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Quasimodo
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Jan 13 2016, 09:58 AM
Post #1
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http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/fat_people_the_latest_victims_of_oppression.html
January 13, 2016 Fat people: The latest victims of oppression
As if we didn't have enough groups of people claiming victim status, we can now add fat people to the list. College campuses across the country are including a new academic field in fat studies that focuses on combating weightism, fat stigma, and the weight-based oppression of fat people.
Rather than focus on the health issues stemming from obesity, fat studies courses advocate against the position that obesity is unhealthy or undesirable and instead call for understanding and acceptance. Fatness is framed as a social justice issue.
According to Campus Reform, the University of Maryland College Park's fat studies course labels dieting as an enemy of diversity that needs to be defeated. Fat liberation movements and activism are encouraged as ways to combat fatphobia, weightism, and the stigma attached to obesity. Required reading material includes a Fat Liberation Manifesto. No one should be surprised that these courses are typically found in the women's and gender studies departments.
According to Oregon State University's website, the course "examines body weight, shape, and size as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination that intersects with other systems of oppression based on gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, and ability." University of New Hampshire students formed a university organization titled "People Opposing Weightism (POW!)." The goal of the organization is to spread education, acceptance, and awareness of people of size. With that goal in mind, the student group created a tumblr page that features obese women. One page goes so far as to feature a naked obese woman standing in the middle of an intersection in New York City.
Exactly what is to be gained from these courses? These institutions of higher learning are becoming nothing more than insane asylums. It appears that the only goal of colleges and universities today is to turn every student into an oppressed victim.
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Quasimodo
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Jan 13 2016, 10:01 AM
Post #2
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http://calorielab.com/news/2008/06/05/notes-on-weightism/
Notes on weightism
Loyal visitors to CalorieLab — you know who you are — may recall a recent post in which I speculated that prison inmates who are or become greatly obese might begin suing to be released from jail on the grounds that to confine them to such painfully small accommodations as a cell constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
Jail time cut for fat offender
Well, now comes the news that one “Big Mike” Lapointe, convicted of drug trafficking in Canada, has had his 5-year sentence reduced because of what his lawyer called the “hellish conditions” he had to endure, including chairs too small to hold him, difficulty using the shower, and prison food that has actually exacerbated the problem, boosting him from his 375 pounds before incarceration to fully 430 now. Mike should be out in a little over a year.
I pass this item on not to say I told you so — although I sort of did — but because it represents one of those infrequent instances of a person actually getting a break because of his or her obesity. According to a veritable sheaf of research studies, the reverse is the rule in the outside world, where overweight people who do their time in cubicles instead of cells are at a serious disadvantage.
Weight bias costs companies good workers
Weightism in the workplace is a real and significant presence, negatively effecting hiring, promotions, pay scale, discipline, career counseling and layoffs. A couple of specifics:
Anti-weight bias is strongest during the hiring stage, when the job applicant’s positives are still unknown to the prospective employers, who may be susceptible to stereotyping the overweight as undisciplined, lazy, self-indulgent or given to poor judgment.
White women of weight are penalized the most financially. A Cornell study found that a white female employee who gains 64 pounds will suffer a 9 percent cut in pay; according to a report in the Health Economics journal, obesity can reduce a woman’s annual income by over 6 percent, versus an obese male’s 2.3 percent reduction.
Unfortunately, there is more than mere bigotry involved here. There is economic reality, and the genuine concern among prospective employers about the cost of hiring the heavy. The Conference Board has estimated that obese American workers cost their companies some $45 billion per year in lost production and medical expenses.
A Duke University study found that obese employees file twice as many workers’ comp claims, lose 13 times as many workdays, and run up seven times the medical costs of their normal-weight coworkers.
These hard numbers are perhaps the primary reason that only one state, Michigan, currently outlaws weight discrimination (with Massachusetts likely to join). During tight economic times, lawmakers are loath to require businesspersons to take financial risks.
And the result is a lose-lose situation: a lot of highly competent and valuable employees fail to find work, and a lot of highly competent and valuable employees go unhired by companies that could greatly benefit from them.
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