My Return to Size Acceptance

 My views have changed about size acceptance since the deconversion. Let's just kind of sum it up that religious fundamentalism which I deconverted from muddied the waters. There was always that cognitive dissonance for me, in standing up for fat and disability rights, in a religious system that seemed to preach against them at every step.  After all I was the "sinner" who deserved what I got, instead of questioning reality. There's a clash there. It's better to be in the place where I can stand up for myself freely without those religious boulders on my back.

The traditional diet and weight loss world takes a negative toll on psyches. Fat people are walking around with their heads down, shamed to the max and denied a place in society. Forget that!

I had a life time already of being invalidated about my hunger levels, exercise levels and physical problems when it came to eating. I did end up removing myself except for rare posts on the Lipedema boards. Why doesn't it occur to these folks, it does to some doctors and researchers, that fat hatred has worsened the treatment of Lipedema and is one reason so many of us remain undiagnosed for YEARS and our condition getting worse.

Imagine if I got the help I needed at stage one and where the co-morb autoimmune and endocrine problems could have been dealt with. Maybe I could have avoided full disability. Lay that one at the feet of fat bigotry. So when I see the Lipedema world tied to diets, I feel doubly and triple betrayed, they caused my problems to begin with. What's worse is when I described the very bad effects of Keto, and I have known other people having serious problems with it, having vision and digestion problems in my case, people are called liars and dismissed. Didn't we get enough treatment like that before when we were all told we were lying about not being able to lose weight?

The constant drum of self hatred and desire to conform among the far smaller lower stage Lipedema women took a toll on me. It was not healthy and I got away from it. Size acceptance or fat liberation simply was unknown in those circles except by a few.

I figure at this age, the weight loss dreams are over.  The candy days of being thin, will never exist in this life. The main goals are to maintain what mobility and nutrition I can.  I am looking into genetic testing, and have discovered there are groups researching this, though I worry about "big pharm",  it may bring me more answers. Hopefully I can get a doctor to sign off on one program I found for genetic testing. I am tired of apologizing just for existing. Size acceptance probably helped me on multiple levels where the fat haters of the world didn't crush me to nothing. I do regret my being trapped in the religious delusions, as I couldn't enjoy all of fat acceptance's benefits.

I know my body never worked like other people when it came to food or weight even beyond the Lipedema. My hunger levels are far higher. I eat meals like normal people. I know this body could easily return to 700lbs and do it fast. My metabolism makes absolutely no damn sense. I have had extreme fear of weight gain from Covid and basically being locked in my apartment, unable to walk around to shop or to do things. I do these exercise routines on Comcast TV, saying "workout" into the voice remote, and try to do 20 minutes combined, at least a few times a week. I have to do it today fearing more weight gain. Also if I don't move around enough I will get sick.

How would you feel if you have lungs from hell, and have to go out into the plague ridden world, avoiding people, just to keep your mobility?  Remember in my case if I catch Covid, that's it. I have severe COPD. One day due to a weather change, my lungs checked out, I couldn't even walk into the living room without extreme shortness of breath, I thought I had "caught it" but had no fever and cough and than realized "Oh it's my COPD, the temperature dropped by 40 degrees!" Sometimes I get angry that undertreatment for my COPD adversely affected my life. You all do realize, I couldn't even breathe right even to have the ABILITY to exercise before I was put on a strong nebulized COPD medicine around 3-4 years ago.

I know some women with similar health problems to me, who haven't dared leave their homes since March at all, and I understand, but in my case this means losing mobility and not be able to walk anymore. I have to go somewhere today to make myself walk somewhere and do an exercise routine as well. The other day, some woman stared at me from her car at a park, ambling around on some grass and lumpy ground on a walker but at least there weren't any humans to run from. I went out to parks, actually liking when it was a bit colder or rainy, knowing it would mean less people. If it were up to me, I would sell everything and leave the country just to be able to walk around and do things freely. I wonder why the theme of this life has always been being "locked down".

 All I managed to do was keep the weight on the same baseline [I am within 5-6lbs of what I weighed last year as of two weeks ago] but had this terror inside I could gain 50 or 100 locked down like this and lose mobility and that fear still exists.  I would wake up, and think things like "Don't eat!" but give in to the hunger. With Covid too, there's this issue of wanting to keep food stores, what if there is no food soon as society crashes or money runs out? I find myself wanting to hoard everything.

There's a point where you know you are fat and you know for life you will be fat, and maybe the better way of life would be dealing with it, the best you can. All fat people are told to live for the day they are "thin" but that's lie too.  The best you can do is do what you can for your health, and let the chips fall where they may.  Fat people shouldn't have to live in misery for their whole lives for not fitting in and being told because you are fat, and that you are supposed to suffer. The diet world was like religion full of endless false promises and lies. For me, none of it worked.

By the way I miss the gym, it did help my lungs, and for me to feel better. How can I ever rebuild that stamina back up? It took guts to show up to a gym on walker. Going to the gym was "fun" for me. Of course they took that away too. The gym is reopened but I am too afraid to go there as Covid is spreading like wildfire in my local community. I was able to enjoy the gym, separating it from weight loss. I know that sounds weird, but the exercise had benefits and brought happiness to my life. I miss lifting weights and the arm bicycler and grabbing that one rope to pull and using their hand weights.

So I have returned fully to the size acceptance world, even NAAFA seems like they have changed for the better, though their presence seems more online, than in any real world chapters. I even consider rejoining it. I have gone to a few webinars with fat activists and groups and have noticed among the young, there seems to be far more enlightenment. I didn't offend bringing up my issues with size acceptance and there is more intersectionality with issues of class, honesty about the impact of fat admirers, promotion of LBGTQ rights, and more. A lot has changed. Things got better. Free of the religious baggage, my mind did change on some issues and my view of size acceptance was majorly altered, that's the best way I can explain it.

The Plot Hole in Christianity

 This was a question I asked myself. I had these troubling thoughts for years, shutting them down before I faced it head on and confronted it. Something was wrong with a God that demanded blood and sacrifices. When I found this link challenging Christianity's ties to ancient human sacrifice, this told me I was in a religion that had foundations of brutality and bloodlust. It just wasn't going to work anymore. I believe a God is possible as an agnostic, or some kind of "divine source" but the God that wants blood, and more suffering in such a harsh world and threatens people with hell, is a monster to me. Then there's the scapegoat issue that brings up other issues. It makes you wonder how our culture and world could have developed with a "nicer" religion not based on cruelty and violence. Some Christians believe in a different view of the cross of course and whhat it meant.

When You Learn So Much of the Population is Stupid and Evil.

I used to imagine when I was young that the world was a better place, and outside of my family, I would be free of horrible people. I did find some good people, don't get me wrong, but I remember being in my 20s, and learning the hard way how many narcissists and stupid people were the ones in charge.  I think one of my biggest disappointments in life, was learning that narcissists were so high in number.

We don't know if Biden has won yet, I still worry Trump could steal it or use some machinations to get his way. Some liberals are too naive and don't realize that if both parties aren't acting in good faith, that trying to be "civil" and "play nice", is just one easier way to get screwed. This is an advantage the fascists of the world have used against the sane and reasonable people for all of world history. 

This election should not be a close one. I started crying yesterday, the day after Election Day, that things were so close, that people had no problem voting for a monster that has allowed plague to be unleashed on us. Hundreds of millions of deaths hasn't even been enough to wake up these stupid people, they want more of the same. I definitely don't think Biden is perfect, my vote was a "survival vote", but to watch at least 48-49% of my own state vote for that piece of shit, even though my state came out blue by a thin margin, I can't even describe my utter disgust. I never was one to believe that most people are good, but my view of people has sunk even lower. How can they be so stupid? How can they want so much pain? How can they be so racist, and hate LBTGQ people and want everyone to be poorer living in the gutter?

I know for some society has gotten so complex and overwhelming, many are running to fantasy. I made that mistake in my own life broken down by poverty and illness to buy into the lies of Christianity when the fundies got their claws on me. In my case I never became a Republican, because I could not ignore the fact that the Republican answer for the disabled was go die in the gutter. These people join extreme churches that tell them Democrats equal baby killing Satanists [the prolife idiots ignore the fact birth control and stable wages lowers the abortion rate] and Republican equals God's party and they question none of them. These lemmings would run off a damn cliff if their pompadour haired lying pastors told them to and ARE.

America has a self-destruct button on it's back. This election proves it to me. Maybe it's the economic despair, maybe it's being tired from the go-go culture, but I wonder if some people are voting in such a way to bring the most death and destruction possible. One thing about narcissists and people without consciences, there's a point of psychopathy where they don't give a fuck about themselves either. They will make choices and do things to even destroy their own lives. Does this explain why people vote for those who directly harm them? Do they enjoy being hurt? Does this explain why inbred Kentucky voted for Moscow Mitch who denied even the poorest of them a stimulus to pay their rent when there's millions of unemployed people? What's wrong with these people? Were all those votes cooked too?

If Trump wins, I may be re-examining emigration. The barriers are so high. Maybe they really have "ruined everywhere". I want nothing to do with Republicans. We have crossed the line of civil disagreement because these people hate human rights, they support destruction and death. They have brought pandemic. They are directly destroying our lives. I broke out in tears, because there's so many stupid and awful people. Is this to say I am perfect no, but when people can watch a madman bring destruction and not even give a shit, this tells me something is very wrong. I feel like I am back in the house with my screaming abusive family but the house is my country. 

Update: Biden sucked as much as Trump, neither party cares, they are both for the 1 percent, and have abandoned all the needs of American people. Republicans did continue their harsh crap towards the poor and disabled but the left went even more stupid and abandoned the working class and poor as well. 

American Psychosis--Chris Hedges on American Narcissism and Psychopathy

Covid 19 as a Weapon?

I found this article to be very interesting:

UBI is going to become necessary. The small businesses that are gone in America, aren't going to provide livelihoods anymore.

As you know, I wrote an article here recently on the Social Engineering of Covid19. and why it has been allowed to happen. Make sure to read that article before you read this one. The virus is real, but it is being USED.

I don't like what is being done to our lives.  The far reaching implications of all this disturbs me.

Covid 19 as a Weapon: The Crushing of the Disposable Working Class by Design

Some articles warn not to trust Cory Morningstar, the author of the above article.  It is hard to know who to trust nowadays.  I am bothered by the social engineering I do see. Time magazine going on about the "Great Reset" as lives have been destroyed is beyond bothersome.

Don't Take Voting for Granted!

 

This was another lecture I did to the UU. I had to cut this way down for the time limit. My husband did help me edit it. I believe even if we have nothing but the worse candidates, we must never refuse to vote, because once that right is gone, it is gone for good.  My voting is done, it was one of the most Democratic ballots I've ever voted. The Green party usually gets a lot of my votes, but we are in crisis mode, even locally the Republicans here have a death-grip on us, and are impacting our lives, refusing all Covid19 mandates.  We get to see who is going to be president next soon.

Don’t Take Voting for Granted

"Voting isn't the most we can do. But it is the least" [Gloria Steinem]

If the ballot doesn't work, we'll try something else, but let us try the ballot.” [Malcolm X]

So what does it mean to vote, exactly? It's something that many people can't access today, or have fought for centuries, to have a democratic process happen where they are truly represented. Few people in the history of this world have ever had the choice in electing their own government.

One snapshot of the problem comes from the Democracy Index, a project of the Economist Intelligence Unit, which ranks how 167 countries are run.

Only 22, mostly in Western Europe, rate as full democracies, in which civil liberties are respected and protected by adequate checks and balances on government power.

The US is among 54 flawed democracies on the Index, or nations that provide free elections, and honor basic civil liberties, but suffer from major institutional problems, like governance problems. The last time I checked, we rank just ahead of Malta and Estonia in those areas.

Thirty-seven more nations on the Index are classified as hybrids, or flawed democracies hobbled by issues like rigged elections. The remaining 54 are authoritarian, mostly in Africa, or the Middle East, in which basic rights are severely oppressed, under threat, or essentially nonexistent.

Americans take the ability and right to vote for granted, when this has been chipped away. Even if you feel there is no one that's worth supporting, don't ever give up. Don't fall for the idea, “Oh, your vote doesn't matter,” or, “All those politicians are sold out, and rotten, anyway.”

Otherwise, you're just giving in to inertia. Voting is an important part of any activist's toolbox, even if it means sticking only with local races, or there's only candidate you're able to support. So you go and protest, but never show up to vote? Then you're missing an important part.

Poor people and people of color, and women all had to fight for the right to vote. People forget that our time in America of having an equal vote among all races, and sexes is a very recent development. Women didn’t gain the right to vote until 1920, Native Americans until 1924 – and some had to wait until 1948 – while 18- to 20-year-olds could not vote until 1971.

Before that date, most states set the bar for voting at 21, even though you were old enough to marry, get sent off to war, and pay taxes. Vietnam raised the issue with the saying, ''Old enough to fight, old enough to die – old enough to vote.”

By the 1980s and 1990s, however, getting young people to vote, or engaged politically, was nearly impossible – leading to campaigns like MTV's “Rock The Vote” effort, because so many people of our own generation checked out. I was politically active, however. I protested the Iraq War in the 2000s, and for much of that time, never missed a vote.

Too many of Generation X took the slacker media image to heart, though, and lost motivation for civil involvement. These days, from what I can tell, young people are getting more politically involved – and that’s good, because political vigilance is needed to keep our freedom and right now, we are in danger of it slipping away. Part of this vigilance requires exercising our voting rights as an informed citizen.

That brings me to our current problem of Voter Suppression, where a ruling political party or clique works to curtail the ability of certain groups or individuals from voting, or limit their representation in government.

For authoritarian or hybrid regimes, that often means sending police or paramilitary groups to polling places, either to scare off a particular candidate's supporters, or force them to vote for its preferred candidate. Sound familiar lately?

Claiming additional years in office is another common tactic. Examples include Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin, who's just signed himself on as “president for life” through 2036, or the Ivory Coast, whose former president plans to seek a third term – defying his opponents, who argue its constitution forbids it. However, the government has already announced that national elections will go ahead, with or without its critics.

Other voter suppression tactics include changing how checks and balances work. In Poland, judges have been removed for not being loyal enough to the ironically-named Law & Justice Party, which then passed laws to give itself, the dominant political force, more power over the judiciary.

These things happen here, too. We all remember what happened in 2018, when Georgia's Secretary Of State Brian Kemp, whose office oversees elections, defeated Stacey Abrams – on paper, anyway – amid bitter accusations of voter suppression.

For those who keep score, Kemp's office canceled 1.4 million voter registrations between 2012 and 2018, including half a million in one night in 2017 – what the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called “maybe the largest mass disenfranchisement in US history.”

Here's the rub, though. Unfair as they definitely are, such tactics are not illegal, in light of two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions – including Citizens United, which allowed corporations to count as “people” under the law. Many believe this 2010 ruling sold democracy to the highest bidder, and made Super-PACS a reality.

The other case is Shelby County v. Holder, a 5-4 ruling in 2013, where the justices threw out the idea of preclearance – or getting federal approval, in advance, for changes in voting laws and practices.

This is why we're seeing the last minute closing or shrinking of polling places in states like Ohio and Texas, for instance, or the tightening of voter ID laws – where someone without a driver's license ends up shut out of voting altogether, or unable to vote absentee, if they can't produce an excuse like a doctor's note. Or their name might end up getting struck off the list, as Kemp did in Georgia.

The Holder ruling prompted late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to fume, in one of her most blistering dissents: “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked, and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes, is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

Last but not least, let's not forget about gerrymandering, or redrawing district boundaries to lock down opposition-proof majorities for favored politicians – a tactic that often shuts minorities and other marginalized groups out of the equation.

Not surprisingly, the current Supreme Court has proven indifferent to addressing the problem, as it showed in a 5-4 ruling last summer that threw out challenges to redrawn districts in Maryland and North Carolina.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts claimed “partisan gerrymandering claims present political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” Again, his reasoning prompted a scathing dissent from Ginsburg, and her more liberal colleagues: “If left unchecked, gerrymanders like the ones here may irreparably damage our system of government.”

The Michigan Supreme Court apparently followed the same rulebook in October 2019, when it ruled, 5-4, that 34 districts didn't need to be redrawn until 2022, even though they purposely favored Republicans.

The decision also means that a 13-member independent commission can't do its job until 2022 – even though Michigan voters overwhelmingly created it four years earlier, in 2018, by a statewide referendum. The walls being thrown up against people of color, the poor, voters with disabilities, and young people are getting higher and wider all the time, it seems.

We get in our cars and go to a polling station, or fill out our ballots early now, not realizing how many people in America today are stopped from voting. Not everyone has a car to get to a polling place. People with disabilities may need help with reading a ballot, or even marking one. Accessible voting machines are available in our state, but are needed in lots of other places.

Whatever happened to government or civics classes? We need them more than ever nowadays, instead of teaching to standardized tests. Knowing how the system's supposed to work is the first step in trying to change it.

We also need to better educate young people on how marginalized groups like women and African-Americans, stood up against poll taxes, literacy tests and other tactics rolled out to prevent them from voting.

That kind of context is crucial, especially when you consider the approach of movies like Mississippi Burning, that present civil rights as a history lesson that wrapped up in the 1960s, or early 1970s, depending who's spinning the narrative. I doubt Stacey Abrams would see it that way, though.

Never take voting for granted. One important way to stand against Voter Suppression is exercise your right to vote, and agitate for everyone else's right to vote too. Don’t give in to apathy or thinking your vote won’t matter. This has chipped away at voting in America for too long, and we are seeing the results.

I think we need to bring back to the concept of civic duty, of being a good citizen, of being informed, and participating in your own government. After all, it’s supposed to be FOR THE PEOPLE. It's up to us to keep it that way.

Yahweh the Monster?

This writing is from Sandi_T. over on the Ex-Christian Reddit board. She does have a lot of interesting things to say about religion. I always enjoy her posts. I deconverted long ago realizing some serious things about Christianity did not add up. The brutal foundations of the religion is one reason I no longer consider myself a Christian. I do believe Jesus had many good teachings about love your neighbor and much more, but I separate the good from the bad. I do not believe there is a huge invisible man demanding blood sacrifices and appeasement anymore.  These teachings have brought brutality to our society, and violence on multi-layers.

 "Well, the NT portrays yahweh as a monster because jesus is a human sacrifice.

Human sacrifice is objectively evil.

Yahweh screwed up and created people who didn't know right from wrong. He expected them to obey him when they didn't know disobedience was wrong. He sat back and did nothing while their "big brother" tricked them into learning about right and wrong.

Then he had a hissy fit and made everyone forevermore after that pay the price.

What price? DEATH.

Which, by the way, he lied about. "If you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall surely die that very day." They did not, indeed, exactly as the serpent said, die that day. Or the next. Or the next, or the next, or the next.... for years yet to come.

That being said, why, precisely, do you think that the NT renders all of the slaughter, savagery, rape, and monstrous behavior of the yahweh and his people in the OT perfectly fine?

Because the perfect human sacrifice was needed, and absolutely anything whatsoever, however brutal, horrific, and savage was perfectly fine because it led to THE PERFECT HUMAN SACRIFICE??

Tell me, what do you think of the ritual of eating your demigod's flesh and drinking his blood as "communion"? Isn't that just a LITTLE on the sick side? What kind of god can't fix his screwup without a human sacrifice? How weak, pathetic, and stupid does he have to be?

Or sadistic? Which is it is? Sadistic, or weak? Under what circumstances is it acceptable for a thing of unlimited power to be incapable of fixing their own mistake of miscreation without HUMAN BLOOD SACRIFICE??

The very premise of the new testament is sickening. The fact that you think all of the old testament is FINE and even GOOD because it led to the ultimate human sacrifice makes me wonder if you've really, genuinely thought that through.

An entire race slaughtered en masse in a grotesque drowning... to pave the way for what? Ritual human sacrifice to a monster who thinks the scent of burning flesh is "a savory odor."

Now, I understand that you think it's BEAUTIFUL and all that, but... me? Not so much."

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