Concern with Obesity, Fat-Shaming and Racism

People who don't know me well sometimes assume that it's easy for me to keep my weight down.  This is completely untrue.  I constantly watch what I eat. I constantly force myself to exercise and I make myself get on the scale several times each week.  If I don't do these things I will gain 2 or 3 pounds per month.  I've repeatedly and unwittingly run the experiment of not paying attention to my weight during my life. Each time I fall off the rails, I have had to call a stop to the nonsense and declare war on my fat. Over the past 30 years, this has led me to begin ever new rounds of weight loss boot camp (on my own, at home) where I've worked hard to lose 35, 20, and 20 pounds, as well as various smaller amounts of weight. I'm currently in yet another (minor) boot camp that will end when I lose 5 more pounds. This is my plight, my burden and my opportunity if I am going to maintain a body that  feels good and fits my clothes. I also want to avoid risks of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, strokes and other illnesses associated with excess weight.

Whenever I find out that friends are trying to reduce their size, I encourage them and celebrate their successes with them. I silently applaud when I see obese people I don't know exercising at the park  Good for them! I hope they reach their goals!

Increasingly, however, the excesses of the "body positivity" movement invade my thought process, occasionally making me do mental double-takes. Body positivity is a double-edged sword:

On the one hand, body positivity—the attitude associated with the movement—aims to try to help overweight and obese people (especially women—see also, fat feminism—and sometimes, when intersectionally analyzed, specifically black women) accept themselves and their overweight status as they are so that negative emotions are not tied up with it. This, of course, has the direct benefit of helping people not feel bad about themselves for a state of facts about the world (weight, BMI, body fat percentage, etc.), which can be demotivating and hinder weight loss attempts (or, which can just be mean and bullying—see also, fat shaming).

On the other hand, body positivity tends to rather aggressively deny any connection between weight status, including obesity, and health (see also, healthism). It rejects such connections as a “medicalized narrative” (see also, regulatory fiction). This rejects mountains of medical evidence suggesting otherwise, that being overweight and especially obese correlates strongly with and causes a number of serious health issues. This view relies upon seeing body weight status and obesity ultimately as a social construction that is used to create an unjust power dynamic that discriminates against and oppresses fat people. Activism in the body-positive movement often encourages overweight people not to want to lose weight (sometimes as a means of identity politics—see also, identity-first), which is irresponsible, at best (e.g., a book in the movement is titled You Have the Right to Remain Fat).

I agree with the benefits of body positivity described above.  Overweight people should not be shamed.  They should not be shunned.  Doing these things is cruel and destructive.  We should recognize every other person to be a precious human being. It all starts with I and Thou, Martin Buber's version of the golden rule.

That said, how can it possibly be bigoted when I work hard to be healthy and look better by losing weight. How can I possibly be acting out of bigotry to the extent that I encourage others to reach their weight loss goals?  It's not.  For background, see this article on Woke attitudes toward obesity at New Discourses. This is shut-up ("Woke") culture doing what it does best: halting important and necessary conversations under the guise of combating alleged discrimination. Today's excess is an article by CBS featuring a sociology professor who claims that concern with obesity is veiled racism.

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Judge Gives Green Light for Transwomen Athletes to Compete in Women’s Sports

The ACLU is doing a victory lap on a case that risks demoralizing many woman athletes and dissuades them from competing at all. Here's the ACLU Tweet:

We now have a competing-frames argument like we do in the abortion debate (my body vs. don't kill babies). In transgender sports, the competing frames are A) It is insulting and unfair to exclude trans people from women's sports, versus B) Trans women are so much stronger, faster and larger than bio women (because they went through puberty as men) that they are dominating the competition. This competing Frame flips between two principles and also flips between the perspectives of the two parties to this dispute.

In reaction to the ACLU Tweet many people are applauding this court decision as kind and decent, the correct thing to do for trans women. Laudable first principles are important, but so are the overall consequences for women's sports. What if this court case destroys the careers of aspiring women athletes in order to invite athletes who went through puberty as men to compete as women? I believe that this decision will demoralize many women athletes and convince them give up careers as women athletes. Regardless of how well-intentioned it is to be "inclusive," this decision is likely to hurt attendance and destroy the carefully constructed spaces that most women athletes want and need in order to fairly compete. My concerns are echoed by the concerns of many women who have responded to the ACLU Tweet. Here are some excerpts from numerous comment Tweets to the above Tweet, all of them by women:

This is definitely not a victory for girls and women. It is a victory for trans identified males.

How is this a victory? This is a kick in the teeth for women in sports

Girls are going to drop out of sports if they know that they don't have a fair competition.

All these transwomen are way taller than the average woman/girl yet even seeing this obvious physical difference they deny the Male body that these transwomen inhabit. Why don't female hormones shorten these transwomen to a normal woman's height? A: Because Trans science is false

If women and girls to walk off the field, who will biological men race /play against then ?

Seriously, this left has lost its mind. I’m tired of wondering where sanity went and expecting it to come back.

The fact that every left wing person in this country isn’t screaming about the damage this will do to our girls tells me the left I knew no longer exists.

Let this sink in. A rights organisation is fighting not to keep boys out of girls sports but to PUT THEM IN.

This is so worrisome. A female cannot compete with a transwoman, especially if they transitioned after male puberty. Most bone and muscle mass for a transwoman will have already been built as a male. For a biological woman to compete, she would have to take testosterone.

A tragedy for women/girls! The ACLU actively works against women/girls to steal their existing rights! The ACLU attempts to steal opportunities of girls to compete, steal their scholarships.

What’s the point? Sport is competitive. Looking at World Rugby’s analysis, allowing TW to play against women is not remotely competitive. It is dangerous. Who wants to compete in, or watch that?

It will kill women’s sport taking the little revenue it had with it.

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Implicit Bias Efficacy Meta-Analysis

Here's the link to the journal article.  The abstract:

Using a novel technique known as network meta-analysis, we synthesized evidence from 492 studies (87,418 participants) to investigate the effectiveness of procedures in changing implicit measures, which we define as response biases on implicit tasks. We also evaluated these procedures' effects on explicit and behavioral measures. We found that implicit measures can be changed, but effects are often relatively weak (|ds| < .30). Most studies focused on producing short-term changes with brief, single-session manipulations. Procedures that associate sets of concepts, invoke goals or motivations, or tax mental resources changed implicit measures the most, whereas procedures that induced threat, affirmation, or specific moods/emotions changed implicit measures the least. Bias tests suggested that implicit effects could be inflated relative to their true population values. Procedures changed explicit measures less consistently and to a smaller degree than implicit measures and generally produced trivial changes in behavior. Finally, changes in implicit measures did not mediate changes in explicit measures or behavior. Our findings suggest that changes in implicit measures are possible, but those changes do not necessarily translate into changes in explicit measures or behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

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Sam Harris Explores the Global Epidemic of Child Sexual Abuse

In his introduction to "The Worst Epidemic," Sam Harris warns that the subject matter might be difficult for listeners. The topic is the global epidemic of child sexual abuse involving children as young as one year old. Sam is joined by Gabriel Dance, a NYT reporter who has thoroughly investigated this issue. Until I forced myself to listen, I had assumed that this predatory behavior was relatively rare, but I was shocked to learn that sexual predators have exploited every corner of the Internet. To illustrate, Dance mentions that law enforcement experts estimate that of the 9 million citizens of New Jersey, 400,000 have been exposed to these highly illegal images and videos, some of this exposure being inadvertent, but much of it being intentional. It makes you wonder who we are, as a nation, that so many among us are willing to torture children. The tragedy is widespread, making the technical challenges and law enforcement needs overwhelming.

As a public service, Sam has put this episode in front of his paywall. The topic spirals in many directions, including the misleading concept of “child pornography,” the failure of governments and tech companies to grapple with the problem, the tradeoff between online privacy and protecting children, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, photo DNA, the roles played by specific tech companies, the ethics of encryption, “sextortion,” and the culture of pedophiles.

I am proud to say that I have been a paid subscriber of Making Sense for years. Sam Harris does a great job of exploring complex and oftentimes thorny issues unflinchingly, week after week.  From Sam's About Page:

His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.

If you are unfamiliar with the work of Sam Harris, I invite you to listen to this Episode, or any Episodes of Making Sense.

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