Let's put a death to this, shall we?

Trying to turn around a situation so that it is about race instead of sex. (Or what have you.)

"If somebody said such-and-such about a black person..."

Cut it the fuck out. You are playing on the narrative that racism is dead in our society, which is a back-breaking load of rancid shit.

I understand the desire to try to communicate to people who might not otherwise understand how serious something is. But please find a way to do it without making things worse for our brothers and sisters living every fucking day as a gay person, trans person, person of color, person with a disability...

These systems of oppression are incomprehensibly large and they operate in different ways for different classes of persons. They are equally reprehensible, but that does not mean they all operate the same way, and that if something problematic about [x class] is not tolerated in society, [x class] must not have it so bad after all.

Check your privilege.

Submitted without comment

President George W. Bush, in response to a question of how to protect Christians in Iraq:

Well, one thing we can do is to keep our troops there long enough to have a civil society emerge, and go after them, and go after these killers, and bring them to justice so they quit killing people, including our own troops, because this is a war.

AUGH

School Popularity Affects Girls Weight, NY Times

I'll let the more experienced cover the article as a whole. But I just wanted to pick out this bit:

And as part of other anti-obesity measures, school officials should consider implementing programs to help girls build social skills, they added.

.......

*faint*

Ugh. There's so much in this one little quote, I just can't think of how to address it all.

There's the fact that apparently a girl's position on the social ladder only begins to matter to adults the moment she starts showing a little chub. No mention of the social ostracization, including the emotional harm—all the way up to and including depression and suicide—and the physical harm involved (ask my friend Mike what he faced as an unpopular child in school).

There's the fact that, for goodness' sake, these are children! My husband was a very chubby child, but he grew up to be 5'9, 120lbs, and plateaued at 140 when he was weightlifting. I was a chubby little girl, and grew up to be 5'8" and 125lbs at the highest before I got on my current medication.

There's the fact that you can't just swoop in and "teach" a girl "social skills." The hierarchy that exists in elementary, middle and even high school is far, far more complicated than adults give them credit for. Girls who are perfectly "skilled" socially are still ostracized. Even if a girl is a late bloomer in the social skills department, her position on the social ladder may be cemented enough that it doesn't help her any. And popularity can be based on absolutely random shit sometimes that has not a thing to do with whether you have social skills.

There's the fact that maybe the girl is perfectly happy with the friends she has, and doesn't particularly want to be friends with the girls she perceives as "popular." I knew I wasn't high on the popularity list in high school (and I was beyond skinny, by the way), but I had no delusions that I would lead any better a life if I was. I had amazing friends and I wouldn't have traded them for all the prep cred in the world.

And finally, to state the fucking obvious, there's the fact that maybe, just maybe, these children are unpopular BECAUSE they are fat.

*head.* *desk.*

Update: Just wanted to add a slightly different perspective: Could it be that, besides popular girls being selected in part for their body type, they also feel such intense pressure to remain thin that they'll do anything to keep that status? As usual, it's a double-edged sword here.