A comment about judging people

[sqbr]

So people with chronic fatigue syndrome are a minority in society. People with vaguely similar chronic illnesses and disabilities are less of a minority, I have no idea how much less.

But I still get very annoyed when people assume that anyone who does *blah thing to save energy* must be lazy. Yes, in the old days we didn't have labour saving devices etc. And in the old days, being chronically ill or disabled really sucked. (It still does, but not as much)

Pre-prepared food, remotes, scooters, whatever.

I mean I can understand saying "Surely not EVERYONE who uses this actually needs it, so the overall popular trend is bad even if some uses are valid" but you can't judge any given person without knowing their circumstances.

Even if they're overweight, especially since mobility issues tend, oddly enough, to lead to weight gain. Sometimes people's ill health is either unrelated to, or the cause of their weight issues, and we have just as much right to do unhealthy things like eating junk food as anyone else. Sick and disabled people do not fit into neat little boxes of "lovable perfect victim who never complains" and "entitled whiner who brought it on themselves".

Not aimed at anyone in particular, inspired by hearing about examples of overweight people with similar symptoms to mine (shortness of breath, low blood sugar meaning I need to eat often, slow ungainly gait etc) being judged for "making themselves sick by not losing weight", and thinking dark thoughts about my future since I can't see how I can not gain weight with my current level of immobility. Also this post, which has the added fibre of classism!

Oh, and that woman at the station who said to the man awkwardly carrying his crutch off the train before putting it back on "You obviously don't need that, haha"

Phew! I feel better now.

Comments

[grahame.livejournal.com]

The trouble is just that people are really good at taking a cause and effect like "laziness makes you fat", then flipping that around to if you are fat you are lazy. I suspect the problem is just that it's true X percent of the time, where X is high enough that people feel confident in the false connection.

Underlying motivation is just that we like feeling better than other people, it's not that surprising. It sucks, but we're not particularly logical or rational beings :-)

[alias_sqbr]

Yep, absolutely. Also lots of lazy people aren't fat, so it's more like "laziness is somewhat correlated with fatness" :)