Obesity: A Protected Class?

People openly discriminate against obese people, I've seen it all my life and it is apparent in this thread. I've had people call me names since I was very young, I've had adults come up to me and tell me I'm disgusting, I've had people laugh at me openly but thankfully, I have been able to have a fairly successful career in which no one can say that they won't hire me due to my obesity. I've felt that being a woman (and maybe an obese woman) has kept me back a few times more than anything although they can't openly say that either.

It is a shame when people make assumptions about all obese people without knowing the lifelong struggle that many of us have had.

See- that isn't discrimination. It is abuse and people generally being douches. It is totally separate to discrimination. Don't confuse the two.

People openly discriminate against obese people, I've seen it all my life and it is apparent in this thread. I've had people call me names since I was very young, I've had adults come up to me and tell me I'm disgusting, I've had people laugh at me openly but thankfully, I have been able to have a fairly successful career in which no one can say that they won't hire me due to my obesity. I've felt that being a woman (and maybe an obese woman) has kept me back a few times more than anything although they can't openly say that either.

It is a shame when people make assumptions about all obese people without knowing the lifelong struggle that many of us have had.

See- that isn't discrimination. It is abuse and people generally being douches. It is totally separate to discrimination. Don't confuse the two.

When has someone faced persecution because of obesity? And I mean real persecution. When has an obese person been paid less for the same work than a non-obese person? When has an obese person been denied education because they are obese? When has someone been lynched or legally defined as 2/3 of a person because they are obese?

Historically, being "mean" to someone should not be not grounds for protected status. Someone's whole living, inalienable rights to life, liberty and happiness should have been violated historically in order to warrant protection. "I'm fat and i can't fit in this seat" is not the same as "you're a woman, so you can't vote", you're black so we're going to lynch you, you're gay, so you can't marry."

If we do allow obesity to become a protected class, we trivialize the true struggle other groups have gone through just to be viewed as an equal human being.

I agree with you. By making it a protected class, you're giving up and saying it's not their fault, when in most cases it *is* their fault. I'm not saying it's easy to change, but it's possible. Hell, it wasn't easy for me to get up at 6am this morning and workout, or to say no to all the crap food that comes my way, but I do it. And as a result, I'm getting in better shape, I'm stronger, and I feel much better. I think making this a protective class is a mistake, because in most cases, obesity is a symptom, not a condition. (ie, symptom of eating like crap and not exercises, or even a symptom of a thyroid problem. In either case, it's the result of something else; it's not itself a root condition.)

No apology, UsedToBeHusky? You did kind of imply I'm too lazy to use Google, twice.

Reading carefully enough to notice the difference between an amendment to an Act, and completely separate legislation that follows the example of said Act in a highly selective, weak-sauce way, is not lazy.

I've always struggled with my weight, but a debilitating 2+ year illness had me housebound and isolated and able to do little more than lay in bed or sit on the couch. I couldn't stand up for long, so I made fast meals and quick snacks and rushed through the grocery store when I got up the strength to go, and admittedly did not make healthy decisions about food. I lost my job and my illness isolated me from friends and family and I became severely depressed. Not sad. Clinically depressed (and it wasn't my first experience with that either). I was so anemic from constant blood loss, I barely had the energy to heat up my food.

You know what isolated me even further? The fact that when I did go out people treated me with no respect. They made assumptions about me because I was fat. They assumed I was just lazy when the fact is, I was sick.

When I started getting better, I knew I had to take action, so I started walking at my local park. It was torture. Not just because my back hurt and I was out of breath, but because of the way people looked at me. Some even made negative comments right to my face.

Now, I'm eating right and getting outside for walks almost every day and am down almost 30 pounds. But ya know what? I'm still fat. And I'm still gonna be fat a few months from now. I've got 100 more pounds to go. I don't expect special treatment because I'm fat, but it sure would be nice to think that I won't get passed over for a job just because a long physical illness and bout of depression lead to significant weight gain.

To those of you who have always had your health and nutrition under control, good for you. Really. But you can't judge a person by the weight they carry, you have no idea what lead to it, and unless you see them regularly binging, you have no idea if maybe... they just lost 30 pounds and are working hard on the next 100.

No apology, UsedToBeHusky? You did kind of imply I'm too lazy to use Google, twice.

Reading carefully enough to notice the difference between an amendment to an Act, and completely separate legislation that follows the example of said Act in a highly selective, weak-sauce way, is not lazy.

Actually, I did attempt to post something in response. Not an apology, but an admission. Something happened with my internet connection and I resolved to let the issue go.

I work for government. I have also worked in private sector. Discrimination against LGBT has always been a 'no-no' to the best of my knowledge. If the laws aren't firm enough, then I suggest that the LGBT community focus their efforts on that fight for equality.

I see. It was just frustrating because as far as I can tell, we didn't actually disagree about anything emotive. Only about what the law does and doesn't say, and we don't even have an underlying clash about what it should say. I mean if that can't stay as friendly as it would do face-to-face, what would happen in an abortion or death penalty debate round here?!

I didn't set out to derail the thread with the LGBT issue, I just think it's always worth pointing out when American discrimination law comes up, and the 'choice' issue invariably comes up with it, that if 'choice' were always a determining factor in what is included, then religion wouldn't be in there. I contrasted this with the fact that LGBT people are left out (largely because of some people's belief that it's a choice) to demonstrate how inconsistent the discrimination debate has been for decades and still is. Either the choice issue matters, or it doesn't. As I explained, my opinion is that it doesn't, hence that particular argument against protection for fat people does not wash with me. The subsequent derailment was unintentional.

There is one cause of fat gain that is never mentioned and it surprises me that it wouldn't be known about in a country with such a massive rate of it.

Psychiatric medications! I'm not hating, I take one with more stigma than most in fact and defend that medication to the hilt. My point is that a massive proportion of Americans take them, and everyone knows that weight gain is a hugely common side effect of the most common ones, antidepressants. Antidepressants are used for a huge range of mental illnesses and even a few physical ones in the US. How they cause fat gain is unproven, so we don't know whether it affects the storage of fat or the behaviour of the person taking them. But it's often very drastic and the numbers affected are very drastic.

Antidepressants aside, anti-PSYCHOTIC drugs and mood stabilisers are even worse for weight gain, they often make people go from thin to clinically obese in an alarming amount of time, and as around 1% of the population has schizophrenia, and many more on top of this have bipolar disorder, autism or another problem treated with these drugs, you end up with, I'm guessing, at least 4 in every 100 Americans on anti-psychotics or mood stabilisers, on top of the even larger percentage on antidepressants.

The big problem here is the stigma: people who say they have a medical reason for their fat problem are often dismissed on the basis that very few people are known to have a glandular or untreated thyroid disease. However, when was the last time you heard someone say "my fat gain started and won't shift ever since I started taking lithium"? People don't like to admit it because of the stigma, and that disguises the fact that many people who are large frankly have much bigger problems to deal with than their weight: they are being pleaded with by society to take their medication so they won't get forced into a mental hospital or hurt themselves or others, but when they DO take them, usually giving themselves a range of other horrible side effects as well, they get fat-shamed by ignorant people who say "most fat people just eat too much!"