On the Latest in Fat Eliminationism & Healthcare

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

In today's blogaround, I linked to a piece by Ragen Chastain about proposed medical guidelines that exhort physicians to "treat the weight first" in fat patients, i.e. literally deny fat people healthcare unless we lose weight first.

This already happens unofficially all the time: Fat patients are routinely told by many doctors that they must lose weight before they will be approved for certain surgeries, e.g. knee or hip replacements, using bullshit rationales about safety and fat surgical patients, never mind the fact that these same patients would be ushered into bariatric surgery with no questions asked.

Anyway. I've been doing some tweeting this afternoon about these guidelines, about the silence of allies, and about what caring about fat people's health really looks like.

For those who aren't on Twitter, I've Storified my tweets.

If you'd like to find more smart and decent people saying smart and decent things on this subject, you can check out my timeline. I didn't include their tweets in my Storify, because I didn't have a chance to seek their consent for inclusion.

Have at it in comments. And please remember that fat people's right to healthcare is not up for debate in this space.

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