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

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

First off, occultatio, tiamat360, it was good talking to you guys on the phone about this yesterday, and I think you raised good points, particularly about the many ways that weight affects health.

In response to this comment in particular:

I guess what I'm saying is, you know what, you should feel ashamed of being overweight if it is within your power to change that. I just think you should feel ashamed of your own lack of willpower, not of the mockery of others.

People (possibly mostly therapists) talk about the differences between "guilt" and "shame." They come to two different types of definitions. One definition says that guilt is when you feel bad because you know you did something wrong, whereas shame is when you feel bad because others saw you and told you you were wrong. The other definition says that guilt is what you feel when you did something bad, whereas shame is when you feel that you are bad, as a person-- that something about your very essence is wrong and disgusting and possibly evil. As you can see, these two sets of definitions have some overlap, though they are not identical.

It sounds to me like you're saying that being fat is something about which a person-- a person whose obesity is not caused by medication, hormonal problems, dietary restrictions, mobility impairment, other health problems, etc, etc, etc-- should feel guilt ("not changing my lifestyle is a specific thing which I am doing which harms me, so I should change that, and then I won't feel guilty any more") but not shame ("being overweight is a sign of my general weakness, immorality and badness, and if I didn't know that already, every single person I run into, including my doctor, is thinking it and will let me know how bad I am"). Is that right?

It is intensely challenging to learn to overcome unhealthy shame while retaining healthy guilt. People can do it, but it takes work and time and often spending a while pendulum-swinging. If you start at "I am a horrible person because I'm fat," then you may need to go all the way to the other end of the spectrum-- "There's nothing wrong with being fat, so there's nothing wrong with me!" before you reach the healthy middle ground of "There's nothing essentially wrong with me as a person, but I would feel better if I lost some weight." I think that, as ashnistrike points out below, people use the Fat Acceptance movement for just that process, and I think that's wonderful.

I agree that it would be better if some members of the Fat Acceptance movement did not say that all medical studies are wrong and all doctors are enemies. But I think that attacking them is getting the wrong end of the stick-- the Fat Acceptance movement is tiny, and the problems with Americans' lifestyles are huge. Yes, what they're doing is problematic, but it is much, much less problematic than the way that Americans moralize and shame themselves and others about appearance, disability, and weight. I think that making fat into a moral issue is one of the things that makes it hardest for people to face it head-on and make whatever lifestyle changes they need to be healthiest.