fatphobia & other resurgences

[illuvium]

this honestly falls in line with what my last post was talking about (blah blah blah, everything's connected, et cetera), but i think another real issue within society now is the resurgence of general tolerance for frankly horrific behavior. fatphobia has never not been an issue, especially for women, with pressures to conform to the typical beauty standard (which is another level of absurdity; the people you're being compared to are those with the money to burn on expensive treatments and those who don't have to do any sort of meaningful work a day in their lives), but i think it's become so much worse now. people are so comfortable being rude all the time and it's just appalling to see how much bigotry has made a comeback. lots of these issues are interconnected, too. when you look at those videos talking about stereotypical polyamorous couples, for example, it's always the same thing. there has to be a mention of they/them pronouns, the person has to be fat, they have to be clearly unconventional. fatphobia there is, of course, one issue, but it's also connected to queerphobia and intolerance for anyone that doesn't look like you or doesn't look like what you're into. people deride the 2020 levels of "sensitivity" too much, but that's preferable to being so callous with what you're saying.

these trends of having filters to appear fatter for the purpose of making fun of themselves and saying something like "oh, i could never", the eating disorder content masquerading as diet content online, the willful ignorance to their being fatphobic are all so incredibly intolerable. the response to defenses of people just living their life is that obesity is not to be promoted and that it's a health risk. that's a double edged sword; neither's being too skinny. shaming someone into developing anorexia is something i'd wager would do more than whatever consequences these people are fantasizing about. it's really not about being fat, it's about not conforming to the beauty standard. nobody would care about all these health risks (i'm not denying those exist, to be clear. it's just disingenuous to claim that fatphobes genuinely care for the health of those they bully when they evidently do not) if being fat were the beauty standard and being skinny was out of favor.

all of this is just to say that there's an acceptable level of queerness, which is clearly oxymoronic given the literal definition of queerness is of diverging from the social norm or rather, the social ideal. i think it has something to do with your looks. the more apparent the aspect of a person is, the worse it gets even to other queer people. for example, what i said regarding the nonbinary polyamorous person applies since 90% of the time the stereotype finds its basis on the person looking androgynous with shorter hair and whatever. it's not the best example, sure, but i think that it's still nevertheless true that the more apparent your divergence from the norm is, the more criticism you face even by those from your own community. people closer to that image of normalcy have tendencies to mock those further away from them on this hypothetical spectrum, and it's just really funny because they do that at risk to themselves. when you kick out the most "radical" from the group, you become the new radicals. they're just speeding up their turn on the chopping block, and for what? temporary laughs that only go to show their utter lack of empathy? i don't really know, but that's my stance & i just find it exceedingly ridiculous.