Oh my god. Get off the cross, we need the wood. Also you’re causing stress fractures.
If you can write one word but not the other, it’s the other that’s worse.
That being said, fat people do face systemic issues which are often intersectional with race, class, gender, etc., but this is a shitpost, so don’t think too hard about it.
Obese is a medical term though and Dr … PhD should know that.
Hello yes my name is Dr. PhD I have many college and come to bringun you the health. stat.
Also, I don’t agree with the OP and think it’s fucking dumb, but let’s not forget that “retard” used to be a medical term as well
As was “negro” - and that’s kinda the point; just because a word is “official” doesn’t make it not discriminatory, just that the discrimination was backed by the power of institutions.
I don’t 100% buy the argument that the two words are equivalent, but I can see how “oh you can’t come here you are obese” could feel similarly arbitrary as “oh you can’t come here you are black”
That comparison is so bad that I’m not sure you are making it in good faith. Being mentally handicapped or belonging to a minority is not a choice, being obese is.
If you make the conscious choice to be obese you really can’t complain about the consequences the same way the former can. And you especially can’t complain about people referring to you by the medically correct term
As were “idiot”, “moron” and “imbecile”, largely used to describe the same or similar conditions but somehow considered OK today for general use.
That’s the way these things have always gone and probably always will. Retarded, imbecile, idiot, these were all effectively clinical terms (or whatever best approximated clinical practice in their eras) - they didn’t hold an insulting intention initially. People co-opted the terms to make fun of each other, as we do, and so professionals had to shift the clinical vocabulary so they weren’t using commonly hurled insults when discussing patients. And that means new words people can use to make fun of each other, yay! Which of course they did, necessitating another rotation. Pretty hilarious if you ask me.
The most recent example in my own life - my wife is in her mid 30s, and is pregnant - some medical professionals call this a “geriatric pregnancy”! But because some folks are getting offended by that term, they’re starting to use “advanced maternal age pregnancy”. Bit of a mouthful, I think they’ll get to keep that one.
Anyway. Carlin had a great bit on this phenomena, he’s the one who pointed it out to me.
I’ve heard this called the “euphemism treadmill”
I like it, very succinct way to get the point across.
As usual, George Carlin should be the go-to for matters of language
I see that someone wrote their thesis on it.
Mid 30s is a “geriatric pregnancy”? Jesus Christ, medical professionals.
Why does that upset/startle you? Pregnancy at age 35+ is associated with more risks than pregnancy in the 20s.
It is, though—women having children later in life are at higher risk for complications for both themselves and the baby. It also has a higher risk of birth defects.
Not necessarily, a PhD isn’t a medical degree
Ok I looked her up, I had to know.
She’s a “fat-affirming” dietitian and her PhD is in “body positive medicine”
Her name is a blatant pun.
I don’t think I’m reaching when I say not only is the account fake, this person doesn’t exist, but that it was made to make fun of fat people.
Sooo you’re saying it’s understandable for someone with a PhD to not have basic common knowledge?
I’ve got one, and there are many many thing I’m an idiot on
I mean, sure. As someone who recently went back to school and is around a bunch of PhD and PhD students, they’re really, really smart… about their specific area of study. But more than some of them are fucking stupid when it comes to other, normal things
Nobese then ?
As always - if you’re saying a word is comparable to the n-word, and you are able to use your word in public as a non-black person, it’s not like the n-word
I couldn’t remember where the quote came from, thank you, I tried to search for it but it was surprisingly difficult
All quotes should be credited to Michael Scott if you dont know the original.
- Michael Scott
Frankly that’s something I do not understand. Why this single specific word? We have dozens of terrible offensive words. Why this specific one is considered so bad we cannot even talk about it directly, even when merely discussing it? I would think discussing it and not directing it at someone would be pretty reasonable. As with every single other word.
Non-American here. I also didn’t get this, thinking it’s just puritanical bullshit. Some Americans seem obsessed with auto-censorship.
Anyway, I finally understood while watching Django Unchained. It’s an extremely dehumanising word, meant to separate people (who have rights) from things which do not. It’s a tool to be able to do this distinction and then do unspeakable evil to specific people because they don’t count as people and so it’s alright.
Now remember that slavery was ended* only relatively recently, segregation was a thing during the lifetimes of many people and this mindset of black people not being even human is still prevalent…
The word is meant to be always used in hostility and it’s still being used like that today. That’s why you want to steer clear of it.
I think a lot of the conflict around the word is centered on the fact that many black people use it (obviously without the hard r) in casual reference to other people, often even people that aren’t black. It’s essentially become equivalent to “dude” or “brother”. So some people don’t see how it’s wrong to use it in that context even if you aren’t black.
I’m not saying I agree, mind you. I’m just making an observation
There’s an equivalent for homosexuals
In my opinion, the intellectually disabled too. Unfortunately, many people make all kinds of excuses why that word, which has been used to bully the disabled for decades, is an acceptable one.
The OJ Simpson trial. No joke.
Is one of the other words associated with 200 years of chattel slavery?
Negro is pretty gosh darn close, but I guess it’s just not quite as derogatory.
It’s weird being told that a regular color in your native language could get you beat up to a pulp in another country.
To my non-American ears “negro” sounds far worse actually. Probably because of how rare it is in comparison.
It was used in place of black for a longer period, and wasn’t necessarily considered a slur in and of itself. But of course if you say it with a sneer, even “black” can be used as an insult.
For example a lot of books (even written by people of color) used “negro” and “coloured” etc. interchangeably up to the mid-late 20th century. But in modern context very few people use it in a manner that isn’t derogatory.
I still have trouble referring to a person as ‘black’. It feels like a slur, or at least an inappropriate racial caricature (they’re not really black!) and it still surprises me that it’s become the acceptable and inoffensive term.
The n word almost seemed more mild, being about the same thing (an inappropriate way to describe race from skin colour), but linguistically removed (I’m not a native Latin speaker*) so I can feel it’s just a word, no need to be intrinsically good or bad.
- Or Spanish, whatever
From my experience, black people want to be called black. I’m a white kid, but was raised in a foster family with three black siblings and other black family, including some that lived in a ghetto in another city. It was the 90s and early 2000s, so we watched some BET, we watched the Boondocks, we listened to thug rap, we watched shows with black characters such as All That and Cousin Skeeter. Because it was all a part of my brothers’ culture, and they felt attached to it, and “black culture” was cool to all of us. And in anything we participated in I’ve never heard a single African-American who didn’t call themselves “black” and be fine being called that. Maybe there are some rich people like Obama or Tom of The Boondocks who wouldn’t call themselves “black”, but they seem to be of a different lifestyle and culture than that.
I’ve also sometimes made the argument in defense of “black”, that “African-American” is mildly politically-incorrect itself— not that I have a problem with the term, just the hyper-vigilant enforcing of it. Because it’s not synonymous with skin color itself, it’s a statement about where they came from. We don’t call white people “European-Americans”; and what do we call non-black African-Americans from, say, Egypt or South America? So… yeah.
How about when people they don’t think they’re racist whisper it? I hate and love that.
To my Hispanic ears, “n—o” sounds like an Anglophone saying “black”. Even when used derogatorily, my immediate first thought is that they pronounced it incorrectly, then the rest of the associated matters kick in and I realize what they are really saying.
Imagine if in the Hispanosphere , the word “black” was almost synonymous with the n-word.
But yeah, don’t use n—o in English to refer to or describe anyone.
Probably no, not in this specific form, that being said I don’t want to compare one tragedy to another. There are lots of disgusting parts of the human history, and that’s certainly one of them.
The only equivalent I can think of starts with k and is a slur for Jewish people, and it’s much less commonly heard.
Ironically enough, that word was coined by Jewish people who had been in the US for generations to describe newly-arrived Jews from Eastern Europe. Still offensive but somewhat different from the n-word.
What about something related to the indigenous peoples of the Americas?
“Savages”, "Redskins”, “Squaw”, and so on.
Some news headlines even refer to the second one as “the R-word”:
CNN: The terrible R-word that football needed to lose
Politico: The R-Word Is Even Worse Than You Think
These are extremely harmful words with hundreds of years of genocide behind them. I imagine the only reason they aren’t censored like the N-word is is because Native Americans make up a proportionally smaller population due to the effectiveness of the genocide, and because the reservation system is in contrast to racial integration as with American black people in so much as it limits interactions between them and racist whites who would overuse a dehumanizing phrase to the same extent.
We killed them and displaced the rest so damn fast that we forgot all the major slurs for them
No, you’re thinking about a different scenario. What matters is not if you are black, but if you are the target of the word you are comparing to the n-word.
She, as an obese person herself, proposed that “obese” is equivalent to the n-word. She didn’t censor her word the same way a black person doesn’t have to censor the n-word. That’s not a contradiction. It would be, if she wasn’t obese.
Not that I care about the actual point, just wanted to talk about the logic. My bad, if my assumption that she is obese, is wrong.
Wasn’t really all that long ago when non-black people very commonly used that word in public and probably still so in certain communities. Having said that, obese is a medical term and I don’t think it compares in anyway to the n-word.
Absolutely. I moved from urban Southeastern Wisconsin to the upper peninsula of Michigan in a rural area. I love visiting that spot, and I got a job offer five years ago while on vacation. I snatched the opportunity to move to my favorite place and uprooted my life in under two months. I didn’t last two years before coming back.
The amount of times I got into verbal altercations with strangers and acquaintances over their use of racial slurs, most often the N-word, made me become a homebody. I was a bartender, though, so you can’t exactly hide.
That’s not to say I haven’t heard it in public all throughout Wisconsin. The difference was how comfortable people felt using these words and sharing openly racist views and stories like they were bragging about it. It felt like an area where people breathed a sigh of relief and took their hoods off. I couldn’t stomach staying in a place where certain friends of mine couldn’t comfortably visit.
Still, all that is nothing compared to what I saw and heard living in Tennessee. It’s sad and frightening how many communities are like this.
it changed with the OJ trial
Definitely did not. I grew up in West Virginia and idiot rednecks used it before and after the OJ trial. Decent people did not before or after.
I mean like way before they did, but they weren’t decent then.
i thought it was meaning in media, like the news and other stuff. not everyday life
Fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat
Just wanted to give some input as someone who dealt with lifelong obesity. As a fat person, some people just don’t like to face the music or give themselves an honest look in the mirror. They don’t want to call a spade a spade. Changing around words to describe things in more complex and softer language doesn’t change the situation any, it just helps you psychologically cope with your own insecurities.
The same with playing the blame game on outside factors like genetics and disability. Blaming everything you can but yourself and your own choices and failures and unaddressed mental insecurities. Thats not a fat person thing though, thats a general human being thing I tend to see in most groups of people one way or another. Its easier to convince yourself that you never had a choice, than it is to acknowledge the bad personal choices that lead to the consequences of your failures.
When you have fat rolls, and stretch marks litter your stomach, and you look more like a slug than a human being, and you need help wiping your own ass or a bigger toilet to support the weight, when you have to go shopping at specialty close stores (before amazon) just to find a size that fits, and you have no self control or desire to change your habits to stop the self destructive spiral, thats obesity. Regardless of arguments on BMI or CICO or genetics or whatever else, you’ve got a serious problem that needs addressing or it will destroy you slowly but surely.
“At least I’ll die happy!” my type 2 diabetic father would always gleefully tell me as he shoved another tasty cake in his mouth before jabbing himself with an insulin pen. I don’t think the junk food ever did make him happy though. He had mental health issues he never worked through in life. Instead, he relied on the temporary relief of junk food for pleasure, eventually having his addiction dominate and guide his existence.
As for me? I’ve gone through cycles of gaining and loosing 100 pounds. Right now im on a downward trend, lost 40 pounds this year. Hope to loose another 40 by this time next year. I gain the pounds during cycles of extreme depression, and loose them during cycles of great determination and self-agency. Our physical well-being is tied to our emotional and spiritual well-being. Self destructive cycles are much easier to enter when you feel nihilistic and out of control of your own life.
How do I loose weight? I don’t eat. CICO, Simple as. I eat one meal a day, if that. Maybe snack on some dried preserved nuts and fruits once or twice.I drink water and lemon juice. I am a 6’1 man the calorie calculators tell me I should have around 2000 calories daily and cut down by 500 to loose a pound every once in awhile. Fuck that, I have maybe 500-1000 calories daily. Maybe this is a little unhealthy but I try to imploy some anorexic type thoughts like “Im strong enough, I can withstand the hunger for another hour or two. Lets sip on some water and endure it.” Often the hunger is boredom disguised. Its hard, im hungry every single day most of the day. But I see the results of my conviction when I step on the scale expecting it to raise 5 lbs and seeing it drop 10 lbs. I look at myself in the mirror, examining my stretch marks and folds to remind myself of what im doing it for, and the price ive already had to pay for my insecurities and failures to control myself.
The physical act of loosing weight is hard and requires self-control over a very long time often multiple years. The mental act of introspection and reflecting on what lead to your obesity often requires analysing the roots of your negative aspects while confronting those past traumas. That requires a mental strength and intelligence many people lack. At the end of the day, its easier and feels nicer to twist words and point fingers than fix your own problems.
Where do you set the weight loose
Wow thank you for sharing your personal experience and thoughts. I think you hit the nail on the head. To add to that, I have noticed with a family member of mine (who has been trying to loose weight for 20 years, unsuccessfully) that mental wellbeing = willpower. If something get you down, the weight usually goes up. It’s hugely complected of course. My heart goes out to all.
You all not hearing her correctly. Shes saying, “Fat people know they’re fat. Shut up about it. Shaming doesn’t help.”
Lol, no she’s not.
That is not what she is saying.
She is equivocting a medical term with a racist term, and by extension implying obese people as oppressed victims.
She is objectively wrong.
Comparing a health condition to ethnicity is peak whiteness.
Her tongue also moves, omg
If you hadn’t said anything I’d still be thinking this was a still image. Thanks for ruining my day
Chris Rock… There are two types of obese people. There’s fat people, and then there’s Biggas and the Biggas have got to go!
all medical terms get turned into hateful insults–moron, idiot, imbecile, r*tarded which is approaching but will never achieve n-word status-- all used to be actual medical diagnoses. “obese” will go the same route and be replaced by something else, which will also eventually become derogatory and be replaced
funny how “shit”, “piss”, “fuck”, “cunt”, “cocksucker”, “motherfucker”, and “tits” are almost everyday words now
I wonder if those prior medical terms had precise definitions. Obese is BMI >= 30 and morbidly obese is >= 40. BMI itself has some issues but works ok as a general assessment for most people.
funny how “shit”, “piss”, “fuck”, “cunt”, “cocksucker”, “motherfucker”, and “tits” are almost everyday words now
So much so that there’s a song about it!
Singing Family Reunion at their concert is a memory I will never let go
STEP ONE, INSTEAD OF ASS, SAY BUNS
LIKE ‘KISS MY BUNS’ OR ‘YOU’RE A BUNS-HOLE’
Buns-hole gets me every time
And now apparently autism. Why us? Autism doesn’t cause you to be useless or stupid, most of us aren’t recognised in public and a high percentage isn’t even diagnosed.
The reason is bigotry. If you really want to get into it, a big reason for the stigma against autism is the damage done by Autism Speaks.
what did autism speaks do, or still doing?
They’re behind just about every negative stigma surrounding autism. Mainly that it’s a debilitating disease that ruins the lives of everyone around them and needs to be cured, as well as that autism is caused by vaccines.
We’re taking it back at !autismplace@lemmy.autism.place
funny how “shit”, “piss”, “fuck”, “cunt”, “cocksucker”, “motherfucker”, and “tits” are almost everyday words now
Now? These are mostly very old English words with a long history, unlike those previously mentioned recent Romance loans because English speakers think they sound fancier.
I forget what comedian said it, but if you’re discussing two words and you cannot even say anything except the first letter of one of the words, that’s the worse word.
John Mulaney
Fun Fact:
A northern German youth-slang word for “Bro” is “Digga”, which is a friendly way to say “Fatty”, from “Dicker - dick” (lit.: Fatty, fat/thick), but with the implication of being very dear friends, “dicke Freunde” (lit.: thick friends) just has the meaning “close friends” with no implication of being fat and “dick miteinander sein” (lit.: being thick together) is also an expression of closeness, not of weight.
Interestingly, Digga is being used in exactly the same way as black people in the US use the soft n-word with each other. “Mein Digga!” (lit: my thicky) is 1:1 analogous to “My n-word!”. It’s common for tourists to do a double take when they hear some very German and very white youths yell at one another “Ey Digga!” and many German rappers definitely use it as a stand in for the soft n-word, but It’s use and etymology is rooted in the old dock workers culture of Hamburg and has absolutely nothing to do with the n-word.
I’m from the USA, and when I first heard “digga,” I was certainly confused! It seems the youth say it even more than the generation that invented the phrase now.
Anyway, English speakers have an old phrase that is similar and might help some understand the usage of the word “thick” here. The phrase is “thick as thieves” - meaning thieves stick together.
Your medical status is not a racial slur.
But neither is your skin colour expressed in Latin. It becomes a slur based on how and when it’s used.
I agree with feeling ‘obese’ is a neutral, objective term for the physical/medical fact. But then, coming from a non-Anerican context, I used to have no sense of the N word being so offensive, any more than any other random insulting (or even affectionate!) term.
In the wrong context, ‘obese’ can certainly be hurtful and inappropriate. I can imagine, for some people, it’s a trigger word of years of pain and mockery.
Look I’m a fat American and here at least nobody I’ve ever heard has used “obese” as a slur. You hear actual insults, “fatass” comes immediately to mind but there’s plenty of others; I’ve heard plenty of them personally. The OP in the pic is a fucking doctor according to her obscured user name and needs to be far more responsible. Obesity is party of a medical status - being called a land whale is an insult.
Further, the N-word has centuries of racist cultural weight behind it. The word “obese” is far more recent and isn’t used as part of the systematic oppression of an entire ethnic to group - one that makes up an enormous amount of American population.
This isn’t even apples and oranges. This is cantaloupes and blueberries. Not watermelons though, that has racist baggage too.
She’s off her rocker to compare the two, but I do want to say people are policing medical terms as being offense, so maybe she was trying to express (very poorly) that obese should be considered offensive like using the terms retarded, idiot, or what not that started as a medical diagnosis/meaning, and now can be viewed as hurtful. I don’t agree with it because the reasonsaying the term retard is insulting is because the person you are calling it isn’t actually fitting the medical diagnosis, and therefore using a medical term to put other people down. (Doubt it is used by doctors today, they likely have found different ways of expressing a person’s mental growth in terms of comparing to average growth, growth within science and all that). So if we were calling people who were not obese obese to put them down, maybe it would start to make sense, but it hasn’t occured around me much. That said, I have seen jokes made around belimic people calling themself a fat ass for eating say a slice of pizza, but even most movies have moved away from joking about such anymore.
But neither is your skin colour expressed in Latin.
Niger is Latin… Nigger is not.
While I’m generally not sensitive to these things, claiming something that’s factually not true as a defense of the word is just not okay. Use the word if you really want to use it. If you use it in any other way other than academically (such as discussing the word in of itself)… don’t surprise pikachu when people shun you for it.
Nigger is a diminutive (or at least derivative) of negro, is it not?
Not according to the etymology. https://www.etymonline.com/word/nigger
1786, earlier neger (1568, Scottish and northern England dialect), negar, negur, from French nègre, from Spanish negro (see Negro).
All of these languages are latin-based languages… So there must be a latin root. If you dig further you find
from Latin nigrum (nominative niger) “black, dark, sable, dusky” (applied to the night sky, a storm, the complexion), figuratively “gloomy, unlucky, bad, wicked,”
So yes negro exists in the middle but not as the source necessarily… It would have evolved (if I read the etymology correctly) as Nigrum -> Niger -> Negro/neger/negar/negur -> Nigger.
Good thing the N word is being censored here, otherwise we might actually learn something.
I fucking hate indiscriminate censorship. In some context the word is important in order to learn and educate
It’s your own .world instance that’s doing the censorship.
Oh that’s good to know and also fucked up, I thought they stopped that censoring bullshit. Thank you for letting me know.
How would I go about to see this post outsife ot my .world? I can’t even click the link because it removes it from the URL, this is so fucking stupid.
Negro. Jeez, you really out here saying those words huh?
Jeez, you’re really out here word policing when it’s clear we’re simply talking about the word… You know… not actually attributing it.
You act like just saying “Negro” with no context is any better.
Just like your namesake, you’ve added nothing to the discussion except a bit of toxicity.
I never used or seen used ‘obese’ as a slur.
Fatty, yes. Absolutely, all the time. Obese, no.
If you’re ‘triggered’ by being called a fatty, stop being fat.
If you’re ‘triggered’ by being called a fatty, stop being fat.
Now that’s a bad take.
We shouldn’t mock people for things they struggle with, even if we think they could just stop.
Struggling with actual problems, sure.
Struggling with being unable to stop shoving burgers in your mouth is not an actual problem.
And saying things like that is exactly why obese people have so much trouble having the confidence to start losing weight. And no, it is not as easy as you are suggesting. We live in an era of processed foods and food deserts where people are so overworked and often with such long commutes that they don’t have the energy or the time to cook a healthy meal when they get home.
Telling those people to stop shoving burgers in their mouth doesn’t help anything.
Also, and I can’t believe this is the second time I’ve had to say this to someone today- have you ever been insulted into making a lifestyle change? I sure haven’t.
My reply got deleted by a mod so this discussion is over.
Enjoy your breakfast burgers.
Shut up.
