No Point of Comparison

No one wants to let fat be what it is. From letting the process of its creation and actuality be described as is, to permitting people who are fat to be described and defined by themselves along with those able and willing to observe them and their experience objectively.

This sadly still too often includes fat people, activists included. Though in this, the problem comes more from the self estrangement and continued erasure of operating under the same basis of falsehood as everyone else.

The crudest sign of this lack of interest in the veracity of fatness is the ceaseless inept comparisons thrown around helter-skelter. Fatness is routinely dubbed/compared with: an eating disorder, neurosis, chronic disease, addiction (where addiction is being conflated with compulsion), smoking, opiate drug dependence, alcoholism, an audit of mental health, self harm, slow suicide etc.,

Usually, to urge to compare comes from a drive to illuminate through finding similarities with things that may be or have more familiar themes or characteristics. Nothing expresses more the extent to which fat people's self defense has been disengaged, by operating to the mainstream agenda, than these failures of comparison.
 
Let's start with; an eating disorder-fatness is body mass or size, an eating disorder refers to a dysfunctional pattern of eating or non-eating habits. A neurosis- is an imbalance of or in the functioning of the nervous system/ brain. Fatness is the physiology of higher body mass. A chronic disease- chronic disease is disorder of the body's function, that has no cure only treatment. Fatness is an outcome of a body's metabolic self regulation, it's function not dysfunction. An addiction-to mean-compulsion as in "obsessive compulsion" is a repetitive act or set of actions that have attained a self sustaining momentum that's unresponsive to conscious intent to halt it or them. Fatness is the action of physiology not the physiology of an action/ set of. Smoking-smoking is the habit of inhaling and exhaling lit tubers of tobacco through your mouth. Fatness is the continued existence of body weight, above a certain point.

Opiate drug addiction/dependence-the use of this and other intoxicants causes the body to reduce its own internal production of matching/similar chemicals, in this case opiates-to prevent overdose. After the drug exits the system, production is restored. Repeated use leads to breakdown in the the mechanisms that restore production-in those susceptible to this. The body becomes dependent on the external supply. Fatness happens when the body increases its own mass. 

Alcoholism-.........er sorry, no idea of the underlying mechanism of alcohol dependence, above and beyond, the body adapts to the presence of alcohol. Fatness derives from cells the body produces, indeed, is born with. 

Mental health audit-body-weight does not signal mental health any more than dents in the head signal criminal or other inclination. The best signal of mental health is of course patterns of behaviour. Self-harm-refers to acts that seek to damage the individual, such as the cutting of ones flesh or starving oneself. Once a tendency to self harm is activated, usually by a build up of negative stress, the drive seems to be triggering the release of chemicals the body uses to repair. This relieves the stress by providing feelings of relaxation, relief/ even up lift. Being fat is the outcome of the body's internal self-regulatory processes. Slow suicide- is an oxymoron. The one thing that most signals the urge to suicide is an imperative to haste. Any slowdown must reflect the will to live. The urge toward suicide is not usually a cause for opprobrium, but that's not really the point. Fatness is body led and does not express a wish to end life, more likely the opposite on body's part.

The purpose here is to press fatness into the agenda of those making comparisons. That mainly consists of a desire get fat people to accept the unacceptable. To re-formulate the way fat people perceive themselves and are perceived by others. And to quiet the person's own conscience.

The acute ineptness of all this reflects a switching off of internal critical faculties. It's easy to forget that our own minds are the first critic of our own thoughts. When we don't bother, we inevitably spout drivel. What's amazing is how even this level of unthink doesn't prompt laughter, but instead is pandered to and treated as if merits countering and is deserving a full explanation of its vacuousness.

That is what's dubbed, thin privilege. The leeway to be as stupid as you wish to be and have that treated as thoughtful and in good faith. That's the halo of slimness.

Those unembarrassed enough to assert the absence of a basic critique of their own thoughts are unlikely to respond honestly to your careful and earnest assessment of such.