OK, one thing…

I’m not going to do the ins and outs of the size acceptance movement tonight because I’m tired 😉 but I formed a couple of opinions on reading the webpages and blogs, which you’re getting whether you want them or not.

How unfriendly is this movement? Seriously. You have someone show up on a blog timidly identifying as fat and asking “is it not the case that overweight can be bad in X way?”You want to convert them to the ideals of size acceptance. Is your best move going to be a. to explain patiently what’s up and the movement’s views on the matter, or b. to have a go at her and berate her for not reading the part of your website where you prove at great length that she’s an idiot?

Guess how many choose b?

Then there’s all the people who say “Well, how many times have I answered this question? I’m sick of it.” Guess what? Being an activist means you have to keep answering the fucking question. I only realised this recently, but it’s true. Every new person who shows up wants the same question answered. They don’t know that you’ve answered it 100000 times already or that you have a page on your website explaining The Truth. They want an answer. You have to give them it and remember it was once you asking the question.

Then places like BFB require for membership that you aren’t on a diet or intending to lose weight. Well, the not dieting thing could fill a book. I wanted to not have sores from my thighs rubbing together when I walked, kthx. So I lost weight. OMG TEH EVIL DIETING SKINNY BITCH. Except no-one who meets me is ever going to mistake me for Kate Moss.

I should have accepted the sores, right? Because….um, I’m drawing a blank. Because they prove that I was fat and fabulous? Because they’d turn on some FA out there and what the men want trumps all? Or…no, I’m not getting it. Someone help me out with this one.  

Such a requirement – well, even if one’s utterly opposed to dieting, that’s one thing. So am I. You wouldn’t find me within a million miles of weight watchers or such shit. If I ever bore the arse off someone with my points or Syns or how much calories are in whatever I’m eating, shoot me. However, I did do evil weight-loss! On purpose, nonetheless!

I went to my doctor and said “Hi there. These pills have made me put on three stone and I’m not so happy with that. Please can you change the script so I don’t have to keep buying larger sizes and I don’t get ill walking up hills? Thanks.” Lo and behold, she did, I no longer woke up at night and wished to devour a pizza and six different chocolate bars and my weight dropped by two and a half stone (so far).

It’s still dropping, so I am automatically disqualified from BFB. But I’m having a hard time figuring out why what I did is wrong. If I was on a pill which made me lose weight rapidly and I asked it to be changed, would that be wrong?

Contradictions like this confuse the movement and people interested in it.

Slight return

O hay! I haven’t blogged for a long time.  That’s because I was, like, Engaged In The Struggle and doing all this excellent stuff – who am I kidding? I was sitting around in my pyjamas eating bonbons and reading Take a Break. (They have adverts for Unison now, which I think is quite a good move on Unison’s part. Look what I did there! I made a vaguely political excuse for reading Take a Break!)

Anyway! I managed to find some new excellent blogs to liven up my sidebar a little, before I get on to the serious business of writing posts. First up is this guy who is doing some fucked-up shit involving doing every fad diet he can get his mitts on. It amuses. Now, I don’t diet, but anyone who’s tempted to should just let this guy do it for you. It’s easier and it frees up more bonbon eating time.

He also goes on a special diet designed to “upset communists”. No, not eating copies of Das Kapital, though that would be funny. Read his site to find out what it was.

Next up, in a startling change of direction, I’ve been wandering in two different but strangely connected blog-worlds of things I haven’t been thinking about before with any great intent. Those worlds are fat/size acceptance and lesbian separatism.

They both appeared on my mental list of “Things which are kind of interesting but I disagree with” and in some ways they’re still there. More on this in my next proper post but for views to chew on I recommend the following…

Amy at Feminist Reprise. I actually had trouble linking to her site because I realised there was a whole lot of stuff I hadn’t read there and wandered off to read it. Then I remembered – oh shit, I’m supposed to be linking to this! And had to open a new window.

I highly recommend her blog (which I read in like one sitting, stopping only for teh foodstuffs). I strongly disagreed with some of what she says but then some parts of it made the grey cells work and gave me a differing outlook on things. Very cool. Also, this. Written in fine fashion and guaranteed to make you very angry, if you have a working human brain.

Fat ladies writing: The Rotund, Big Fat Deal, Shapely Prose. All recommended for some excellent writing and thoughtprovokingness. I don’t recommend some other shit, but more of that in my next.

DO NOT WANT

I was recently forced to attend a training course designed to make us humble minions “think more positively” and “choose to have the right attitude to work”.  Cue 100 videos of cheery Americans “making the choice to offer 110 percent customer service and connect with the customer”, silly motivational exercises and general suckiness.

I amn’t even any good at kidding on that these motivate me and fill me with love for my job any more. I’m all burnt out. I’m sitting in a corner fiddling with my wristbands and not shouting out when the trainer goes “Hey everyone, let’s brainstorm! Ten positive things about your job! C’mon!”

That gives me more time to think about these things. What’s it all about, eh?

As all who know me ken weel, I’m not much of a theorist. But I was struck by the ideological implications of this course. The trainer (who was very nice, btw) was addressing an audience who were very low on the totem pole and whose job involves far more enforcement than it does friendly chats over a cup of tea. And yet they’re pushing this “delight the customer”  “send them away happy” craziness? The kind of customers we get aren’t delighted that they have to deal with us. It’s a grim reality of life for them, and they would be far happier if they never saw hide nor hair of us, or even better, if we didn’t exist. We’re not jolly service providers. We’re an inescapable fact of life.

Furthermore, another aspect being heavily emphasised is that if you don’t arrive at your workplace brimming with joy then you’re somehow defective. There’s something wrong with you if you don’t Choose to be Positive. Not anything wrong with the job or the working conditions, something wrong with you.  During the Industrial Revolution all factory workers weren’t required to smile constantly or risk being stamped as some kind of deviant from corporate values. Now one is expected not just to carry out boring, repetitive, menial work for a pittance but be relentlessly cheery about it – cause if you’re not, the problem is within your own psyche, and it’s nothing to do with a low wage or taking abuse from angry customers. It’s because you’re choosing to be negative, and people who choose to be negative need to be fixed.

My trainer said, with an air of faint bewilderment, that she couldn’t understand how people who didn’t like their jobs didn’t just get a new job. Love it or leave it! “Why would you want to work somewhere you don’t feel 100 percent fulfilled?”

Like I said, she seemed really nice. But she didn’t seem to get how “Oh, just pack it in and get a new job!” isn’t an option at the level me and my colleagues are at. If we pack it in it we won’t graduate to an air-conditioned office and four or five times the salary we are on now – in other words, her job. We’d be shelf-stacking at Tescos, and no doubt still getting harangued for not “living in the moment” and “injecting fun and playfulness into work.”

See this fucking class divide? It sneaks in all over the place. Now we’re even sposed to kid on we’re blissful in our minimum-wage shite jobs so the people who provide them can feel better about themselves. Alienation? Get rid of that lingering scent quick with Corporate Febreze.

I are yewsin mai brest powa repsonsibly

I’ve always wanted a guide to how best to show off my cleavage in the workplace, and the powers that be have finally led me to that holy grail. Behold!

This is an absolutely vital potted guide to how your breasts (those squidgy thingies attached to ladies’ front parts, for the uninitiated) can make or break your entire image!

 Women’s breasts are vital in getting men to take one seriously. If your breasts are the wrong size, kiss goodbye to any hope of being respected in the workplace.

”

“A recent study showed men photos of women in a workplace with large breasts showing cleavage, medium breasts and small breasts. When asked about who looked most professional and personable, the men chose the women with medium-sized breasts,” she said.

“You don’t have to be flat-chested to be taken seriously,” she added. “You just have to be proportionate. For women who are small busted, that may mean a little padding. For well-endowed women, that may mean a minimizer.” “

If the day ever comes where I decide on a padded bra to make my boss think I am more professional, I will shoot myself in the fucking head.

Why don’t we have a guide to cock-manipulation skills for men? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.

“Guys, if you want women to take you more seriously in the workplace, it’s important to think of your package. We showed three pictures of David Brent to some drunken admin assistants in Wetherspoons. In the first, we’d digitally altered his picture to appear he had no cock at all. In the second, we did not edit his nethers. In the third, we made it appear that his trouser-snake was so massive and bulbous that it would make a hosepipe cry tears of shame.  The unanimous preference was for the second picture, as the first picture gave our sample creepy flashbacks to childhood and the third caused them to experience simultaneous orgasms, which would unavoidably slow their typing speed.

For those less loved by nature, this may mean wearing a discreet pair of socks in your Y-fronts. For those well-endowed gents, this may mean tying your knob around your leg, wearing a vibrant tie to distract attention from your manhood or considering transsexuality.”

Even the soundbites are disturbing (even the soundbites?)

“If cleavage isn’t in your job description, don’t put it in.”

“Your children should not have to compete with your cleavage for attention.” 

“During pregnancy you should celebrate your breasts.”

[The rest of the time you should hate and revile them.]

“You really have to use your breast power responsibly”

Do you know, sometimes you hear women say “We’ve come so far.” Then someone publishes a book on how to get men to like you better by adjusting your breast size so you don’t upset them, and you think “We really kind of…haven’t.”

😦

Freepers tackle slags and erotic hoovers

The best thing about social conservative sites is their unending potential for hilarity. Because these, my friends, are people who think that everything has a hidden agenda. People who compulsively display their own sexual…issues….while ranting spittle-faced about those of others. And, nutters.

The best of the best is Free Republic. I could spend hours on this site, just laughing and laughing and laughing. Then thanking the powers that be that I don’t actually live anywhere near any of these weirdos. I am beginning to understand why Americans are all armed to the teeth. I would be too if I lived next door to someone who believed that the makers of Teletubbies were subliminally introducing babies to the concept of cumshots in order to further the homosexual agenda.

Think I’m joking, don’tcha?

I recall that robot-vacuum character – they made EXPLICIT sexual references with that. Money-shots, we’re talking… once they had it suck up some liquid that one of them spilled, and then it “got sick” and “vomited” by erupting back onto the Teletubby.

I can’t make this up, it was so obviously meant to be pornographic.

here

I mean, comrades, is this not terrifying? Somewhere on this earth exists a man who can see a cute robotic vacuum cleaner performing its daily tasks on a children’s TV show for under-3s and transform it in his mind into a gay porn-fest complete with money shots. What do you suppose he sees if he watches actual porn? The mind boggles and the spirit recoils from contemplation.

(Also, I may be just a wee bit innocent, but I don’t think that’s how sex actually works. I mean, you don’t eat something in order to spill your seed, as it were. What does the first part represent? Or does he just watch more interesting porn than I do?)

But we are not finished yet.

I heard that all the sexual orientations were supposed to be represented by the Tubbies. That Po with her circle over the head was a straight female, Dipsy with his straight up in the air pointy thing on the head was the straight male. And Laa Laa, with the thing that is half a pointer and a circle too was the lesbian, and of course you have Tinky, who has the purple triangle over his head — how obvious — as the gay male.

here

Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the one with the circle be the lesbian, if we surmise that the circle is supposed to represent the vagina? What’s the lesbian doing with a pointer? Is it supposed to represent a strap-on?

Or maybe this one thinks that lesbians don’t have vaginas. If lesbians didn’t have vaginas, they’d be men. And men would be lesbians, so logically there would be no gay men, as all men would fancy women. And….aaargh! No! Brain hurts! Too much Free Republic!

Next up:

I wouldn’t want my child watching this bizzare, surreal program.

here

OK, this person has obviously never been a child. Children live surreality. Teletubbies is the Antiques Roadshow by comparison.

When I was a child I believed that the baby Jesus automatically made ladies pregnant at the age of 25 unless they asked him very specially not to (and they had to have a good reason, not just that they couldn’t be arsed changing nappies.) I also believed that wasps were related to dragons, that if you drank enough cups of hot water you would become a wizard, and that red Fiesta cars could put a curse on you.

So, obviously, I should have been watching Newsnight.

Last but not least, the conspiracy is unveiled!

Yes but Falwell was a Christian and the ultimate refusnik who would not submit himself to the slalags of political correctness and the wholesale homosexual indoctrination of Amerika.

here

I applied the little grey cells to the vexed question of what is a “slalag of political correctness” I at first thought it might have been a misspelling of “gulag” but that doesn’t really make sense. Ye cannae submit yersel tae a gulag. Well, you don’t have the ability to make a choice. That’s like saying “Even though he was stabbed to death, he refused to be murdered.”

Slowly, as dawn broke and the first cheepings of birds were heard in the land, I came to an almost Zen-like understanding of the phrase “slalags of political correctness.” It refers not to gulags. It is a misspelling of the word “slag”.

Slags of political correctness! An upstanding Christian man like the Rev. Falwell would certainly not submit himself to a slag. And just as certainly it would take a slag to think of making a robot-hoover on a kid’s TV show represent the human penis.

These people are under siege from slags of political correctness. Their confused hormones say “yes!” to these enticing beasts, while their proud conservative hearts say “no!”. It goes a long way to explaining their extreme sexual dysfunction. You’d have disturbing erotic thoughts about kids’ TV programmes too if you were constantly being forced to submit to a slag. It’s a wonder their minds have held out as long as they have. Or maybe they haven’t.

Another day, another insight into the conservative mindset. Aren’t you lucky I read this stuff so you don’t have to? 😉

Obligatory introductory post

Hello.

To gain an understanding of my politics, read the Communist Manifesto, preferably while drunk on cheap cider.

I really am a girl. I really do look like a kitten, and I really do wear hoodies. But only to make a political point.

I come from a rural place. If I told you where, you would laugh, so I’m not going to tell you.

I like women, wine and song. I also like men, beer and howling.

That is all.