I’m glad Lindy West loves herself and her body, and I’m happy that she’s done with shame, and I think she’s beautiful and charismatic and hilarious and I always have. I take issue, however, with Lindy’s setting me up as some sort of boogey/straw man, attributing prejudices to me that I do not feel, and attempting to purge her fatshame by fathateshaming me. Arguing that the obesity epidemic should be off limits for discussion on Slog—or that Stranger writers, a notoriously snarky bunch, must slip on kid gloves before we sit down at our computers to post about this issue and this issue alone (really? at a publication that’s joked about child rape, AIDS, and the Holocaust?)—because “fat people know they’re fat” is simply ridiculous.

There are two things I’d like to clear up before I really get going…

Thing 1: I’m not Lindy West’s “boss.” I didn’t hire her, I don’t have the authority to fire her, I don’t edit her. Lindy’s post was courageous and it was inspiring—until the ad hominem attacks began—but it wasn’t standing-up-to-the-boss brave. Because I’m not her boss. I could probably get her fired, I suppose, but I wouldn’t try to do that, because she’s brilliant and funny and, even if she disagrees with me, even if we come to rhetorical blows on Slog, we all argue all the time on Slog. What would Slog be without our intramural battles? What’s different about Lindy’s post is the personal nature of Lindy’s attack. She’s accusing me of bigotry and malice—she’s accusing me of attacking her personally, which I’ve never done and would not do.

Thing 2: I was out of email, cell, and Internet range all weekend, starting Friday afternoon, and didn’t get a chance to really sit down and read Lindy’s post until late last night, and that’s why I’m only just responding to it now.

Okay! Let the record show that I love that Lindy loves Lindy—everybody loves Lindy and so should Lindy—but I’m not so in love with the way Lindy used this quote from a Savage Love column I wrote more than seven years ago:

I am thoroughly annoyed at having my tame statements of fact—being heavy is a health risk; rolls of exposed flesh are unsightly—characterized as “hate speech.”

That sounds bad floating out there in space like that, all removed from its original context and shit.

That’s one sentence from a column that came at the end of a series of columns—a series of columns from 2004—that was not about the general unsightliness of fat people. It was about the late, unlamented fad for skin-tight, low-rise jeans coupled with midriff-baring tops. (The columns are here, here, and here.) The columns weren’t just critical of overweight or obese women in low-rise jeans and midriff-baring tops, but of women who didn’t have the right “proportions” to pull off that look; “most women” didn’t look good in these getups, not just fat women. (Men came in for some slamming too.) In its original context the remark was not a reference to fat people’s bodies generally, or a suggestion that fat people didn’t have a right to live in their own bodies without shame (or wear those stupid jeans if they wished), but to a particular kind of pants that do not flatter most bodies, pants that created and exposed unsightly rolls of flesh on fat women, not-so-fat women, and not-at-all-fat women alike, pants that have mercifully been consigned to the dustbin of fashion history. I suspect that Lindy was casting around looking for the most damning possible sentence, found that one, and tossed it up on Slog. It’s that or believe that Lindy was intentionally dishonest and manipulative. (And, yes, it could’ve been better put. Allow me to amend the record: “I am thoroughly annoyed at having my tame statements of fact—being heavy is a health risk; the rolls of exposed flesh created by low-rise jeans/high-rise tops are unsightly—characterized as ‘hate speech.'” And thank God no one wears those fucking things anymore.)

As for the rest of the evidence of my supposed bigotry that Lindy links to in her post—sometimes snarky posts of mine linking to news stories about the obesity epidemic; links to research that gives lie to the diet-and-exercise-have-nothing-to-do-with-the-obesity-epidemic lie pushed by dishonest, vindictive, and codependent fat activists; a post of mine featuring a Tim Minchin song that I labeled “brutal” and “bullying” but whose title I happen to agree with strongly (can we all agree that people shouldn’t feed donuts to their obese children?); discussions in a book I wrote a decade ago about the crazy fat people at the NAAFA convention (there are crazy fat people out there, Lindy, just as there are crazy gay people out there; be careful who you crawl into bed now that you’re a “brave” hero to the FA movement for standing up to your bigoted “boss”)—the bigotry in my posts exists only in Lindy’s imagination. (Okay, I totally crossed the line when I made fun of Kate Harding’s arms, which I’ve never even seen (they could be made of steel for all I know), and for that I apologize. I could dig up a few hundred emails from FA movement folks calling me a cocksucker, if it that would help balance the scales.)

Take Lindy’s reaction to my “Ban Fat Marriage” post. Opponents of marriage equality in Iowa claim they want to ban gay marriage because gay men are unhealthy. By that logic, I wrote, “fat marraige” would also have to be banned in Iowa. Did I mean that fat people shouldn’t be allowed to marry? Of course not. Does pointing out that there are a lot of fat people in Iowa—30% of the population of that state is obese—somehow “stigmatize” fat people? Um, no, not unless the existence of fat people is somehow inherently stigmatizing. I did point out that there are health risks associated with being obese—I had to in order to make the point that Republican legislators in Iowa are bigots—and you know what? There are health risks associated with being obese. There are also, as I’ve written until my fingers were numb, health risks associated with being gay and sexually active. (They’re not the ones the bigots in Iowa are talking up; more on those health risks in a minute). Citing the prevalence of obesity in Iowa and mentioning the health risks associated with obesity to make a point about bigotry isn’t by itself bigotry. So what was up with Lindy’s reaction to that post? I think this reader is on to something:

I read your “Ban Fat Marriage” post. Applying the arguments for position X to analogous position Y in order to show that both arguments are spurious and indefensible is a standard and often effective tactic. Perhaps as a matter of discretion, you left out the “ick factor” that is often applied to gay (man-on-man, that is) sex, which could easily go with fat-on-fat sex as well, but when I mentioned the article to my spouse, I threw that in. Then I saw Lindy West’s reactions “RE: Ban Fat Marriage” and “Hello, I am Fat.” Apparently, Lindy isn’t very good with reading comprehension, which is kind of startling since she writes for a living. Or maybe she suspends her reading comprehension and reasoning skills whenever the subject of “fat” is broached. I’d wager the latter is the case.

I’m going to start numbering these things, à la Lindy, because I wanna get through this and return to my regularly scheduled life:

1. Lindy cites that particular quote, above, as proof that I’m a bigot. She claims to know what I think about fat people and how I feel about fat people and leaps from there to claims that I think fat people are gross and that I don’t want fat people touching me (no more hugging my relatives, I guess), which she then condemns me for. Ad hominemineminem. (I’m on an airplane sitting next to a fat person RIGHT NOW, Lindy! A fat person I’m sharing my NYT with! I even let her do the crossword! Because I HATE!) It’s hard to disprove a charge of bigotry without resorting to some-of-my-best-friends-are—and on this subject I can resort to I-once-was-myself (relevant email from my brother after the jump)—but I’m not an anti-fat bigot ,and one piece of material evidence I could point to might be all the people of varying sizes that I have hired or had a hand in hiring over the years. The first thing I said to Lindy when we met in person wasn’t “Unsightly! Unsightly!” but “Your film reviews are amazing—we’ve got to get you on staff.” If that’s bigotry… (Discrimination in the workplace is a huge problem for the obese… but not at the Stranger, despite the place being partly run by a fatpohbic bigot. Weird.)

2. I never claimed to be concerned about Lindy’s health. The science is in: obesity has serious potential health consequences. Which is not to say that all the obese folks are unhealthy and all the skinny bitches are healthy. Individual results may vary. But being seriously overweight is likely to harm a person’s health. That said…

I have always maintained that people have a right to live their lives and pursue their pleasures, wherever they find them, even if there are potential negative health consequences, even at the risk of shortening their lives. There are health consequences to being obese—the First Lady agrees, Lindy, go get her!—but like I wrote at the end of the gluttony chapter in Skipping Towards Gomorrah, we should all have the right to live however we damn well please without being stigmatized or discriminated against. But we don’t have a right to demand that other people pretend that there aren’t health consequences involved with being obese, with smoking, with eating meat, with skiing, and, yes, with being gay and sexually active. Sexually active gay men have much higher rates of sexually transmitted infections, higher rates of HIV transmission, higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse (sometimes that drug and alcohol abuse is rooted in self-hatred, which the wider society is responsible for creating; sometimes it’s rooted in destructive community norms, which gay men are responsible for creating and perpetuating). I’ve written about the risks gay men face—the potential negative health consequences of being gay and sexually active—until my fingers were ready to fall off. Was that bigoted of me?

3. I could give a shit about health-insurance premiums. I support a government-run, single-payer health care system, one that spreads everyone’s risks around—the obese, the gay, the smoker, the skier, etc. I’ve no doubt linked to stories about the health care costs associated with the obesity epidemic because, you know, it’s an aspect of the obesity-epidemic story and I’m interested in this story. (I’m a sex-and-relationship columnist; I could no more avoid questions about bodies and health and size than I could avoid questions about blowjobs and assfucking and cunnilingus.) I believe that the extra burden the obese place on our health care system should be borne without complaint just as the extra burden the HIV-positive place on the health-care system should. (And, hey, have I mentioned that my seventy-year-old dad is a smoker and on Medicare?) But there’s nothing bigoted about encouraging the obese to take steps to improve their health—that usually means making the kinds of changes that lead to weight loss—any more than there’s something bigoted about encouraging gay men to use condoms, fuck fewer people, stop using meth, etc.

4. I’m interested in the obesity epidemic—what causes it, how it got this bad, what we’re going to do about it—and I’m angered by what I perceive to be the dishonestly of many FA movement activists. I think the obesity epidemic is remarkable, which is why I remark on it, and I will continue to remark on it so long as I’m blogging, and I reserve the right to make the odd snarky remark. I will continue to post the links to stories about the obesity epidemic that catch my eye, stories like this that give the lie to the whole lack-of-exercise-has-nothing-to-do-with-it crap pushed by fat-acceptance crowd:

Adult obesity rates rose in 28 states last year, the report says…. Among the [report’s] findings: In a dozen states, more adults reported getting absolutely no regular physical activity beyond their jobs. It’s not likely a coincidence that the fattest state, Mississippi, also has the highest rate of physical inactivity in adults. There was a lot of overlap in the most-obese and least-active lists.

This stuff interests me not just because it pisses off the FA crowd. It’s interesting all on its own.

5. The takeaway from Lindy’s post—once the euphoria of our pleasure in Lindy’s triumph over her self-loathing fades—seems to be this: Fat people already feel bad, so shut up. Reading about obesity reminds fat people they’re fat and they already know they’re fat and feel bad about being fat, so shut up. And diet and exercise never work and even if they worked for you it’s unpossible for a heavy person to keep the weight off so why bother, so shut up. And shut up because your not shutting up is making it harder for fat people not to hate themselves and only after fat people stop hating themselves and lose the shame can they… begin to lose the weight that they can’t actually lose. And shut up.

I find that very confusing and confused.

And finally…

Look, Lindy, I hear you. You don’t like my posts about obesity. You don’t think they’re helpful. They’re not necessarily meant to be helpful. You seem to assume that I post in the hope that fat people will read my posts and drop the weight. That’s not my motivation; neither is shaming fat people. I’m interested in the obesity epidemic and I’m following the news about it and I assume other people are too and I’m posting about it and I’m ticked off about some aspects of it (including, yes, the vitriol that has been aimed at me over the years). And, yes, I believe that people should be fit—fit, not skinny; active, not sticks—not because Fat Is Gross, but because healthy—which doesn’t always translate to skinny—is better than non-healthy. It’s pretty much the same reason why I think people shouldn’t smoke or fuck strangers without protection or play on railroad tracks or smoke meth or vote Republican.

I am not, however, responsible for your shame (RIP). You arrived at my posts with your shame, my posts didn’t create it, and you managed to conquer your shame despite my posts. Good for you. (No snark intended in that “good for you.” Seriously, Lindy, good for you.) If you don’t want to read my posts about this subject—about any subject—just skip ’em.

And finally-for-real-finallyfinallyfinally… if you had written to me at my column seeking my advice about all of this (and I realize you didn’t and I realize that now I’m the one pretending that I can read your thoughts—but, hey, you pretended you could read mine, so looks like we’re even), here’s what I would have to said after reading your letter: It sounds like you’re externalizing an internal conflict about being fat—you’re projecting your anger and self-loathing onto to me, and seeing malice and bigotry where none exists, and perhaps that’s useful because that anger seems to be liberating and motivating. If having your own personal boogeyman on Slog helps you conquer your shame and love your body and this helps you break out of old, self-destructive patterns and habits (you can’t be losing weight now just because your attitude changed), then I’m happy to be your own personal boogeyman. But honestly, Lindy, you don’t need one. You’re stronger than that.

················

Here’s the email from my brother Bill…

When you do have time to respond to Lindy: note how often these people (LW included) use anecdotal evidence and generalize to the Whole World about it. She cannot lose weight dieting, so it’s not possible. Then you might talk about our family.

You were fat as a kid. You started exercising and eating right and voila, you’re not fat.

Other family members, not so much. Post a link to our CHF talk, where I look like fucking buddha for crissakes. if you and I both have genetically preset weights which our bodies just naturally go to, then we’d be roughly similar given our shared genetic backgrounds. But I don’t exercise as much as you do (my biking not withstanding, I haven’t been to a gym in years) and I don’t eat as well as you do and so I’m 20 to 25 lbs overweight.

You and Eddie exercise a lot, eat right and are in good shape.

If they get to generalize anecdotes about themselves, so do you.

The ultimate irony in all of this? I still feel like the fat kid.

473 replies on “Hello, I’m Not the Enemy”

  1. wow look at all the comments. This really hit a nerve. In the forever war of image versus health, image has always won. We humans will torture and starve and pierce and shave our bodies to look like the latest ideal instead of opting for healthy. Probably, as some have pointed out, because we are more likely to get sex if we look like a societal ideal. Sex is a powerful motivator and our socialized ideals of beauty seem to form a fixed version of what is “good” into our brains that overrides “healthy” most of the time. It would be awfully nice if we could figure out what really is healthy and somehow make that our ideal.

  2. The $100,000 question: do fat people enjoy looking at other fat people?

    And if so: At what BMI do you start finding corpulence aesthetically pleasing?

    Because there seem to be a whole lot of people screaming that Dan’s opinion that muffin tops are unsightly, is an opinion, and not a fact, as Dan stated. While this is true, I have to wonder what percentage of people find fat rolls leaking out of I’ll-fitting garments pleasing. Even the self proclaimed “chubby chasers” seem to prefer a body type that’s more curvy than rotund. Big can be attractive to some, but lumpy and misshapen rarely (if ever!) is.

  3. “but very many truly fat people can never get themselves down into a “normal” BMI”

    This is just untrue.

    The thing is, accurate nutritional and health information is extraordinarily hard to find and people cling to their misconceptions.

    So take some of my ailing family members, whom I love very much and are overweight. They too, think that no matter what they do they can’t lose weight. They are convinced that eating several servings of starches a day (in the form of cereals, breads, and rolls) is necessary, they think iceberg lettuce counts as a vegetable, they think all fats must be avoided (including olive oil, avocados, almonds, coconut oil), they have no idea how much sugar they’re consuming (when you put together the juice the nonfat yogurt the dried fruit and the added sugar to coffee). They also think jogging a little is exercise (hint : you need to get your heart rate up to its target and keep it there for the duration of the workout to burn fat. you can “lightly” jog circles all day without doing much for yourself).

    When I went home for xmas my lovely relatives were totally horrified by the plain boiled egg whites I eat, by my use of plain cinnamon instead of sugar, by the plain brussel sprouts and hemp protein powder. They accused me of starving myself and “dieting.” This is how I eat and I’m healthy for it.

    Nobody is reading at this point anyway. Here’s my opinion : Dan is right about blogging just as harshly about the obesity epidemic as he does about anything else because Americans are in denial about their weight issues. No, it’s true. Americans do not realize they’re fat. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40907754/ns/…. I’ve experienced this in real life : I’ve been on dates with overweight guys whom I met from online dating sites that had described themselves as average – I don’t think they were lying. They really thought of themselves as “normal.” HOWEVER, Lindy is also right. I think obesity is directly related to anxiety about “perfect” unachievable body sizes promoted by the ad industry. When people learn to relax and love themselves, they take better care of themselves and the weight goes away.

    See, it’s not one versus the other. You need both sides. Unadorned honesty + Self love and compassion.

  5. I’m sorry but the people whining that Dan’s picking on them need to step back a minute. I spent the better part of my life being called ugly and having many assumptions made about who I am as a person because of that. Do I hold it against the people who were cruel? Actually, no. As I got older I realized (much like a lot of the people in the It Gets Better videos) that I can take control of how I feel about myself and I don’t need to rely on the kindness of strangers for validation. Someone called me ‘old & homely’ this weekend and I told them that’s a statement of fact not an insult.

    It’s ridiculous to be a grown up blaming another grown up for your lack of self esteem. There’s tons of resources out there to help you with your self esteem that don’t rely on you changing a thing other than your outlook. But you have to do the work. No one can make you feel better but you.

    Lindy wasn’t ‘brave’ for writing that post. She KNEW when she wrote it that people would come out of the woodwork to support her. She KNEW that Dan has a lot of detractors who don’t want to take responsibility for themselves who are more than happy to rip him a new one for not being nice to them. And saying ‘not taking responsibility’ does not mean ‘will not lose weight’. It means what it says ‘take responsibility for yourself’ period.

    I just want to reiterate what many, many people have said if you actually read & listen to Dan, he cares about people. He cares about them enough to not worry whether people think he’s nice or not.

  6. TL;DR.

    just kidding, i read it. but i wish i hadn’t.

    good work, dan. you can go sleep easy in your castle of moral superiority.
    oh, but don’t worry, you can always get away with failing to recognize your own privilege because you’re a gay man and that makes you oh-so-oppressed.

  10. This i s what you get for trying to get the record straight. Bigotry is only where people blame others for their own issues with or without realizing it. And on Fox News. Thumps up, Dan! Whatta reply. Though I’m sure you’ll get more shit cause of this, but hey! Can’t please everybody.

  11. @408 “It would be awfully nice if we could figure out what really is healthy and somehow make that our ideal”.

    Well, “healthy” is hard to define in any real way, since you pay the price of obesity down the road rather than as a young/young-ish person, but “fit” less so. Fit is functional. You can define that empirically however you like – so fast, so strong, so much endurance, agility, any combination of the above.

    The thing is that these correlate decently with BMI/weight. Not perfectly, and certainly not linearly, but decently enough. Look at the women who do crossfit at my gym – unlike a “normal” gym, not is size 0 or 2 or even 4 – but nobody’s a 14 or 16 or 18, either. Thin-ness is antithetical to the whole exercise, but overweight would just stand in the way of doing what they’re trying to do.

    I think that your suggestion’s a lost cause. Not because it’s not a good idea. Because it is a good idea. Having a benchmark for fitness and health would require us to examine ourselves and find ourselves lacking. Not exactly something we’re queueing up for, is it?

  12. It’s a shame that bigotry of any kind is rationalized and tolerated. People who are fatphobes are every bit as bad as homophobes, and are apparently just as determined that they are right. Don’t preach about bullying if you are a bully yourself. As for people who’ve “cured” their obesity, there are ex-gays who say the same thing. See you in ten years.

  13. @371:
    “You are watching a film, and out of nowhere a character does or says something homophobic. It’s a painful shock to the system, and you try to let it roll over you, but you feel angry and ashamed anyway.”

    Well, you were addressing Dan here, but as a fellow queer can I just say that this isn’t how I or a lot of out gay people would respond, thanks. I hope you don’t think all queer people are this easily bruised? We would not get a lot done in our daily lives if we were, you know, because there’s a hell of a lot of stray homophobia out there. Here’s something I would have identified with more:

    “You are watching a film, and out of nowhere a character does or says something homophobic. It’s annoying, and depending on who says it, what’s said, and how big a deal it is, you either roll your eyes and mock for a moment, or change the channel and have a little rant about it. Then you get on with your evening.”

    Yes, prejudice exerts pressure on individuals and relationships, look at the gay mental-health statistics, etc etc. But it comes in big and small servings (you realise queer people face more serious obstacles than prejudiced jokes by TV characters, right?), and most of us learn to distinguish and to save our energy for the bigger, more important fights. I’m not even going to attempt to parallel that to your point about fat acceptance. Just wanted to speak from my own experience and point out that this particular example just didn’t ring true to me.

  14. Hello. Margaret Fucking Mitchell told the story of Gone With the Wind in fewer words than your post contained. Seriously, Miss O’Hara, do you feel better after that rant?

    Rational, normal people get your point & they get hers. But these two posts (yours & hers) besides being largely shit drivel themselves have inspired some of the most shit drivel comments I’ve ever seen.

    After reading the comments to the two posts, I really want to hold a bunch of the commenters down, shove cheeseburgers down their throat, and taze their anus.

  15. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much backpedaling in a single post. Dan, I love you, but I’m not buying it. Sorry.

    The most telling thing is this; you get accused of having a LOT of prejudices and bigotry. This is the only one you get fucking defensive about…while all the while continuing to post stories about how horrible fatness is that you totally don’t mean as having anything to do with fat shaming.

  16. Hey Dan,

    Don’t know if you are reading this or if you even care, but I am a fat guy who thinks your advice is spot on. i read your column, listen to the podcast, and read Slog because I like what you have to say (and it turns out the other people posing here have great things to say too). I’ve never felt bullied or shamed by anything you said about fat people, mostly it struck me as good advice (and when it didn’t, well you’re an advice columnist, I can ignore bad advice from you more easily than I can ignore bad advice from my parents). Look, I’m fat, I know I’m fat, and I know when people are hatting on me because I’m fat–and what I read and hear from Dan isn’t hate — it’s snark and it’s cutting on occasion — but his advice clearly doesn’t come from a place of hate.

    And since apparently this is hate on Dan time, I’ll preemptively say that I am also bi, and I’ve never found anything you have to say about bi-guys offensive either.

    Thanks for all you do!

  17. @394 … Wrong, wrong, wrong. You can’t set up this false gay/fat parallelism simply by typing in all caps that both conditions are so unwanted that WHO WOULD CHOOSE them. They are simply not comparable.

    Think about it in reverse… When a right-wing hater says gay people chose their perversion, and you turn the question back to them, they flounder. “Did you choose to be straight?” you ask, and they fumble around, maybe saying something about choosing what sexual behavior to engage in or whatever, but if you pin them down on orientation, they can’t say it’s a choice.

    Now turn it around on the fat/fit side of things. Does a fit person choose to be fit? In many (most?) cases it’s a resounding yes. Obviously, as many commenters have already said, we come in many different sizes, shapes, etc., and a healthy body for one person is bigger than a healthy body for another one, but there is simply no denying that our choices do determine our shape. I just came from the pool, and I’m eating a mango and reading Slog before I start work. I’ll be a different shape at the end of this week than at the end of say, that week last October when I spent Tuesday night out drinking, skipped my Wednesday swim, and ate an egg sandwich for breakfast.

    Do we not all see the changes on our bodies every single day based on the choices we make? How is this a controversial issue?

    P.S. Your belief that you detect a “whiff of disgust” … real or imagined? Relevant here? Asked another way: is the allegation of a “whiff” even really something Dan should take seriously? What does it take to remove all traces of an alleged “whiff”? Honestly.

  18. @394 … Wrong, wrong, wrong. You cannot set up this false equivalency between gay people and fat people simply by asserting that both conditions are viewed as undesirable and then shouting in all caps: WHO WOULD CHOOSE IT?

    They’re just not the same. Think about it in reverse … When the right-wing hater says that being gay is a choice, one of the most common replies to turn the question around and ask the wingnut if he chose to be straight. Usually, this induces sputtering and fumbling, sometimes a remark or two about choosing to only participate in heterosexual behavior, but when you pin him down on orientation and not behavior, he has nothing to say. He did not choose to be straight.

    But what about fitness vs. fatness? These things just “happen” to people? No! Ask anyone who is fit, and most of them will be able to explain their choices to you, which have led to their current physical condition. I do not understand how this idea that our choices show on our bodies is controversial. Do we not all — all of us in bodies — notice these choices (both the good and the bad) day in and day out?

    Right now, I am eating a mango and reading Slog before work, having finished my Wednesday morning swim. Will I be able to tell a difference in my body tomorrow vs. the weeks when I’ve gone on a Tuesday night drinking binge, skipped the swim, and ate an egg sandwich for breakfast? Fuck yeah.

    Who among us doesn’t experience this ALL THE TIME? Choices matter.

    P.S. Your detection of a “whiff of disgust”? … Real? Imagined? Relevant? How exactly is Dan supposed to defend himself from an allegation of a “whiff”? And should he have to? Honestly.

  19. I choose to work out almost everyday. I choose to eat a balanced diet. I choose to only occasionally eat excessively high calorie foods. I could just as easily choose to sit around eating bacon cheese burgers, fries, cupcakes, sodas, etc. everyday. Those foods are tasty, and easy to eat, but I know I don’t need 3500 calories a day. I don’t feel I must sate every slight hunger pang with a bag of Doritos or a Snickers. I can save my appetite for healthy meal. I don’t by any means starve myself. I eat about 2200 calories a day. These are all choices that I make.

    I am gay, and there’s not a choice I could make in the world to be straight. I do choose to not sleep with every guy who passes by. I choose to use condoms. I could just as easily choose to go to sex clubs, and have unprotected sex. These things would be pleasurable I’m sure, but I know that I don’t want STDs. I don’t feel I must sate every sexual urge with some stranger in a bathroom. I can save my horniness for appropriate partners at appropriate times. I don’t by any means sexually starve myself. I have and enjoy sex. These are also choices that I make.

  20. Hats off to Lindy for an awesome post. And shame on you, Dan, for not understanding how you exude bigotry which is hurtful and unscientific. Perhaps the science can help you move towards a better appreciation of the social justice issues and the extent to which you’ve absorbed cultural ideas that are not predicated on fact. Check out this examination of weight science, just published: http://www.nutritionj.com/content/10/1/9. For a less academic version, I’ve also written a book on this topic, called Health at Every Size (www.HAESbook.com). Plenty of free excerpts for download to help get perspective.

  21. I think I’m just tired of this now. In general, not just on the Slog.

    You can talk about being ashamed of being fat. You can talk about how you’re not bigoted against fat people. You know what? I don’t give a shit.

    People have biases. People have hated me for lots of reasons over the years. Fat is usually at the bottom of the list*. And as I have learned over the years there is crap-all I can do about people hating me for superficial reasons.

    You know what I do about those people? I ignore them. They aren’t worth my time or attention. Or if they are in a position of power over me, I get away from them ASAP (or they’ll make sure I’m gone anyway). There will always be judgmental assholes in the world, trying to shove their opinions down your throat. They generally don’t know crap-all about your life.

    I’d discuss this at length à la the above post, but it’s time to go to the track and race-walk past the skinny women out for their stroll. The ones who used to eye me with distaste, but now cheer me on. Because, you know, people can’t EVER change their minds about other people, or admit that their superficial first impressions had nothing to do with realities.

    __________________

    *Yes, I am fat, but no, I don’t consider it a right or something to love, because being fat makes me feel physically horrible. I don’t consider being fat a reason for self-loathing, I consider it a pain in the ass, and a side effect of successive injuries that deeply impacted my mobility and undiagnosed hypothyroidism. The latter corrected and the injuries rehabbed, the fat is coming off. My doctor apologizes for not believing my repeated statements of not understanding why the weight wasn’t coming off and her dismissing me as not trying hard enough. Because all fat people want to remain fat and have no self control, apparently – except when they do.

  22. Dan, you have a boundary problem. Other people’s weight, health, sexual orientation, WHATEVER….is theirs to deal with. Why do you care? You claim to be “interested” in such things, but what you really mean is that everyone else should be just like you, and if they are not, you will tell them about it (i.e. “Being overweight is bad for your health”.) You admit you really don’t care about Lindy or her health…so really, what is the point of telling her being overweight is bad for her health, if not to point out she is just not like you?

  23. Sorry, Lindy, but somebody who thinks that boiling water poured on a man’s penis is “hilarious” — and then adds insult to injury by referring to the dick in question as very small three different times in only one paragraph — hasn’t really got a moral high ground to stand on vis-a-vis respect for others in print. You’ve gone all noble on Savage for, in your view, dissing heavy people. What would your reaction have been if he had found, say, pouring boiling water on a breasts to have been hilarious and reveled in the fact that the injured titties were small?

    http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/penis…

  24. What?!

    Danny pissing all over herself and the Slog because of being quoted out of context and strawmanned and called a hateful bigot just because she disagrees wuith someone?

    priceless!…..

  25. @426 “Right now, I am eating a mango and reading Slog before work, having finished my Wednesday morning swim. Will I be able to tell a difference in my body tomorrow vs. the weeks when I’ve gone on a Tuesday night drinking binge, skipped the swim, and ate an egg sandwich for breakfast? Fuck yeah.”

    @427 “I choose to work out almost everyday. I choose to eat a balanced diet. I choose to only occasionally eat excessively high calorie foods. I could just as easily choose to sit around eating bacon cheese burgers, fries, cupcakes, sodas, etc. everyday. Those foods are tasty, and easy to eat, but I know I don’t need 3500 calories a day. I don’t feel I must sate every slight hunger pang with a bag of Doritos or a Snickers. I can save my appetite for healthy meal. I don’t by any means starve myself. I eat about 2200 calories a day. These are all choices that I make. “

    Good for the two of you. What about people who choose to do all of that and still can’t lose weight? What about people whose lives do not allow for 1 hour of daily exercise or careful meal planning? Very few fat people get that way from sitting on their asses eating cheeseburgers every day (some people do, but that is not the norm) — most get that way eating normal looking amounts of food and getting normal looking amounts of exercise. It only takes a slight calorie surplus every day to start putting on weight, and some people’s metabolisms are constantly changing and shifting the goalposts. I have a son who will not put on any fat no matter what I feed him. Is it so ridiculous to think it might also work in reverse? When will people get it into their head that what works for them does not necessarily work for others? People actually are different.

    You are also missing the entire point that not everyone has the same priorities as you. Do you really think it is reasonable to ask complete strangers to completely reorganize their lives and experience considerable discomfort just to keep random Judgy McJudgersons from thinking “Ew”?

  26. Ok, I sufficiently believe Dan doesn’t hate fatties. I changed my mind, there. I never believed he was the enemy, though. Though it doesn’t mean I don’t think he’s unskillful at times with his use of words about his pet obsessions–the occupational hazard of an acerbic advice columnist, I guess.

  27. For the record, Iowa (27.7) isn’t much fatter than Washington (26.3). If we are using the rounding that we learned in grade school, that you can get 30% for both states. I sucked at math, so I could say it is 25% too. Regardless, 2/3 of the states are above 25%.

    Please don’t imply that Iowa is far more obese than Washington. It isn’t true.

  28. 433, The vast majority of overweight and obese people are so because they eat too many calories. Lindy should be eating less than 2000 calories, but from her writings, food reviews etc, I bet she takes in in excess of 2500 calories a day. Many people tend to not realize the number of calories they consume. (Some get indignant at the suggestion that they keep track of such things.) Fat is not produced from nothing. It requires unused calories. (Don’t let calories from fat vs. carbs confuse you. It doesn’t matter from where the excess calories come. A fat free food that has the same calories as the regular version is no better.)

    If a person watches an hour of TV, playing video games, internet surfing, etc. that is time that could be spent working out instead. Too many people come home from their desk jobs, and plop in front of the TV or computer. I don’t work out at a gym. I do it at home with a couple of hand and ankle weights. Take a walk on a lunch break. Most people could find 30 minutes a day. It doesn’t have to be 30 minute consecutively. Do several 10 minute workouts. Remember that working out does not allow you to eat what ever you want. If you burn 200-300 calories in a workout, a candy bar will negate your efforts. While virtually everyone will see health benefits from working out, diet, more than lack of exercise is what causes people to be overweight.

  29. Wow. I’m several inches shorter and several pounds heavier than Ms. West. I have struggled for years, and am struggling even now, to overcome my constant desire to eat everything in sight. It’s horrible and painful, and some days it seems impossible. But I have never gotten my feelings hurt over anything I’ve seen Dan Savage say about fat. I agree with most of it actually. I really don’t understand what the big deal is here. I think many of the people that respond in the comments of these posts are much more cruel than Dan has ever been.

    I think it’s weird that people are trying to tell him what subjects he can and can’t blog about. If you are sensitive and can’t even handle the topic of obesity being brought up by a skinny person then skip the posts about it – just like I skip the “every child needs a mother and father” posts to keep from having nightmares.

  31. When mommy and daddy stop fighting, can we get back to hate-speech directed at Teapublicans? I’m too close to take sides here, but the ultra right? I’m miles away from their walk of shame, so snark away!!

  32. I guess I should be posting this on Lindy’s rant instead of Dan’s, but I can’t read through another “I am fat, hear me roar” post without gagging. Lindy may not like it, her supporters on this thread may not like it, nobody on earth may like it, but the fact remains, Dan is right on this one. Fat isn’t a disease, it isn’t an addiction. It’s just fat. Eat less, eat healthier, move your butt ocasionally and you can lose it. And yes, I know what I’m talking about.

    I used to be seriously overweight; in fact, I would say I probably made Lindy look small. Today, I’m 132 pounds, which for my height, is slim. I didn’t get there by spending hours writing about some blogger who pointed out that fat people are unhealthy. I didn’t get there by raging at airlines for wanting fat people to buy an extra seat. I didn’t get there by trying to deny the obvious. I got there by EATING LESS AND EXCERCISING, and so can anyone else.

    It’s easier to rant, Lindy. It’s easier to leave comments on a blog post and deny the truth. It’s easier to blame genes or whatever–I blamed a thyroid condition which was partially to blame for my weight gain, although not as much as my love of bbq and cake. But blaming and ranting doesn’t move your ass. Use that energy and go take a walk, go ride a bike, go for a swim. I lost mine, with a metabolism sunk through the floor, and so can you. It won’t come off in a week or a month or even a year (it took me 2 1/2), but it will come off. Ranting at Dan and everyone else who makes honest statements like “what you’re doing is unhealthy” will not budge an inch.

  33. Dan, you are awesome! Lindy took your comments way out of context. And if she is so proud and unashamed of her body, then why did she feel shameful reading your blog? If she was truly confident, she wouldn’t need to defend her confidence- especially when she was UNPROVOKED!!!!! Really, she just wants to make you the enemy so she doesn’t need to get her shit together and lose the weight!

  34. @ 406 – You obviously haven’t been following my posts.

    I’m a CHUBBY CHASER, idiot! I am exclusively sexually aroused by OVERWEIGHT MEN, so your whole “It is not the responsibility of others to fit your idea of how they should look” is totally irrelevent.

    It merely proves that you have nothing to back up your earlier statement that being fat is no more of a choice than being gay.

    And by the way, if I say “There are things you can do to stop being fat”, it doesn’t actually mean that you will succeed. The point is the capacity to change your state.

    And in the case of men, no, I don’t want them to get all bony or buff. Personally, I’d much prefer that they keep 30-50 extra pounds. But it’s up to them. It’s their body. I realize that other people’s health is more important than my sexual desires. The question is: do YOU realize that people’s health and well-being are more important than your overly sensitive ego?

    Now, if you’re talking about gayness, well no matter what I do, I will not lose my gayness for a while, even if it’s only to gain it back later. My gayness will not diminish one iota. There is no pill I can take, no exercise I can do to make it go away (see: Rekers, Haggard, etc.). Changing my “diet” of porn won’t work: women do not attract me, never have and never will.

    YOU CANNOT COMPARE THE TWO, and it’s pathetic of you to have tried.

    Is that clear enough now?

  35. Amen, Dan! I have several overweight friends, in fact more of my friends are overweight than aren’t. I love all of them dearly. They obsess way more about their weight than I do, because I honestly don’t usually think about their weight at all until they bring it up first. One morbidly obese friend posts links on Twitter and Facebook to every obscure pro-fat, anti-thin article she can find. In fact, she’s how I found Lindy’s blog. Like I said, she brought it up first. She’s made it very clear that I should not complain when I have half another person’s body taking up my space on an airplane, and that she believes I should eat with reckless abandon, and that she believes exercise is a complete waste of time. Fine, she can believe whatever she wants to, but it doesn’t mean I have to like being squished for a 3-hour flight.

    A while back when I decided to lose weight, I was shocked at my overweight friends’ reactions. One was aactually distraught that I didn’t “love” myself anymore. Hello? Deciding to get healthy meant I no longer loved myself? Another began to constantly comment on how ugly she thought thin women are. And several of them have done their best to get me to eat unhealthy food, even bringing it over when they come to visit me and leaving it. It all goes in the trash, because I’m determined.

    Lindy’s blog reminds me of those friends. I do feel badly for her and them. Not because they’re fat, but because they seem to hate the rest of the world because they’re fat. Lindy says she wants to change her body more than anything else in the world. She lost my sympathy at that point, because obviously that’s not true. If she really wants that more than anything else in the world, she would do something aboout it. What she really wants is to be able to eat as much as she wants and exercise as little as she wants, and to have the world validate her choices. Since it doesn’t, she’s told it to fuck off. Hell, yeah, being fit is a lot of work. If it were easy, almost everyone would be fit.

  36. Spot on, Dan. I agree 100% with your response.

    Sometimes Fat Acceptance just works to keep people fat when they could be otherwise. My family is pudgy. They claim to be pro-eating healthy but now that I’ve lost a good amount of weight (20+ lbs in 2 yrs) they’re always trying to get me to eat more or saying that I’ve “lost enough”, implying I had better not lose more. I went from a BMI of slightly into the Overweight range to 20, in the middle of the Normal range. For the first time since junior high, I almost feel “not fat” now in my late 20s. So I much prefer the Glad You’re Not Fat Anymore Acceptance.

  37. Two issues here:

    1. Weight/body image/shame-bullying/health/genetics/societal norms/respect/etc.

    2. Lindy vs. Dan / Dan vs. Lindy

    Not the same topics – totally different – causing all kinds of confusion – bloating this thread.

    P.S. – I’m with respect, and I’m with Dan.

  38. I wanted more from Dan but am not surprised by the response. It’s too bad he can’t hear what people are saying about how his words have made them feel. It’s just all about him – about what a great supporter of fat people he’s been and how he has been fat and still feels like the fat kid, so he couldn’t possibly be in any way responsible for saying anything anti-fat. All of these people who feel he has said hateful and hurtful things, they’re all delusional. There’s no grace or acknowledgement or empathy in this post (or any of the prior, no comments allowed posts).

  39. Dan’s response is pretty much spot-on. I’ve met so many fat people in my life who were looking for someone to vilify so that they could somehow defeat that person and thereby overcome their issues with themselves. Lindy has constructed a narrative in which Dan is Darth Vader, and she’s the rotund Luke Skywalker of Dignity.

    Seriously, now that this girl has learned to love herself, she needs to get over herself. This sort of projection of her own inner struggle onto Dan isn’t just rude, it’s embarrassing.

  40. 353 –
    you are a smoker? then yes, you are disgusting. gross. i move away from people like you in public. i don’t inhale when you walk by. i’m absolutely TERRIFIED of sitting next to you on a plane. being trapped in an elevator with you is maddening. i think you are predisposed to litter. i think you make poor lifestyle choices and it angers me that people like you drive up health insurance costs for us all. sometimes i even pity you. i would never ever date you.
    there. maybe you still don’t feel shamed. oh well.

  42. Dan doesn’t hate fat people, he’s merely using them as a scapegoat in the way that social climbers always use others to promote themselves. Same thing many kids live through in high school. Dan might as well have said “Hey, Iowans, I may be gay, but at least I’m not fat!” There’s always someone whose back you can climb on to elevate yourself just a little more. Oh yeah, high school sucked.

  45. “When you do have time to respond to Lindy: note how often these people (LW included) use anecdotal evidence and generalize to the Whole World about it. She cannot lose weight dieting, so it’s not possible. Then you might talk about our family.”

    You and your brother obviously missed Lindy’s point – she doesn’t need your approval about her body or your advice on how to lose weight.

  48. Dan, this post just comes off as petty, catty and *you* sound like the oversensitive one. I know it sucks to get called out for bigotry, but sorry, you are a freaking bigot and your protestations to the contrary sound a lot to me like my old racist uncle screaming “I HAVE BLACK FRIENDS!!!” It would have been nice if you had used Lindy’s (totally NOT that attacking) post as a time for some self reflection. I mean, seriously, you get this criticism a lot, maybe it is time to think of where it could possibly be coming from, if it has any roots in reality (hint: IT DOES).

  50. @448, thanks for trying your best to balance things out. Now I can go to the next item on my checklist: I need some random strangers to call me out on the street.

    Actually, it’s a little too cold to stand around waiting to be insulted. Maybe I could continue the experiment in the June?

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