I never used or seen used ‘obese’ as a slur.
Fatty, yes. Absolutely, all the time. Obese, no.
If you’re ‘triggered’ by being called a fatty, stop being fat.
Comment on obesity
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 3 months agoBut neither is your skin colour expressed in Latin. It becomes a slur based on how and when it’s used.
I agree with feeling ‘obese’ is a neutral, objective term for the physical/medical fact. But then, coming from a non-Anerican context, I used to have no sense of the N word being so offensive, any more than any other random insulting (or even affectionate!) term.
In the wrong context, ‘obese’ can certainly be hurtful and inappropriate. I can imagine, for some people, it’s a trigger word of years of pain and mockery.
redisdead@lemmy.world 3 months ago
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 3 months ago
If you’re ‘triggered’ by being called a fatty, stop being fat.
Now that’s a bad take.
We shouldn’t mock people for things they struggle with, even if we think they could just stop.
redisdead@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Struggling with actual problems, sure.
Struggling with being unable to stop shoving burgers in your mouth is not an actual problem.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 3 months ago
And saying things like that is exactly why obese people have so much trouble having the confidence to start losing weight. And no, it is not as easy as you are suggesting. We live in an era of processed foods and food deserts where people are so overworked and often with such long commutes that they don’t have the energy or the time to cook a healthy meal when they get home.
Telling those people to stop shoving burgers in their mouth doesn’t help anything.
Also, and I can’t believe this is the second time I’ve had to say this to someone today- have you ever been insulted into making a lifestyle change? I sure haven’t.
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Shut up.
Etterra@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Look I’m a fat American and here at least nobody I’ve ever heard has used “obese” as a slur. You hear actual insults, “fatass” comes immediately to mind but there’s plenty of others; I’ve heard plenty of them personally. The OP in the pic is a fucking doctor according to her obscured user name and needs to be far more responsible. Obesity is party of a medical status - being called a land whale is an insult.
Further, the N-word has centuries of racist cultural weight behind it. The word “obese” is far more recent and isn’t used as part of the systematic oppression of an entire ethnic to group - one that makes up an enormous amount of American population.
This isn’t even apples and oranges. This is cantaloupes and blueberries. Not watermelons though, that has racist baggage too.
LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 3 months ago
She’s off her rocker to compare the two, but I do want to say people are policing medical terms as being offense, so maybe she was trying to express (very poorly) that obese should be considered offensive like using the terms retarded, idiot, or what not that started as a medical diagnosis/meaning, and now can be viewed as hurtful. I don’t agree with it because the reasonsaying the term retard is insulting is because the person you are calling it isn’t actually fitting the medical diagnosis, and therefore using a medical term to put other people down. (Doubt it is used by doctors today, they likely have found different ways of expressing a person’s mental growth in terms of comparing to average growth, growth within science and all that). So if we were calling people who were not obese obese to put them down, maybe it would start to make sense, but it hasn’t occured around me much. That said, I have seen jokes made around belimic people calling themself a fat ass for eating say a slice of pizza, but even most movies have moved away from joking about such anymore.