Saturday 7 March 2015

Creating Biological Divide

This is interesting- Why rac(e)ism is not backed by science.
We now know that the way we talk about race has no scientific validity. There is no genetic basis that corresponds with any particular group of people, no essentialist DNA for black people or white people or anyone. This is not a hippy ideal, it’s a fact. There are genetic characteristics that associate with certain populations, but none of these is exclusive, nor correspond uniquely with any one group that might fit a racial epithet. Regional adaptations are real, but these tend to express difference within so-called races, not between them.
That's an excellent summation of how the impression of what you see doesn't necessarily describe physically function. Though I must admit, if you're like me, that feels quite dissonant if not a little bit shocking. Let me be clear, it's not that I'm rejecting it, it's that I'm talking about my reaction to it. Which is based on the impressions I've imbued. I sense its correct.

It's also the same with fe/male, if not more so. I have little dissonance about that. Indeed the term "opposite sex" has been grating on my nerves for most of my life.

Also note, this current attempt to set up a newer false dichotomy of biology;
"Once obesity is established, however, body weight seems to become biologically 'stamped in' and defended,"
I'm not singling this person out, this is simply a reflection of the whole underlying premise of the 'obesity' construct mindset and why I feel 'obesity' as a field-if it is one-needs to go. It can and should be absorbed into metabolic science, [even if it needs for some reason to be a subset of that];
Few individuals ever truly recover from obesity," the authors wrote. Those that do, they add, "still have 'obesity in remission,' and are biologically very different from individuals of the same age, sex and body weight who never had obesity." They are constantly at war with their bodies' efforts to return to their highest sustained weight.
'Obesity' splits people in an even more unscientific way than race or sex-according to mass. What that means in short is like saying if two people are six feet tall-one 140lbs the other 280 their height is produce differently, the latter via a pathological process or pathway/s.

Or that anyone above 5 feet in height is "overheight," and that this height is produced by a pathological process that somehow bears no relation to the healthy mechanics that produce a lesser height. And if you get sick, you aren't a person who's unwell, you have a "overheight-related disease."

You may smirk, but this is the kind of cognitive errors the existence of 'obesity' as a field is enabling. And most of it is down to the odd existence of 'obesity' as meaningfully separate from overall metabolic function. This speaks in part to how old the term 'obese' is. It goes back a few hundred years at least. It's an obsolete way of characterizing metabolic function though.

The kind of thing some would fancy as "time (dis)honoured."

By insisting that fatness is intrinsically pathological and made by pathology, with only pathological effects-how very kindergarten, like bad things happen to bad people because they are bad-they distort their own perception of human physiology, let alone lay people's. To no worthwhile end. It's unnecessary. If you want/need to reverse weight, then do it.

That is all you need to do. If that's was what this was about.

What is described in these quotes as "defended" is homeostasis, or the body's self regulation. I read somewhere that pre-diet hyperphagia [rise in hunger/appetite] was outside homeostasis because it begins before calorie restriction is commenced. When it isn't. I read that years ago. These people are actually regressing intellectually, even fat phobes need to consider squarely whether they wish to be dragged into a new age of ignorance. They may find that they'll increasingly struggle to understand their own body and its function.

This level of falsehood is not likely to contain itself to fat people alone.

The failure of calorie restriction/exercise bulimia or energy manipulation as a weight regulation strategy is down to the universal physiology we all have. Just as the production of height is too, at whatever level.

It has nothing to do with being "morbidly obese" as is increasingly being asserted by purveyors of 'obesity' cultism. By pathologizing fat bodies, they've ended up pathologizing the very anatomy we all have.

This is what the AMA's scientific committee alluded to when they told doctors, no disease has been coined. You cannot label disease when there's nothing to label. Disease is not an outward signal, it has something that is generating it. A bug, a malfunction, something. Medics went ahead in spite of this for reasons of getting paid for quackery and imposition. 

If it were the case that diets only failed for those with a BMI of 40+ or even 30 or 25+, slim people would be getting slimmer, they most definitely aren't. On the contrary. And I'd say, the real reason we cannot tell how erm robust we all are is just as likely that those who see themselves as slim-aren't as slim as they wish to be. They're more uniformly solid than ever.

We can from their reactions to genuinely thin people. They wish to ban truly thin bodies. They don't want to see them, knowing how they feel "skinny" and superior when they compare themselves with or stand beside a fat(ter) person.

When they see a genuinely thin person, they become the fatter person- and they cannot stand feeling on the receiving end of their own judgement. Behaving as if those thin people must think exactly as they, so they become aggressive.

A gap would be opening up between fat and slim if dieting was working for slim people. Focus on 'obesity' obscures this. There's no evidence diets work any better for anybody-restriction goes against the mechanics of our common physiology. That's just more obvious the fatter you are.

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