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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   25670 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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But the overall framework of fat oppression presupposes that the core of the problem is the way society treats obese people, and the movement’s primary goal is to reduce messages that inflict shame. This shame, activists argue, is the main source of suffering for fat people.

A particularly extreme version of this may be Carleton University's Fady Shanouda:

A Canadian professor who specializes in "fat studies" claimed that aiming for an obesity-free future was "fatphobic" and blasted the "biopolitics" agenda as an attack against fat people.

Fady Shanouda is an associate professor at the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation at Carleton University in Canada. Shanouda "draws on feminist new materialism" to examine the intersections between "fat studies, "colonialism, racism…, and queer- and transphobia."

The Critical Disability Studies scholar wrote that it was "fatphobic" to have a public health conversation and to tamp down on obesity, according to a Monday article in The Conversation.

…

In particular, Shanouda believes the marketing of the drug Ozempic – as a method to combat obesity – was the latest example of fatphobia in the culture.

"The latest wonder drug… [was] invented to help diabetics regulate blood glucose levels, but has the notable side-effect of severe weight loss. It has been heralded by many to culminate in the elimination of fat bodies. The fatphobia that undergirds such a proclamation isn’t new," Shanouda said.

…

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."

"Elimination of fat bodies." Shanouda talks about a drug that helps people lose weight — one they voluntarily take — with the sort of language I usually see used to talk about things like ethnic cleansing. I'm not sure how much Grandma's rules of politeness address that.

A Canadian professor who specializes in "fat studies" claimed that aiming for an obesity-free future was "fatphobic" and blasted the "biopolitics" agenda as an attack against fat people.

In this edition of "The Woke Are More Correct Than the Mainstream", I find myself agreeing that I am "fatphobic" and that I hold positions that could reasonably be described as biopolitics of opposition to fat people. I do believe standard platitudes about how it would be better for fat people if they lost the weight, that they'll be happier and healthier, but if I'm being as bluntly honest as possible, I just have contempt for people like Shanouda. Shanouda eats himself into disability, then claims that disability as an oppressed status and makes a professorial career out of it. Yes, my biopolitics are against everything he stands for, people should strive to be fit and healthy, and governments should generally not subsidize disordered lifestyles.

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