Jenn showed this to me.
In Mississippi, the poorest state in the USA with a 30% adult obesity rate, a bill has been introduced to make it illegal to serve fat people in restaurants. Specifically, the legislation reads,HOUSE BILL NO. 282...An act to prohibit certain food establishments from serving food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the state department of health
That means that anybody who is visually assessed to be "too fat" will be refused service. Issues not addressed by this bill: poverty, public transportation, food availability, health care, education. See here and here. Oh, I'm sorry, I guess food availability is discussed. Just don't give it to fat people.
There are elected officials who want to regulate every detail of your life, like you are a giant baby in grown-up clothes who cannot be trusted to make the "right" decisions for yourself. There are people in this world who want to disempower you, so you may never be self-sufficient, autonomous, or threaten their economic and political privilege. Body politics are the ultimate frontier of personal liberty, and they matter. They matter to you, whether you would be served in a Mississippi restaurant or not. Hegemony functions and thrives by keeping people away from the resources they need to be self-governing; freedom is accessibility, and unfortunately, accessibility is often economy.
As I said earlier, if Obama does not get the democratic nomination today, on top of these articles, I will never, ever forgive the US. These are the reasons that I can never really, not really, have any respect for conservative politics. They are the antithesis of freedom, their solutions are almost uniformly cosmetic, they never seek to understand why things happen, how their actions will shape discourse, perception, or the obstacles and realities of the people they are constantly legislating against. It is like a fundamental lack of empathy, and it honestly makes me nauseous when I take a stab at understanding how cold and self-righteous one must be to be a proud member of the GOP. Don't like it? Get fucked.
That means that anybody who is visually assessed to be "too fat" will be refused service. Issues not addressed by this bill: poverty, public transportation, food availability, health care, education. See here and here. Oh, I'm sorry, I guess food availability is discussed. Just don't give it to fat people.
There are elected officials who want to regulate every detail of your life, like you are a giant baby in grown-up clothes who cannot be trusted to make the "right" decisions for yourself. There are people in this world who want to disempower you, so you may never be self-sufficient, autonomous, or threaten their economic and political privilege. Body politics are the ultimate frontier of personal liberty, and they matter. They matter to you, whether you would be served in a Mississippi restaurant or not. Hegemony functions and thrives by keeping people away from the resources they need to be self-governing; freedom is accessibility, and unfortunately, accessibility is often economy.
As I said earlier, if Obama does not get the democratic nomination today, on top of these articles, I will never, ever forgive the US. These are the reasons that I can never really, not really, have any respect for conservative politics. They are the antithesis of freedom, their solutions are almost uniformly cosmetic, they never seek to understand why things happen, how their actions will shape discourse, perception, or the obstacles and realities of the people they are constantly legislating against. It is like a fundamental lack of empathy, and it honestly makes me nauseous when I take a stab at understanding how cold and self-righteous one must be to be a proud member of the GOP. Don't like it? Get fucked.