Entries from November 2007 ↓

I feel special. The douchehounds are coming out of the slime pond! Unfortunately the most recent one wasn’t quite funny enough to make it to public evisceration. Nice try, but “only a tiny percentage of morbid obesity problems are genetic blah blah blah It’s your own fault blah blah blah I claim to be a skeptic but fail to engage critical thinking when it suits my biases blah blah blah” is pretty boring by now.

This blog has a comments policy that’s the short and nasty version of the one at Shapely Prose. People who make dumb comments don’t make it past the moderation queue. Make your dumb comment vaguely entertaining and original and I might let everyone laugh at you. That’s not an invitation.

In other news, I’ll shortly be moving this thing to its own domain, to better enable the Banning of the Morons and the Fiddling of the Code.

BABble blog has pointed out this article:

Obese Patients Demand For Equal Chances For Elective Surgery

I certainly hope their demands are met.

However, there’s one particular thing that has rankled me for some time:

“But Dr. Timothy Bhattacharyya, spokesman for the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, said the issue is hardly about financing the procedures. “In a hip replacement, if the patient is obese, the doctor might not be able to see everything he needs to see,” he said. He also noted logistical problems among obese patients are common, including correctly positioning the body at the operating table. Recovery periods are likewise longer.”

My response as commented at BABble, plus supplementary ranting:

Man, I am SICK of people that are supposed to care about and for ALL people’s health WHINGING that they might have to spend a little extra time getting a large body in the right position on the operating table, or take some extra care with surgical site treatment afterwards. People come in all shapes and sizes and, gasp, as a health professional you might have to treat some of those icky people that fall outside the average. GROW UP AND DO YOUR JOB. Sometimes jobs are hard! Maybe the doctor should have picked some other career if he wasn’t up to the challenge.

I should point out that doctors are denying joint replacement and other surgery (I’ve actually read that several British hospitals are denying hysterectomies to fat women, which is a whole other WTF) are going on BMI, the measurement we all know and love. Love to call bullshit on, I mean. So such massive fatties as the “obese” people in the BMI Project slideshow, for example, would be denied surgery because it’s “too hard” and has “logistical problems” and “a new joint is wasted on a fatty”.

Now, we know that that fat people have no worse outcomes from joint replacement surgery than slim people, as Sandy Szwarc has already pointed out.

But “logistical problems”? What in the hell is that supposed to mean? Medicine, treating the illnesses and conditions of human beings, is one whole massive logistical problem. So you’re a surgeon and you notice that standard surgery techniques are not working well for fat people, tiny people, people with whatever condition – you find a new way to do it! Complaining because the patient doesn’t fit the textbook procedure is just plain lazy. Now, not all doctors are like Dr Bhattacharyya; I’ve known quite a few that were actually competent, compassionate, and caring – they’ve managed to consider that yes, I’m fat, but I still deserve medical treatment, so they use the large blood pressure cuff without making a fuss, explain anaesthetic risks without blind anti-fat bias, find a modified position for an examination. They do their jobs in a proper, professional manner. Without making the patient feel humiliated or upset.

Which is how it should be for all people regardless of size, whether it’s believed their condition was self-inflicted or not. No judgement. Just care.

Doctors, nurses, and other health professionals who do otherwise are do a huge disservice to the profession and humanity.

Oh happy day! Now I’m a real blogger. Yes, my very own douchehound has stopped by and left some comments so I can play Fate Hate Bingo too. *sheds a tear*

“Staci”, apparently from Melbourne, but of course with a fake email address, decided that it would be nice to say just how stupid fatties were for complaining about Apple’s advertising the new iMac with the “you can never be too thin” line. Too bad all the eating disorder organisations and feminists were pissed off about it too. Otherwise it would have been just sad, pathetic fatties “cutting off our noses to spite our (fat) faces” all by ourselves. Whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean in this context. Like most trolls, Staci is not terribly good with complex thought. “And I’m sure Steve Jobs will cancel the campaign when he gets emails from two or three fatties. Not!” says La Douchehound. I guess that the stupid ad copy disappeared after people pointed out just how fucked it was is all a figment of my imagination.

Then, just to help me win another bingo square or two, Staci leaves another comment on the B & Lu fashion review. Apparently, it is very sad that I buy clothes on the internet. Douchehound Staci thinks it is sad because I cannot find clothes that fit me here in Australia, thus demonstrating her poor reading skills. In fact, I buy clothes on the internet because I don’t generally like the fashion available here. I’d be buying things over the internet even if I were a slender young thing, as I don’t particularly like much of what’s in fashion at the moment even for those size 14 and under. Friends of mine who are not fat and have the same opinions of affordable Australian fashion do so regularly. But that’s not sad! That’s the global free market at work!

And here comes the revelation: our douchehound is a reformed fatty. She realised that it was time to lose weight when she couldn’t fit into her size 18 clothes any more. Well done, Staci, well done. The world congratulates you. When you look back over your life as you lay on your deathbed, you can say with pride: ‘thank goodness I made myself a better person with weight loss! Thank goodness I took the time to be a douchehound!’ If only we could all follow your example, then the world would be free from fatties who make you uncomfortable. Ooh, and Douchehound Staci declares that she realised she needed to lose weight, not like me who’s “political”. Oh-kaaaaaay. Too bad “political” isn’t an insult around here. Like fat. FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAAAAAAAAAAAT.

It’s ok, Staci. You don’t have to be frightened of the nasty political fatties. Have a Bex, a cup of tea, and a good lie down. And for fuxsake, stay the fuck away from commenting on any blogs until you can get it together.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, from Fairfax media, are supposed to be two of the most reputable and well-respected newspapers in Australia. They can have a bit of a privileged-lefty bent, but it’s generally accepted as a good paper.

The addition of blogs to their websites a couple of years ago was in some cases good – I liked reading the photojournalists’ blog, for example, but in other cases really sent the tone downhill, particularly the two blogs that seem to mostly be “OMG!!!! Men and women are like, so totally different!!!!11!!” (if you read smh.com.au or theage.com.au you know which ones I mean). And recently one of those put up a post that was about as vomit-inducingly fatphobic as you could expect. It linked to Big Fat Blog, and The F Word’s post on the new Pixar film (a link which sent her some rooly smrt trolls), snarked at the idea of fat acceptance and essentially wished fat people dead of their own ill-health. You could almost smell the fear coming out of the screen.

The post is at http://blogs.smh.com.au/lifestyle/allmenareliars/archives/2007/11/fatist_tendencies.html – I’m not going to link directly, cut and paste if you want to see.

Especially if you’re in Australia, I encourage you to contact Fairfax at readerlink@smh.com.au or feedback@theage.com.au and voice your concern and displeasure. Their blog use policy is at http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/07/26/1153816236184.html?page=fullpage.

I have sent off my complaint, pointing out (as The-F-Word also said) that even if you think being fat is a choice, many other things such as religion are choices yet not held up for vilification. And also pointed out that fat-hate fuels disordered eating and poor mental health among slim people too. It’s not just “for a laugh”, as the shitstain who wrote that post would likely say, it’s serious vilification.

The more people who say something, who speak up, the more effect we can have.