- LGBT murders in Brazil up 55 percent. Trans people and sex workers have been particularly targeted: “‘A transvestite is 259 times more likely to be murdered than a gay man,’ says the study which is based on media reports, since there are no official statistics on hate crimes in Brazil.” I’d assume a study based on media reports is understating the true extent of the problem, since not every murder is reported.
- Meowser’s post on airlines charging fat people extra is the best I’ve read on the subject. Go read this is you have any interest in the issue at all. She also brings up a factor that I haven’t seen any news reports mention: this is an issue in part because the airlines have been making the seats narrower and narrower in recent years.
- Slut-Shaming From Sextexting Leads To Teen Suicide. So horrible. And as Renee says, “This is not about sextexting, this is about gender based harassment and slut shaming.”
- Define Rich! “We have lost our definition of rich and I believe it was done intentionally. If you are rich, then what better camouflage is there than to undefine “rich”? And, what better way to undefine “rich” than to have an argument accepted that “rich” can not really be defined?”
- Malcolm Gladwell, “Black Like Them.” “The success of West Indians is not proof that discrimination against American blacks does not exist. Rather, it is the means by which discrimination against American blacks is given one last, vicious twist: I am not so shallow as to despise you for the color of your skin, because I have found people your color that I like. Now I can despise you for who you are.” Via Ta-Nahisi.
- It’s too cute, my brain may just explode.
Barry’s BlueSky- Untitled May 11, 2024#PoliCartoon: If a Fetus Could Talk... Okay, this one is probably in bad taste. But every friend I showed this to while I was working on it laughed.
- Untitled May 11, 2024"Challenge the outcome" seems like soft peddling what happened. [contains quote post or other embedded content]
- Untitled May 11, 2024Pro-Israel German reporter with over 250,000 followers fantasizes about LBGTQ+ supporters of Palestinian rights being hideously murdered.
- Untitled May 11, 2024A CNN article about torture and mistreatment of prisoners in one of Israel's prison camps. This is indecent, inhuman... and routine. Prisoners being handcuffed so brutally that eventually the hand had to be amputated! https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/10/middleeast/israel-sde-teiman-detention-whistleblowers-intl-cmd/index.html
- Untitled May 11, 2024In 2002, Anne Applebaum uses this perfectly ordinary political cartoon - showing a blindfolded George Bush not caring who his attacks hit - as evidence that "the Voice of Palestine [is] a combatant—and therefore a legitimate target" for military attack. Disgusting. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/01/targeting-radio-and-tv-stations.html
- Untitled May 11, 2024[contains quote post or other embedded content]
- Untitled May 11, 2024
Ok, you’ve got me here.
Airlines benefit from selling more tickets than they actually have, counting on the fact that some customers won’t show up for a flight. They presumably use some kind of statistical algorithms. But if they can exercise discretion about who to kick off – at no cost to the airline – then they can increase the amount of over-booking they engage in.
Yet airlines haven’t abused their discretion in the past regarding when intoxicated people can fly, right? I don’t know. Consider the question of whether a bag is small enough to qualify as a carry-on. I suspect gate attendants enforce a stricter standard when flights are full than when flights are only half-full. So shooting from the hip, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that gate attendants exercise a more stringent standard of intoxication when they are facing an over-booked flight than when they are facing a flight with empty seats. If you have to kick SOMEBODY off the plane, wouldn’t it be better to kick off the tipsy guy (at no cost to the airline) rather than somebody at random (at a cost to the airline)?
The way to deal with concerns about inappropriate exercise of discretion is to establish unambiguous rules that minimize the role of discretion. And, to be sure, “Don’t discriminate on the basis of body size” is about as unambiguous as it gets. I don’t rule out the possibility that other rules could also be articulated, too, but the ones that leap to mind would be cumbersome to administer. (“Let’s see if you carry-on fits in this box, and let’s see if you ass fits in this chair….”)
Man, we have post detailing new dynamics in racism, hate crimes in Brazil and the double-standard run so rampant as to lead to suicide. Colour me disappointed that all the comments have been about the least interesting topic.
Sam,
There’s usually the most discussion about the topic that is most controversial, in the sense that there isn’t unanimity among Alas readers that X is bad. (For a past example, see the post about home health aides refusing to work for abusive patients, where the consensus was in favor of requiring aides to work for them anyway, but a significant minority dissented.) I think we’re all in agreement here that murdering LGBT folks and sex workers is bad; that slut-shaming and teen suicide are bad; that racism is bad whether it is against all people of a particular color or only particular ethnic subgroups within that color.
However, if you would like to argue in favor of any of these — as Sailorman, nobody.really and I have been arguing in favor of United’s policy — have at it.
1) What PG said.
2) Although you didn’t quite come out and say it, your comment can easily be read as saying that fat people shouldn’t talk about discrimination about fat people when there are more important topics to discuss. Which would be an attitude that is… not in accord with what I’d wish. (Of course, you’d hardly be the only one here, if that were the case.)
3) Actually, although slut-shaming is indeed a double-standard, there’s another way we can look at this, which is that gender-based bullying has led to several tragic suicides this year, of both male and female students. I’m not saying we should look at it one way and not the other; I’m saying we should look at it both ways.
If Sam doesn’t mind, I’d like to note what I do consider to be clear, overt discrimination against fat people that’s interwoven with sexism: Kagan and Sotomayer are being rated down as Supreme Court appointees because they’re supposedly too overweight, such that they might not live long enough to influence jurisprudence.
?!?!?!
Perhaps not wanting to start fat-bashing on any Supreme Court justice, Campos neglects what seems to have been the obvious counterpoint that sprang to the minds of many other liberal bloggers: What about Scalia? To the extent this can be visually judged, he’s not been in his BMI ideal weight range since he joined the Court and likes to smoke and drink, yet he’s been there for 22 years and shows no signs of ill-health. I don’t recommend nominating another Taft in terms of age and health (nearly 64 when he joined the Court and served less than 9 years before he died of arteriosclerosis), as I do want Obama’s nominees to have a lasting impact, but the idea that nominees should be excluded because they’re not model-thin is ludicrous.
Sam,
You have a point, I’m shocked that people are more interested in keeping fat people in their place than addressing any other of the topics that were mentioned.
Having said that, I don’t know why you assume that fat hatred isn’t affecting the mental health of fat people .
It would be nice if people would actually say something substantive about the other topics mentioned in the OP’s link collection, instead of bemoaning the fact that other people didn’t. Be the change you want to see, and all that.
Update on airline policies — hopefully United will take the suggestion to provide “extended width” seats just as many planes offer “extended legroom” seats.