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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   25992 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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Medicine will continue to show that obesity is unhealthy, which will give everyone psychological permission to maintain their aversion.

I want to believe this, but I feel that time has shown that the oppressor/oppressed framework is more than capable of overruling the science. There's a lot of research on IQ, heritability, innate gender differences etc - and people just continue to spout verifiable, known lies that accord with the framework in question.

I suspect the fat acceptance movement won’t have the same success, partly because it isn’t innate and partly because medical advances will make being thin easier for most fat people to attain. Didn’t @self_made_human talk a few months ago about some new diet pill that seems to work wonders? Once almost anyone can become effortlessly thin, fat acceptance advocates will probably be seen the same way we now view anorexia advocates.

partly because medical advances will make being thin easier for most fat people to attain.

As I noted in a reply upthread, at least one "fat acceptance" activist professor has attacked Ozempic as an example of "fatphobia" — "the elimination of fat bodies" even:

"What makes this moment different from the others, however, is the dangerous rhetoric in which it is lodged. This rhetoric elevates the banal and commonplace fat-shaming that fat people must endure and resist to an unprecedented level," the professor added.

…

The professor lamented how the effectiveness of obesity treatments could eliminate "fat activism" and "the fat liberation movement."

He added that treatments for "the so-called obesity epidemic" were "steeped in fat-hatred."

Ozempic? It works great, both for weight loss and more surprising applications like treating addictions and impulsive behaviors. They haven't even discovered any real adverse effects, barring loss of muscle mass with the fat (as is the case for most rapid weight loss techniques, including dieting or fasting), and believe me there are plenty of attempts to find a reason it can't just be taken at face value, or must be "too good to be true".

The only knock against it I can muster is that it's still expensive, but it'll get cheaper, there are other drugs in the same category that work even better, and eventually it'll become a generic or commodity alternatives will show up.

I don't think the Fat Acceptance movement ever gained widespread momentum, ahem, but it's going to die out from its adherents ending up sheepishly not fat, or the worst of them will literally die.

I also don't think the fat acceptance movement will have any success - but mostly because fat people are actually viscerally uncool and status-damaging to hang out with. I just don't think their disrespect for science and material reality is going to be what does them in, because observably false beliefs can survive just fine in society without any serious pushback.

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