Anti-bullying signal-boost.

[gaudior]

People have been talking about bullying lately. Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project has drawn attention to the suicides of gay teenagers, and has inspired the Make It Better Project, to give youth and concerned adults the tools they need to stop bullying in the schools. (I strongly recommend MIBP's Take Action page, which has such useful links as information about The Safe Schools Improvement Act (H.R. 2262/S. 3739) and how you can support it). And both homasse and seishonagon linked to an insightful and useful article by Kate Harding, On Good Kids and Total Assholes.

I'm glad people are talking about this so much-- it's making me think about my own childhood, and how much I accepted kids making fun of me, ostracizing me, and generally making me miserable as "just the way things are." That understanding of the universe and my place in it had long-lasting effects, and I am delighted and grateful that people now are talking seriously about how to stop bullying.

(I may at some point make a larger post, but at the moment, I wanted to signal-boost. Yay, signal-boosting.)

--R

Comments

[occultatio.livejournal.com]

But that doesn't mean that every person with a certain weight/BMI is at increased personal risk

Actually, yes it does: your claim here is factually incorrect. Being overweight doesn't mean those people have those problems, but it absolutely means that they are at increased risk of getting them. That's what it means to say that "weight is linked to hypertension etc."

rather than just lecture those whose charts tell me are "overweight."

Nobody in these comments has suggested this route. There's a major difference between "informing" someone, even if it's not something they want to hear, and "lecturing" them.