Being Fat Is A Civl Rights Issue?
I guess for some it is.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Kate Harding has spent most of her life on one diet or another, losing weight but always gaining it back. Determined to improve her quality of life, she joined a fast-growing group of anti-dieting activists promoting overweight people’s civil rights.
Launching an anti-dieting blog called Shapely Prose, Harding and other fat-acceptance advocates online—calling themselves the fat-o-sphere—are also educating one another about how to improve overweight people’s health.
She and other bloggers with names like FatChicksRule and Big Liberty say society’s “war on obesity” makes overweight people hate their bodies and suffer from low self-esteem.“Being fat doesn’t make me lazy or stupid or morally suspect,” said Harding, 34, of Chicago, who also has written a book, “Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere.”
“The message we’re promoting is health at every size.”
Harding appears to be targeting the usual bevy of “civil rights” issues like discrimination in employment, etc. 
I understand why this movement is happening. After all, many in our nanny state government have declared fat to be the new smoking, so it’s now wonder that the overweight are feeling like they’re in the cross-hairs. But while I sympathize with the feeling, I don’t think we need to be setting up a whole new victim class for fat people.
And I’m saying that as a fat person. Everyone wants to be a victim, I guess, but I don’t want any part of it.
This is especially problematic in an age where more and more people are demanding that their employers pay for their health care. How fair is it to expect employers to be financially responsible for the health of their employees, and then turn around and tell the employers that they have to hire unhealthy employees or be faced with discrimination charges?
Of course, the solution for that is to make health care an individual responsibility and not a collective responsibility, but I digress.
Whether or not a given citizen is fat is nobody’s business but that given citizen. And being fat shouldn’t necessarily imply any special treatment for anyone?
Recent Comments