It's not easy casting off shame.
Even now, where I am fairly advanced with it, I still feel a certain defensiveness writing about it. It tempts me to add all of these justifications and clarifications to prove that I am not just in denial.
I suppose that is why I wrote about the various employers screwing me over rather than some other topics, including how interest -- and therefore debt -- drives the economy, so is encouraged and reinforced, even though individuals will have their debt attributed to bad choices.
As it is, I have seen and elucidated clear examples of racism and sexism creating problems, and then people who were invested in the status quo continued to deny and downplay. There is often a limit to how much that type of engagement helps, though you don't always know that going in.
Therefore, I know as I write these things I am leaving myself open to judgment, but I also know that the people most likely to discount what I say are also the least likely to read what I write. I guess that works out.
What I am driving at is that some of what I write about is so baked into societal beliefs that if the initial response is denial that is not even weird. Keep an open mind, and reach out if you have questions.
Getting back to those three employers, the first one did not end up making much of a difference, but the other two really set me back. There were other factors in that (a worldwide financial crash, my mother's dementia), but I lost ground that I never regained.
This is pretty normal. If you have more resources, even setbacks can work in your favor. For example, that worldwide financial crash did affect the stock balances of rich people, but if they didn't need to sell so were able to hold out, there was a big rebound coming.
That was not how it worked for us.
That could be a reason to be skeptical about those arguing for the privatization of social security, but I am mentioning it more to get to the other area where I needed to let go of shame...
I am no longer ashamed I am fat.
I admit this is not the same as being happy about it.
I recently told a friend (who had been fat-shamed by her doctor) that if I had never dieted I would probably be about sixty pounds lighter.
That's only an estimate, and I would definitely still be considered fat (otherwise there wouldn't have been all of the dieting attempts along the way). It still would have been better. It would have made clothes shopping easier (though I hated clothes shopping back then too).
This is a thing that is remarkably well-known: 95% of dieting attempts fail, with the dieter gaining back anything lost, plus a little extra. Since even people who know that are desperately hopeful of making that 5%, the diet industry makes billions annually. Not millions; billions.
There are so many problems with that I can't even get into it now, but my point is how brilliantly this fits into dominator culture, and why people have such a hard time letting go of it.
You can see if
someone is fat -- though not if they are healthy -- by looking at them.
Judging people by color has developed a bit of a stigma, but judging by
body size is still A-okay. That is strong motivation to change, but in
reality you just end up getting farther behind, probably poorer,
probably less healthy from the strain, and almost certainly with a bit
more heft to be judged by. Then no amount of science will convince
hordes of people that it is not because you are just a slug who doesn't
even try, and you don't deserve to ever taste anything good or ride on
an airplane.
Incidentally, I have read that when it became common to judge people by their weight, assuming the sin of gluttony, it was partly because it was becoming too unpopular to criticize the greed of capitalists.
It tracks, doesn't it?
I think the
order that makes sense here is to return to financial issues next
Tuesday, but I am going to leave one thought here first:
The primary purpose of emphasizing personal responsibility is to weaken collective power.
Related posts:
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/04/changed.html
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