at this point, but it's true. It's trivially true. You simply won't get fat if you just don't eat excessively.

I suspect the sort of disdainful attitude you're describing/exhibiting (e.g., "plastic food") is just class signaling and virtue signaling, frankly. Pizza and burgers, for example, are just wheat, tomatoes, cheese, and meat. But combine them into the form of pizza or burgers and all the sudden it evokes an image of a lower class person who's perhaps not that bright, not that health-conscious, doesn't really understand nutrition, doesn't really want to put in the effort to be "healthy" (unlike you, dear observer, of course), and probably also has Coors Light instead of craft beer in his fridge.

I'm not against pizza or burgers in principle. If you make them from good ingredients than that's fine. I was more thinking of the aisles in the grocery store full of plasticky sweets. There'll be a row of soft drink next to a row of chips with flavors unknown to nature. Stuff like gummy bears.

Furthermore, it is true that poor, lower-class people are fatter than rich people, generally speaking. In this case, my classism and disdain is based upon fact. I won't say that the diet I describe above is ideal - these are also people who buy and unironically eat kale and non-alchoholic kombucha which is just repulsive. Nevertheless, it is possible to buy high-quality ingredients that taste good and don't cause significant obesity. Sugary Starbucks drinks aren't healthy either, despite being middle-class as opposed to lower class.

I know CICO is fundamentally correct, and I've conquered my fat demons, but they did exist. If you can eat crappy food every meal without consequence you really are fortunate in some ways. I won't claim it's anything complicated or impossible to overcome but there really do exist people who if not diligently rounded in will balloon out.

Do you know where to buy actual muesli or toasted oat-based cereal any more? All my local stores stopped carrying the last one they had, and now the only marginally edible cereals are that horrible raisin bran stuff packed with as much sweetener as kids' Sugar Puffs.

I guess it fell victim to the successive wave of fads against carbs and grains

I guess it fell victim to the successive wave of fads against carbs and grains

Or it just was getting outcompeted for shelf space by the chocolate frosted sugar bombs.

Because they don’t stick with it.

That's because sustained willpower is hard. For a diet to work long term, it requires a more fundamental behavioral change than just toughing it out.

Do you think that the root cause of increased obesity today vs in 1970 is primarily due to people in 1970 being more persistent in sticking to a diet where they are hungry sometimes? If so, do you think that's due to a general decline in willingness to stick with unpleasant things in general between the 1970s and now, or something specific to dietary habits (e.g. "feeling slightly hungry" was a feeling with ~neutral valence in 1970, but is a feeling with negative valence now)?

It's food getting cheaper, more palatable and shelf-stable, plus the normalization of snacking (aka eating while doing other things).

  • Cheetos were invented in 1948

  • Sugar-frosted flakes were created in 1952

  • The first flavored potato chips were created in 1954

  • Trix was created in 1954

  • Domino's was founded in 1960

  • Taco Bell was founded in 1962

  • Froot Loops were created in 1963

  • Cap'n Crunch was created in 1963

  • Commercial production of corn syrup began in 1964, allowing for cheaper sweet food

  • Lucky Charms were created in 1964

  • Pringles were invented in 1968.

  • Cheese Doritos were created in 1972

  • Honey Nut Cheerios were created in 1979

It's a wonder people weren't getting fat in the 70's with all this sweet and savory junk, I guess with just PBS, CBS, NBC and ABC on TV they had more active pastimes.

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I think the root causes are multiple, but that an increasing unwillingness to stick with things that require putting in the work to achieve results is a major factor. I would also point to soda becoming cheaper to the point of being a replacement for water, and less home cooking alongside skyrocketing portion sizes, in addition to less tolerance for healthy but not especially tasty food.

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Tend to agree, but they've had far less success in getting people to actually change their preferences.

And, unlike Trans activists, they haven't coalesced the weight (heh) of the medical establishment behind them, either. It's still not taboo to say "obesity contributes directly to various health issues and reduced life expectancy."

Fat activism has been spectacularly unsuccessful. Obese people are as hated as ever, women and girls with normal-range bodies are still hating themselves and riddled with insecurity. More people are overweight, but that's basically unrelated.

However, if a large enough segment of people are overweight, it results in obesity/fatness becoming normalized. This has already happened among the underclass and lower class, especially among Blacks and Latinos, I think.

Normalized sure, idealized no. Something can be common while also being despised. In fact, it's very common for common things to be despised. Suburban life and whiteness and factory work and office work all became something derided in popular culture as they became more common among the populace. Idealization was the goal of the FAs, get people to accept the obese as equals. Not gonna happen.

Obese people are as hated as ever

Not seeing this. Maybe if you're 12 years old in gym class during the 90s, but ppl tend to overlook or stop caring about that stuff as adults

... Which they did before fat activism started.

They've managed to get "plus size models" onto Magazine Covers, so that's at least a norm or two cracked open.

Likewise, look at the very existence of Lizzo and Rebel Wilson as celebrities.

It's fair to say they've had superficial successes, even if it isn't going to "take" with the rest of the population.

Wait and see how they react to the recent development of seemingly effective weight loss drugs, though.

Likewise, look at the very existence of Lizzo and Rebel Wilson as celebrities.

I will not stand for this erasure of Ella Aretha Ma Rainey and this absolute fuckin' banger. I don't really know who Rebel Wilson is so I won't comment, but Lizzo makes fun music, fat acceptance for her isn't any stranger than Aretha or Ella.

Are there any obese male singers that have any real prominence now, other than Rick Ross?

I'll grant that Meat Loaf was a sex symbol in his day.

Speaking of Meat Loaf, if you broaden your scope to film actors as well as singers, you also have Jack Black, for instance.

I'd say DJ Khaled isn't exactly svelte. Luke Combs is a fatass, when he's in music videos with his wife it is disgusting to imagine them together. Historically we have Biggie, biz markie, Cedric the entertainer, big pun, a dozen great Tenors, fats domino, fats waller. Toby Keith's waistline varied throughout his career, as did the mustachiod half of Brooks and Dunn, I don't remember which is which.

Rebel Wilson has had recent weightloss and is no longer an example of what you're writing about. She might even be too thin for comedy now. Plus-sized people in comedy has existed for a while (Fatty Arbuckle, 1/2 of the duo Laurel and Hardy) and in woman more recently but I would say predates the fat acceptance movement (Roseanne Barr, Melissa McCarthy).

Wait and see how they react to the recent development of seemingly effective weight loss drugs, though.

It does show the power of revealed vs. stated preferences.

Fat celebrities are nothing new, and it's very possible that the occasional plus size model can be explained at least as much as a cynical attempt to garner hate clicks and get any-publicity-good-publicity as a genuine sop to fat activism.

Fat celebreties in the past were usually men, but never a woman whom one isn't supposed to laugh at.

Appeals to publicity don't make sense since they are always to left, were they not motivated by political considerations, right-coded deviations from the norm would be as common, if not more, than left-coded ones. Probably more, since a media espousing nazism is more controversial, than that which promotes stalism.

Not in opera?

Or, for that matter, Oprah?

I also don’t believe that appeals to publicity are “always” left-leaning. Jokes about reality’s bias aside, there are marketing niches which clearly code right. You don’t have to talk about the extremes to count.

Well, sure, at some level they're going to bump into the same problem as trans activists - people are still attracted to what they're attracted to and people will still feel self-loathing when they're physically repulsive. They've had about as much cultural success as I think it's plausible to have though. You probably can't get away with saying, "I won't hire fat people because they're lazy, undisciplined, and I just plain don't want to look at them". Likewise, I've had people personally scold me for saying, "I would never be attracted to an overweight woman".

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