So near, so far

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Yesterday morning I caught a few minutes at the end of a program called Pororo the Little Penguin that at first seemed fairly dead-on in its portrayal of a character with an eating disorder. So, naturally, descriptive triggers follow in the recounting of it.

What I saw started with a pink beaver character (named Loopy according to the Wikipedia article) moping, looking at herself in the mirror and sighing that she is 'chubby'. Then her friends come over for lunch and are enjoying themselves, while she quietly sips a drink through a straw instead of eating. While doing so she visualises herself expanding in size as she drinks, and puts even that away.

While she is lamenting that she is chubby and should not eat or drink anything, her friends are admiring a model in a magazine she has lying around. When they notice she is upset about her weight, they try to tell her she is not chubby but she does not believe them.

And then... it all falls apart. She says she wants to be thin and pretty like the model in the magazine and the polar bear tells her if she wants to be thin she should exercise, and that dancing is great exercise. They all get up and dance happily.

~ fin ~

Speaking as someone who hasn't experienced it first-hand, that seemed an accurate and distressing portrayal of someone suffering from an eating disorder, immediately followed up by what is just about the worst possible response you could give in that situation presented as a permanent solution. From everything I've seen personally and elsewhere, eating disorders pretty commonly include obsessive exercising as part of their manifestation, so advising someone in any stage of one that exercise will solve eir problems is more likely just adding to them.

Vexation

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

I came across this post and was bothered by it.

Mainly what bugs me is the read I get off it that feminism and capitalism are in necessary opposition. From what I see of capitalism it has no particular call to reinforce sexism or other oppressions[1] and indeed might function more effectively by not doing so. The problem with capitalism perpetuating societal oppressions is I think a matter of historical contingency, and if a hypothetical world without sexism were to invent capitalism I doubt the people of that world would also invent sexism to accompany it.

None of this, of course, vanishes the practical issue of women who claim feminism and vote or act politically against the interests of women generally.

There were also some remarks in a later comment which peeve me in a personal way.

But its time we get back to our roots and say “we are against all oppression, all hierarchy and in support of autonomy, make your politics follow us!”.

[...]

Honestly, we have to ask what feminism is about. Are feminists against all systems of oppression, or just the ones that personally afflict them? Are they only against patriarchy or against other/all forms of hierarchy?

I see plenty of feminists complain about people, often men, saying feminism ought to be renamed something more inclusive like humanism - and rightly so, as typically these proposals exist as part of a pattern of behaviour which has the effect of impeding feminism by refocusing attention on men and the concerns of men (which is strictly unnecessary, since men are also beneficiaries of reducing and eliminating sexism and these attempts are mainly manifestations of the incompleteness of that liberation).

Anyway, my annoyance is the confluence of those complaints with the pervasive attitude I perceive from feminists that feminism is a movement against all oppressions. It is pretty well impossible to untangle one form of oppression from another, but to claim membership of a anti-specific-oppression movement entails opposition to all forms of oppression seems a bit much. I would rather see feminists claim to be for example anti-racism on the basis of being anti-racism, rather than in some way suggesting feminism forms the heart of anti-oppression overall.

Plus, if pressed to identify my values one way I'm likely to answer is humanist, for reasons broader than merely anti-oppression politics. I don't appreciate seeing feminists object to the term humanist yet claim feminism means anti-all-oppressions when it would indeed be a more fitting term for that attitude.

[1] Except I think capitalism would have a difficult time not driving some sort of classism.