The Virtual Pub Is Open

image of a pub Photoshopped to be named 'The Shakesville Arms'
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]

TFIF, Shakers!

Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!

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Daily Dose of Cute

image of Dudley the Greyhound's eye poking out from a pile of blankets, looking at me
I have been spied from amidst a pile of blankets.

As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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The Friday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by chocolate.

Recommended Reading:

Kiese: [CN: White supremacy; violence] My Vassar College Faculty ID Makes Everything OK

Charles: [CN: Homophobia; transphobia; ageism; class warfare] Aging LGBT Populations Face Substantial Economic Hurdles

Jessica: [CN: War on agency] Indiana TRAP Law Ruled Unconstitutional

Nicole: [CN: War on agency] Who Are the People Behind the Numbers?

BYP: [CN: Racism; racist slurs; police misconduct] Ohio Sheriff's Deputies Under Investigation for Racist Texts

thekooriwoman: [CN: Racism] On Who the Fuck Is Iggy Azalea When She's at Home?

Jamilah: [AUDIO] John Legend, Common Add "Glory" to Selma Soundtrack

Leave your links in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime



Janelle MonĂ¡e (featuring Big Boi): "Tightrope"

This week's TMNS have been brought to you by ladies with double Ls in their first names.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

President Obama has nominated longtime senior Pentagon official Ashton Carter to replace Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. I literally cannot stop seeing "Ashton Kutcher" every time I read a story about this guy. "Dude, where's my drone?"

[Content Note: Police brutality; racism] And again: "Protesters demanded Thursday night that Phoenix police identify the officer who shot and killed an unarmed black father of four children, in a confrontation that critics and community members likened to the deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri and Eric Garner in New York. About 100 people marched to police headquarters a day after the department strongly defended the decision by the officer who shot 34-year-old Rumain Brisbon, who friends and family said was simply delivering dinner to his children, on Tuesday night."

[CN: Police brutality; racism] My pal Dan Solomon has written a good piece for Texas Monthly noting that police body cameras can only ever be one tool among many tools and strategies needed to meaningfully address this problem. After all, more evidence only matters if the people reviewing that evidence are invested in making sure it matters.

[CN: War on agency] Tara Culp-Ressler compiles "7 Victories for Reproductive Freedom You May Not Realize Happened This Year."

[CN: Transmisogynoir; violence] Police are investigating "the death of a 21-year-old transgender woman who was gunned down while pounding on the front door of a South L.A. home seeking help. Deshawnda Sanchez, known as 'Tata,' was shot around 4 a.m. Wednesday on the front porch of a home near South Wilton Place and West 62nd Street, according to the Los Angeles Police Department." It was not, as in the case of Renisha McBride, the homeowner who shot Tata, nor, as in the case of Jonathan Ferrell, the police who shot her. "A neighbor's surveillance camera captured part of the incident, which showed someone pulling up to the house in a vehicle, getting out and running up to the porch. The figure could then be seen running back to the vehicle and driving away, police said. ...Detectives believe S"anchez was running away from a robber when she was shot, but said they were not ruling out other scenarios." They are considering the murder a possible hate crime.

[CN: Transphobia; appropriation] Um: "One of the founding members of the iconic band The B-52s is back with a very queer new single. Kate Pierson is slated to release a solo album, called "Guitars and Microphones"... In anticipation of this release, Pierson dropped her first single and video for 'Mister Sister'—a track that she is dubbing a 'trans[gender] anthem.'" Nope! [H/T to Eastsidekate.]

"Romney's Inner Circle Is Convinced He's Running." Well, Romney's inner circle was also convinced he was winning, so.

[Note: Video autoplays at link] ChescaLeigh: "5 Tips for Being an Ally." So great.

NASA's Orion capsule, a spaceship designed for a future Mars mission, had a perfect test run: Orion "made a near-bullseye splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on Friday, wrapping up a flawless, unmanned debut test flight around Earth. The Orion capsule blasted off aboard a Delta 4 Heavy rocket, the biggest in the U.S. fleet, just after dawn from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Three hours later, it reached peak altitude of 3,604 miles (5,800 km) above the planet, a prelude to the most challenging part of the flight, a 20,000-mph (32,000 km/h) dive back into the atmosphere. Orion survived a searing, plunge through the atmosphere, heating up to 4,000 degree Fahrenheit (2,200 degree Celsius)—twice as hot as molten lava—and experiencing gravitational forces eight times stronger than Earth's. Over the next few minutes, a total of 11 parachutes deployed to slow Orion's descent, including three gigantic main chutes that guided the spaceship to a 20-mph (32 km/h) splashdown 630 miles (1,014 km) southwest of San Diego, California, at 11:29 a.m. EST (11:29 EST). 'I think it's a big day for the world, for people who know and like space,' NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said before the launch." Heck yeah it is! Neat!

A letter to my cat: Dear Vastra. All the blubs.

You probably won't read a headline better than this today: "Firefighter Nicknamed 'Dr. Doolittle' Saves Dog That Fell Through Ice." Yes!

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Number One!

[Content Note: Christian Supremacy; racism.]

Hey, remember Kirk Cameron's Christmas movie which we are all definitely going to see called Saving Christmas, which features a protagonist named Christian White who finally experiences the magic of Christmas via dancing and racial stereotypes?

Well, I have exciting news for you! It has reached #1—on IMDb's Bottom 100 movies, as voted by regular IMDb users!

Saving Christmas is literally the worst!

And it beat out some stiff competition, too! Like: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (#11), From Justin to Kelly (#23), Track of the Moon Beast (#34), Ghosts Can't Do It (#48), and The Tony Blair Witch Project (#76).

Congratulations, Saving Christmas! It really is the hap-happiest season of all!

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I Write Letters

[Content Note: Sexual assault; rape apologia.]

Dear People Who Don't Believe Jackie:

In my experience, people who don't believe survivors simply just don't want to believe them, and then use whatever details of any particular case they can exploit in order to try to justify that disbelief.

But I'm going to go ahead and take your "concerns" at face value, in order that you might be more inclined to believe Jackie and/or other survivors of sexual assault.

Robby Soave, writing under the headline "Is the UVA Rape Story a Gigantic Hoax?" for Reason, does not find it credible that Jackie's friends could have discouraged her from going to the hospital or reporting out of self-interest.

If the frat brothers were absolute sociopaths to do this to Jackie, her friends were almost cartoonishly evil—casually dismissing her battered and bloodied state and urging her not to go to the hospital.
Failure to support a rape victim is something that could only seem "cartoonishly evil" to someone who has never survived an assault only to be met with indifference from friends, law enforcement, and/or even one's own family.

Some of us don't have the luxury of being able to pretend it's incredible that someone would be abandoned after an unfathomable trauma.

The secondary trauma of being disbelieved, being silenced and dissuaded from talking about your rape, or being obliged to pretend like nothing happened is extremely common.

Sometimes the people closest to you utterly fail you. Sometimes it's because they can't navigate their own discomfort. Sometimes it's because there is still a powerful stigma attached to surviving sexual assault; families with an enforced veneer of perfection will often prioritize that veneer even over supporting a child who has been abused. Sometimes it's because they think you're lying, or so fervently wish you were that they behave as though you must be, just to protect themselves from the reality of your pain that they can't alleviate. Sometimes it's just because they're straight-up assholes.

Most people are raped by someone they know, not strangers. (That alone, the fact that people are raped by their friends and family, should indicate the mere failure to support someone after a rape isn't remotely unfathomable.) Sometimes friends fail to be supportive because they know the person who raped you.

There are all kinds of reasons that friends might fail to support someone who has just been raped. And it's a particular sort of cruelty to disbelieve someone on the basis that their ostensible support system stinks.

Meanwhile, Richard Bradley, the editor-in-chief of wealth-management magazine Worth, writing under the headline "Is the Rolling Stone Story True?" for his own blog, does not believe that these sorts of sexual assaults happen in the United States:
A young woman is lured to a fraternity in order to be gang-raped as part of a fraternity initiation. It's a premeditated gang rape. I am not, thankfully, an expert on premeditated gang rape, but to the extent that it exists, it seems to be most prevalent in war-torn lands or countries with a strain of a punitive, misogynist and violent religious culture (Pakistan, for example).
He is not an expert on gang rape, but is pretty sure it doesn't happen here however often would convince him that this could have happened here. Well, it happens here. It happens in Cleveland, Texas; it happens in Cupertino, California; it happens in Suburban Chicago; it happens in Richmond, California; in happens in Orange County; it happens in a US workplace abroad. That is hardly a comprehensive list.

I certainly hope that Mr. Bradley, and others who share his incredulity based on the frequency, or infrequency, of gang rapes in the United States would not argue that they would like more gang rapes, in order to believe any individual victim of one.

Bradley is also not an expert, apparently, on sexual assault as an initiation ritual:
The allegation here is that, at U.Va., gang rape is a rite of passage for young men to become fraternity "brothers." It's possible. One would think that we'd have heard of this before—gang rape as a fraternity initiation is hard to keep secret—but it's possible.

So then we have a scene that boggles the mind. (Again, doesn't mean it's untrue; does mean we have to be critical.)
We begin to see the problem with a self-admitted non-expert on rape culture using what he has or has not heard of as the benchmark for credulity. Because, again, fraternities—and athletics teams, and the military, etc.—using sexual assault, either of an outsider or of the new pledges, as part of initiation and/or hazing is not at all an unknown thing.

That is not "a scene that boggles the mind"s of people involved in anti-rape advocacy, who listen to survivors' stories. It does not boggle the minds of women who have been gang-raped, or raped by one man as part of his initiation ritual into a fraternity or sports team, or even just so he can enter a name in a book passed among male classmates.

This, too, is a particular sort of cruelty: To use one's detachment from the threat and realities of sexual assault to impugn the credibility of those who don't have the privilege of ignorance.

Bradley has lived his whole life not "having heard" of basic truths about the ubiquity of rape and the many forms it can take. And then he positions his ignorance as objectivity to audit those of us who have intimately experienced these horrors and call us liars.

The disbelievers can't believe her friends would fail to support her. They can't believe gang rapes happen, or happen this way, or for that reason. They can't believe her injuries weren't worse; that her dress wasn't more torn; that she didn't behave this way or did behave that way.

In every story questioning the veracity of Jackie's story, I whiff a distinct disbelief that we can survive this stuff and still seem in any way "normal." They can't comprehend how survivors can go on after something like that. (It's because we have no choice.) They are so far removed from surviving this sort of experience in a privileged life in the United States, that it is incomprehensible to them that there are survivors who emerge from this shit and still look human.

There was never going to be a right way for Jackie to survive in order to convince people who don't want to believe survivors. Because this is the horrible conundrum of the public survivor: You are too broken to be credible, and not broken enough to be credible.

So they say that we are liars. Only they say it by publicly questioning "the details" under headlines phrased as questions.

Well, I have answered your questions in good faith. Do you believe her now?

I'm going to guess not, since your questions weren't asked in good faith. But please feel free to surprise me.

Regards,
Liss

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Open Thread

hosted by blueberries

Hosted by blueberries.

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Question of the Day

Again, by popular request: What are you currently reading? Would you recommend it?

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Fat Fashion

This is your semi-regular thread in which fat women can share pix, make recommendations for clothes they love, ask questions of other fat women about where to locate certain plus-size items, share info about sales, talk about what jeans cut at what retailer best fits their body shapes, discuss how to accessorize neutral colored suits, share stories of going bare-armed for the first time, brag about a cool fashion moment, whatever.

* * *

FYI, if you're looking for some tall boots for winter in wide widths, Maurice's is currently having a flash sale, with some styles of wide width boots priced as low as $19.90. The sale covers narrow widths, too, in case you don't need a wide width for foot and/or calf.

I got my first pair of tall, wide-calf boots earlier this year (from SimplyBe), and I love them SO MUCH.

image of my outstretched legs, clad in brown tall boots, my feet resting on a red chair
Gonna kick some ass in these beauties.

They are super comfy for walking around, and they are just tight enough to be fine if I'm wearing 'em bare-legged with a skirt, but just loose enough to be fine if I'm wearing 'em over snug jeans. That is definitely one of the benefits of spending a little extra to get boots with precise calf sizing, based on your actual leg measurement and not your shoe size. Whatever magical combination of foot-to-calf ratio on which that calculation is based, I don't have it!

Random Aside: They're not leather, but they were finished or packaged with some kind of scent of leather. (?) I was thinking when I opened it, I guess that's fun for people who buy faux leather to save money, but I'm not sure how keen people who are explicitly anti-leather for ethical reasons will be on it, lol.

Anyway! As always, all subjects related to fat fashion are on topic, but if you want a topic for discussion: Tall boots? Yay or nay?

Have at it in comments! Please remember to make fat women of all sizes, especially women who find themselves regularly sizing out of standard plus-size lines, welcome in this conversation, and pass no judgment on fat women who want to and/or feel obliged, for any reason, to conform to beauty standards. And please make sure if you're soliciting advice, you make it clear you're seeking suggestions—and please be considerate not to offer unsolicited advice. Sometimes people just need to complain and want solidarity, not solutions.

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Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Rape culture.]

"It is not who Cosby is that accounts for our long silence. It is who we are: a culture that does not believe people who share stories of surviving sexual violence. Were Cosby an unremarkable man of modest means, we would still doubt allegations like these, because that is what we do. The rationales we offer for why we doubt survivors are varied: the accused is a legend, or religious, or has been nice to us. The survivors have any number of real or perceived flaws. What doesn't change is that when someone alleges rape, we immediately begin to grasp for reasons why that person is unbelievable."Tope Fadiran, in a terrific piece for RH Reality Check.

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"Us Against Them"

[Content Note: Police misconduct and brutality.]

Today, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division released a "pattern or practice" report on the Cleveland Police Department's use of force, one of whose officers shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice last month. The investigation began in March 2013, at the mayor's request, following an incident in which a police chase "resulted in Cleveland police dispatching at least 62 vehicles, firing 137 bullets, and killing two unarmed black suspects, who each sustained more than 20 gunshot wounds."

The report found an almost unfathomably frequent use of unjustifiable and excessive force:

The agency's investigation found that officers in Cleveland routinely use unjustifiable force against not only criminals and suspects, but also innocent victims of crimes.

...Most recently, on November 22, a Cleveland police officer fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was playing with a toy gun in a park. Footage of the incident shows the officer firing his gun within two seconds of pulling up to the boy in his car. The Guardian reported on Thursday that Timothy Loehmann, the officer who shot Tamir, was judged unfit for police work in 2012 by his then-employer, the police department of Independence, Ohio. An Independence official described Loehmann's "dismal" handgun performance in an internal memo.

According to the DOJ report, Cleveland police officers "carelessly fire their weapons, placing themselves, subjects, and bystanders at unwarranted risk of serious injury or death." For example, the agency pointed to an incident in 2011 where officers "fired 24 rounds in a residential neighborhoods," with six rounds striking houses and 14 hitting parked cars. In another case, "an officer's decision to draw his gun while trying to apprehend an unarmed hit-and-run suspect resulted in him accidentally shooting the man in the neck."

The Justice Department also claimed to have identified "several cases" where "officers shot or shot at people who did not pose an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury to officers or others." For example, in 2013, the report noted that police shot at a kidnapping victim after he fled from his assailants wearing only his boxers. The sergeant said he believed the victim had a weapon because he raised his hand.

In another case detailed by the Justice Department, a 300-pound officer punched a 13-year-old boy who was handcuffed inside a police car and kicking the door. The officer, whom the report describes as 8 inches taller than the boy, punched him "three to four times" until he was "'stunned/dazed' and had a bloody nose."
The investigation also found that supervisory reviews of the force incidents "is superficial at best and, at its worst, appears to be designed to justify their subordinates' unreasonable use of force."

Further, the investigation concluded that there is a militaristic, antagonistic culture within the force: "The report also said that the culture of the Cleveland police force promotes an 'us-against-them' mentality. It cited the example of a sign in one district station that identifies the station as a 'forward operating base'—which DOJ noted is a military term for a small outpost in a war zone."

This cruelty reverberates through communities, and does not make anyone safer.

As I noted during coverage of the murder of Jonathan Ferrell, the 24-year-old black North Carolina man who was shot and killed by police after knocking on a door for help following a car accident: If a man unknown to me comes knocking at my door in the middle of the night seeking help, I don't want to feel like if I call authorities ostensibly equipped with providing the aid he's seeking that I'm risking his life.

Police routinely tell members of their communities to call them when a stranger needs help. When anyone needs help. But how can we safely help someone we believe is in genuine need by calling police, when police harming them is a potential result?

Us against them. When police are enemies of the community, or parts of the community, we're well and truly fucked.

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Today in Rape Culture

[Content Note: Rape apologia; sexual violence. Graphic description of assault in Rolling Stone link.]

Last month, Rolling Stone published a story by Sabrina Rubin Erdely detailing the gang rape of a University of Virginia student named Jackie. It is incredibly difficult to read, and a depressingly familiar story to anyone who engages even marginally with anti-rape advocacy.

The story has received the predictable and typical backlash. But it has also come under fire for failing to include responses from the alleged rapists.

Earlier this week, writing for the Washington Post under the headline "Rolling Stone whiffs in reporting on alleged rape," Erik Wemple said: "For the sake of Rolling Stone's reputation, Sabrina Rubin Erdely had better be the country's greatest judge of character. ...Rolling Stone bears a great deal of responsibility for placing the credibility of the accuser in the spotlight, thanks to shortcomings in its own reporting. Consider that: Erdely didn't talk to the alleged perpetrators of the attack."

Katherine Reed has written a thoughtful response [H/T to Jessica Luther] to this particular criticism, from the perspective of someone who covers sexual assault cases, and I encourage you to read the whole thing.

I will just make this personal observation: Who the fuck even cares what the men alleged to have gang-raped a woman for hours have to say? If they're rapists, I'm pretty sure they're liars, too.

Whatever they have to say isn't worth a smudge of dogshit regarding the veracity of Jackie's account.

Even people who believe Jackie to be a liar know this is true. Whatever the men accused of gang-raping her have to say, unless it's a full confession, isn't really meaningful.

So why would anyone bother arguing that their expected denials should have been included? And this is the reason: Because they want something on which to hang their hats. They want something, even if it's a transparent lie, that they can use to justify disbelieving Jackie.

It's so unfair that they haven't been offered the opportunity of the pretense of fairness toward the accused as cover for their axiomatic rape apologia.

They're pissed that they haven't been given something, anything, to allow them to question her account by pretending they are just interested in fairness and balance. They're pissed that they have no cover for challenging her credibility.

So now it's all about ethics in game rape journalism.

I see you.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime



Michelle Branch: "Everywhere"

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Daily Dose of Cute

image of Olivia the White Farm Cat grooming her belly, while Sophie the Torbie Cat is curled up beside her
Olivia grooms herself, while Sophie snuggles up.

As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Racism; police brutality.] Last night, people took to the streets of NYC in protest of no indictments for Eric Garner's death, chanting his last words: "I can't breathe."

[CN: Racism; police brutality] The officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice while he was playing with a toy gun in a public park, "had issues with handling guns during his brief tenure with a suburban police department. A Nov. 29, 2012 letter contained in Tim Loehmann's personnel file from the Independence Police Department says that during firearms qualification training...'He could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal,' according to the letter written by Deputy Chief Jim Polak of the Independence police. ...'I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies,' Polak said." Terrific hire, Cleveland.

[CN: Rape culture; sexual abuse; descriptions of assaults at link] Three more women have come forward with stories of Bill Cosby sexually abusing them. Vulture has an updated timeline of the allegations here.

[CN: Child abuse and neglect; disablism] A 15-year-old Indiana girl with psychological disabilities was discovered by relatives being kept in a locked room in her grandfather's home. She weighed only 35 pounds. She has been hospitalized and "remains in critical condition with life-threatening injuries, police said." Her shitlord guardian says she was abusive, and meanwhile is raising at least one other kid, a boy, like nothing horrific was happening in his home.

[CN: Misogyny; sexual abuse; sexuality policing] The World Health Organization has released a new document stating that "'virginity tests'—a 'two-finger test' used to determine whether or not a woman has had sex or has been sexually assaulted—has no scientific basis and should never be used." Good.

Whooooooops! "The Vatican's economy minister has said hundreds of millions of euros were found 'tucked away' in accounts of various Holy See departments without having appeared in the city-state's balance sheets." Well, sure. It's easy to lose track of millions of monies. Who hasn't done that? Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit millions of euros from the Vatican's couch cushions!

Oh shit: Africa's giraffe population "has dropped about 40 percent in just 15 years, according to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. ...And while animals such as elephants and rhinos garner a large share of conservation attention, why does it seem like a 'silent' extinction? Experts speculate that they're such a presence in our lives that it's easy to think the species is as abundant as can be. 'Giraffes are everywhere. Look at kids' books, which are full of giraffes. They're always in zoo collections. They're easily visible, so you don't think we have to worry about them,' said David O'Connor, research coordinator with the San Diego Zoo's Institute for Conservation Research."

This dude in Indiana turned his old Geo Metro into a flying saucer. Well, no shit he did! What would you do with an old Geo Metro?

And finally! Great silly photos of dogs who need homes. Love.

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Fat People, Smokers Denied Routine Surgery

[Content Note: Fat hatred; "headless fatty" image at story link.]

This is utterly heinous:

Smokers and the morbidly obese in Devon (UK) will be denied routine surgery unless they quit smoking or lose weight.

Patients with a BMI of 35 or above will have to shed 5% of their weight while smokers will have to quit eight weeks before surgery.

The NHS in Devon has a £14.5m deficit and says the cuts are needed to help it meet waiting list targets.
They need to save money, so someone has to not get surgery—and it might as well be people for whom no one will be inclined to fight.

Just to underline how completely arbitrary this horseshit is, someone with a much higher BMI (which itself is a garbage measurement) than 35 could lose 5% of their weight and still have a BMI over 35.

So what's the point?

The point, of course, is setting a threshold for access to healthcare that most people won't be able to meet.

The new restriction is "only" on routine surgery and not lifesaving surgery. (So they claim.) Among those routine surgeries are "hip and knee operations for the morbidly obese." If you're thinking, gee, it might be difficult even for people who can lose weight via diet and exercise to lose weight without full use of their hips and/or knees, welcome to the world of being a fat person who can't fucking win.
In a statement the Royal College of Surgeons said it was "concerned" by the move and warned the region was merely storing up "greater pressures" for the future.

It said: "The need for an operation should always be judged by a surgeon based on their clinical assessment of the patient and the risks and benefits of the surgery - not determined by arbitrary criteria.

"Losing weight, or giving up smoking is an important consideration for patients undergoing surgery in order to improve their outcomes, but for some patients these steps may not be possible.

"A blanket ban on scheduled operations for those who cannot follow these measures is unacceptable and too rigid a measure for ensuring patients receive the best care possible."
Well, at least the Royal College of Surgeons has some fucking sense. For some patients these steps may not be possible. Imagine that! It's almost like it's a terrible fucking idea to draw arbitrary exclusion lines instead of doing your job and taking the time to work with patients on an individual basis.

Granted, arbitrary exclusion lines are so much easier.

The thing about successful surgical (and other healthcare) outcomes is that patient compliance is the most important component. It doesn't matter if someone is a thin non-smoker; if they don't follow post-surgical recommendations, don't comply with recommended physical therapy, don't take their meds, etc., they're not going to have a successful outcome.

Certain types of mental illness or neurological disorders tend to be incompatible with rigorous patient compliance. The line is not drawn there, however, even though this is ostensibly about best outcomes, because it would be an outrage for healthcare providers to suggest that someone with mental illness doesn't deserve access to routine surgery because they might not make good decisions afterwards.

(This does, by the way, happen. Individually and quietly. There are profoundly disablist policies in healthcare services, including here in the US, especially around lifesaving surgeries like transplants, used to deny people care. It just tends not to be made public so brazenly.)

This is a public policy position, and so they make the choice based on stereotypes about fat people and addicts (but only addicts to cigarettes, who are "nuisances" and not addicts)—people who are largely assumed to not give a fuck about their own health and who are widely despised with impunity.

It's an outrage to draw this line anywhere. Individual patients need individual care and individual decisions.

Fat people are being scapegoated, targeted by people who don't want to make tough decisions. So instead they make lazy ones.

And, the truth is, many of the "routine" surgeries they want to deny meaningfully affect people's ability to move and thrive. This isn't a neutral decision. It will negatively affect fat people's and smokers' health. But we're not supposed to think about that. Or care about it, because, hey, they're definitely for sure obviously already unhealthy anyway.

This could shorten people's lives. But who cares.

Fat hatred kills.

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Today at the Intersection of Racism and Fat Hatred

[Content Note: Police brutality; racism; fat hatred.]

Last night, Republican Representative Pete King, who is a nightmare, appeared on CNN's "The Situation Room" in order to defend the cop who killed Eric Garner, saying Garner died because he was fat.

NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo was not charged in the death of Eric Garner, 43, whom he put in a chokehold during a July confrontation over Garner's selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. Garner, who suffered from asthma and other health problems, later died in the hospital and the city's medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.

"You had a 350-pound person who was resisting arrest. The police were trying to bring him down as quickly as possible," King said in an appearance on CNN's "The Situation Room." "If he had not had asthma and a heart condition and was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died from this. The police had no reason to know he was in serious condition."

The confrontation between Pantaleo and Garner was also caught on video that showed Garner repeatedly telling the officer he couldn't breathe. King said police hear that kind of thing all the time.

"But if you can't breathe, you can't talk," he argued.

The Long Island congressman also dismissed the idea that any racial animus played into Garner's death.

"I have no doubt, if that were a 350-pound white guy, he would have been treated the same," King told CNN.
So, racism played no part in it a white cop killing a black man, and it's all that black man's fault for being so fat. Cool theory.

(I will just quickly observe that there are plenty of fat people for whom asthma is not a result of being fat. Sometimes, in, fact, it's precisely the other way around.)

King is certainly not the only person to float this theory. In fact, the police tried that from go: Before the medical examiner's report was even done, the official line was that Garner just had a heart attack.

They probably figured they could say a fat man had a heart attack and no one would question it. Because fatties.

And why not? This happened in a city primed by the former mayor to view fat people as dangerous and diseased.

Eric Garner did not die because he was fat. He died because a police officer who doesn't agree that Black Lives Matter put him in an illegal chokehold and because his chest was lethally compressed as multiple officers who also don't agree that Black Lives Matter piled on top of him.

But in a world where truth doesn't matter, Garner is dead because he is fat and the officer merely used a wrestling move on him.

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Open Thread

image of a Russian Blue domestic cat

Hosted by a Russian Blue.

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Question of the Day

What is something you regret never having tried when you had an opportunity, and hope to have the opportunity to try again someday?

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