Ban Fat Marriage?

Yes, I know that Dan Savage’s screed on banning fat marriage is trying to illustrate the point that gay marriage bans are ludicrous. Fellow Stranger writer Lindy West has already responded with a solid “why fat hate doesn’t work” aimed at those who don’t want to get it, and I don’t disagree with it.

However.

I do think Dan seriously missed the boat bringing up the silly “fat is contagious” thing. It totally weakens his argument! No, the better argument is this:

Fat is frequently inherited, even among children who are raised by thin adoptive parents or twins raised separately.
As anti-gay legislatures are constantly reminding us, only married heterosexual people have children.
Therefore, to prevent fat people from passing on their fatness to children, we should not allow fat people to marry.

See? Much more logical!

See also: Parents-to-be shouldn’t diet.

PS: Brian at Red No 3 has a good post on this as well.

Rate this:

Posted

February 12, 2011

Anti-fat bigotry, fluff, News, OtherBlogs

Living 400lbs

Tags:

Comments

14 responses to “Ban Fat Marriage?”

Tempest LeTrope

February 12, 2011

Yes, I see where he’s coming from, and Dan has counseled heavy people enough times to not allow some jerk to make them feel bad about their bodies that I don’t think that he means anything bad by it. But you are correct, the way you word it reads better and not as an attack on larger people.

Reply
1. Living 400lbs
  
  February 12, 2011
  
  But you are correct, the way you word it reads better and not as an attack on larger people.
  
  Actually, I’d argue that the way I worded is more of an attack, because it asserts that fat people should not marry or procreate due to their genes being undesirable. Yes, this is eugenics.
  
  Reply
Erin S.

February 12, 2011

Dan Savage has the dubious honor of being one of only two gay men who actually have been so hateful as to make me briefly reconsider my stance on marriage equality only to spite them. Fortunately once I regained my calm I knew that that would actually be MORE wrong of an action than the hateful crap they were spewing to begin with.

As far as the topic goes, I actually have seen people on message boards and forums and Facebook etc proposing that fat people not be allowed to have or raise children because our weight apparently makes us unfit parents. Not for a few years, the last time was over some adoption issue where a pair of foster parents somewhere in the states applied to formally adopt their foster child and were told that they couldn’t because the father was obese and depending which news article you read they were either afraid that his unhealthy lifestyle was a bad example, or that he would die young and leave the child an orphan again. I really don’t remember many details and what I do remember may have some of it’s details off. We’re talking maybe 5-6 years ago, and I couldn’t tell you what I ate for breakfast two days ago lol.

Reply
1. Living 400lbs
  
  February 12, 2011
  
  Regarding adoption, this post at The Well-Rounded Mama has more information: http://wellroundedmama.blogspot.com/2009/01/adoption-and-people-of-size.html
  
  The maddening thing about requiring weigh loss prior to adopting is that it’s not only incredibly marginalizing for fat people to be unable to adopt, it’s not only that lasting weight loss is a futile hope for most people, but that research with adopted kids shows that adult kids are more likely to have bodies that reflect their biological parents than their adoptive parents. Argh!
  
  Reply
Meowser

February 12, 2011

Dan Savage must have gotten the memo recently that his page views were lagging and that he needed to do some more fatty flamebaiting in order to beef them up. I refuse to give him the clicks on general principle, because he’s yet another person who can understand social justice when it comes to the stigmatized group he belongs to, but not to anyone else’s. He’d probably think it was a GOOD thing if a fat kid read his stuff and then hanged xyrself.

Reply
1. Erin S.
  
  February 13, 2011
  
  (tw for suicidal ideation)
  
  Not a kid, but his site, and most especially the comments on it, damn near did just that a couple years ago. Although I’m more of the slit-my-wrists school than hanging.
  
  To be fair, the days when I don’t fantasize about my own death and how great everyone else’s lives would be if I’d just stop dicking around and do it are pretty damn rare.
  
  But when one author and the comments on his posts literally make a thirty some odd year old woman start cutting again… there is a problem. And it isn’t with her.
  
  Give him credit though… if it hadn’t been for his bullshit and my desperate attempts to find some reason, ANY reason, why I shouldn’t just kill myself since even someone who defends people who engage in sex play with excrement is telling me I’m more disgusting than that… I probably wouldn’t have discovered FA at all.
  
  Reply
SoyShake

February 13, 2011

Bahaha – I find it great when not only can you defeat someone’s argument by them being wrong, you can even take on their own hypothetical universe and still show them that they’re wrong!

My favourite takedown of this all has to be http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/02/11/hello-i-am-fat#commentForm which is actually written by an employee of Dan Savage. It is awesome.

In relation to this post though, that linked article of ‘Parents-to-be Shouldn’t Diet’ is awesome. To quote from the blog post I was just inspired to write about it – “there are lots of diet ads and cultural pressures for thinness in the West going back at least a hundred years or so (tapeworm diet pills, anyone?). Soooo, if parents – especially mothers – are starving themselves in the effort to remain svelte (because pregnancy is totally fat, right?) and having kids more prone to being fat, who have the horror of being chubby kids and dieting themselves in crazytown and having pre-disposed fat kids… continue, continue, continue… and then chucking in the food deserts and processed food and chemical sweeteners and all those multitudes of factors involved – why, maybe we might have an increase in obesity in the West?”

Reply
1. Living 400lbs
  
  February 13, 2011
  
  I linked to Lindy West’s “Hello I am fat” too. :)
  
  And yes, the results of parental food restriction before/during pregnancy are fascinating.
  
  Reply
Alexie

February 13, 2011

My two cousins were adopted by my rake-thin aunt. My female cousin was a fat kid from the start, and my aunt (God rest her) made her life a living HELL. Was always taking food away from her, commenting on her food, you name it. It was embarrassing to watch.

Whereas my male cousin was also thin, though nothing like as bony as my aunt. He’s gone on to become a pastry chef. He’s around fattening food all day and he’s still thin.

My female cousin? Morbidly obese. My aunt’s shaming of her did nothing to prevent it, other than give her wretchedly poor self esteem. She now lives like a semi-recluse with her father.

Reply
1. Living 400lbs
  
  February 13, 2011
  
  Oh God…I feel for your cousins.
  
  Reply
Moe

February 13, 2011

Fat people don’t need marriage to get pregnant and pass on their genes. I’m just saying…

I still don’t get the whole contagious theory. All my thin friends are still thin after all these years. And if fat is contagious then in proper theory thin should be contagious too and I should be a 100 pounds slimmer. Especially since my husband is also a thin man. I swear scientist make this shit up so it gets attention and looks good on their grant requests.

Reply
1. Living 400lbs
  
  February 13, 2011
  
  Fat people don’t need marriage to get pregnant and pass on their genes. I’m just saying…
  
  Yeah, I kinda figured the sarcasm there was obvious.
  
  Re: the “contagious” thing, the same methodology found that pimples, height and headaches are contagious too. :P
  
  Reply
wriggles

February 14, 2011

I fell for the temptation to give him the page views, but I admire the stand taken by others!

Incidentally it was great that it only got 62 comments thus far-an early commentor predicted 300 by noon.

I think we should pursue this policy of ignoring this kind of thing or better still introducing contentious points about fat acceptance and arguing amongst ourselves, setting up a different stream of conversation and ignoring the main one, hah, haaaa. :-)

Reply
Junk Food In Schools Doesn’t Correlate To Fat « Living ~400lbs

January 23, 2012

[…] thing (that didn’t work) to try to prevent fat kids. And yet, fat kids exist. Time to ban fat marriage? Advertisement GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); […]

Reply