Hate crimes

News from London:

Overweight people in London have launched a campaign to make the capital more fat-friendly.
It comes after one woman was beaten up on a train for being fat.

Now read some of the comments ranging from the abusive, "Why don't fat people simply stop stuffing their pie-holes?"; the unthinking, "I wish the obese would accept that they have a problem and start doing something about it"; to the oh so caring and understanding liberals, who call for "compassion" (I think they're the worst).

It's a classic moral panic. As people become sensitised to the definition of fat people as a 'problem', then us fatties become the target of abuse, resentment, pseudo-psychological diagnoses, ludicrous newspaper columns and, worst of all, condescension.

I am a person of the rotund persuasion. It isn't a problem. People come in various shapes and sizes and it has been the same throughout history. We are different, all of us. We can be healthy, sickly, active, lazy; fat or thin, tall or short, dark or fair. And one day we will all die. It is life, simply that.

Now the attitudes of the playground bully are infecting the panic-struck media and reaching politicians in search of a cause. Let us be. Anti-fat sentiment is pretty trivial. It is a far cry from the murderous brutality of racism, there is no Action T4 seeking out the obese, these permissible prejudices are normally just an irritation and inconvenience. But this rare act of public violence, highlights the damage that can be done when we lose a sense of proportion and relapse from reality into panic. And the result elsewhere is many more victims, treated far worse than us plumps.

Hat tip Kev