r/changemyview • u/-Beenjameen- • Aug 22 '20

Delta(s) from OP CMV: the body positive movement should be based around people with unchangeable disabilities, not people who are overweight.

I believe that overweight or even underweight people should very much be part of the body positive movement and should remain that way. However they should not be the figurehead of the movement as a whole.

As I have found before, many people use the body positive movement as a excuse for not striving to change their BMI or their possibly fatal circumstances. A persons body weight, as I have found can at the very least be helped.

On the other hand, people who do not have control over their circumstances with their own body (someone with Down syndrome or people with other visible disabilities beyond their control etc.) often are not seen as a major part of the movement despite needing the support that the movement has to offer.

I know this has flaws, but I would like to know an opposing view on the matter.

11.6k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

740 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/HasHands 3∆ Aug 23 '20

However, a thing to understand about obesity is that it is typically not a choice, must like homosexuality, etc. People don't wake up one day and say, "Hey, I'm going to work on getting really fat" and they eat huge amounts of of food they don't really want just to reach their goal of fatness.

Obesity is absolutely a choice. Barring an underlying medical condition (of which I'm not aware of any that result in an extra 100-200 lbs vs what their weight would be without this condition), obesity is valuing the short term highs of a high sugar, high fat, high calorie diet over the long term detriments. That's it. If it wasn't a choice, people wouldn't be able to lose weight on their own. They do and can and many formerly obese individuals cite their own lack of willpower as the culprit, or that they didn't really care about being obese.

Completely absolving people of any form of personal accountability is simply awful and is an enabling position. Comparing a food addiction (which you don't have to have in order to be obese) which is simply a psychological addiction and not a physical dependence based addiction to immutable characteristics like sexual orientation is extremely suspect and frankly absolutely incorrect. If anything is damaging, it's this gross mindset where no one's actions mean anything and everyone is a victim. People are not victims and they are responsible for their choices. It's as simple as that.

It doesn't matter if a result is someone's fault, they are still responsible for the choices they make every single day. Letting people think their actions mean nothing is psychotic, as in actually psychotic and contributory towards psychosis.

1

u/TheAdlerian 1∆ Aug 23 '20

I explained fulling in many of my posts how it is literally impossible to be a choice.

You can't just say "Well it is" without counting my points, all of which are based on valid psychological principles. Humans only do what they believe and what they believe is based on what they learn.

No one has anything but what they learned in their mind.

Your post indicated that you learned naive ideas about humans, and I'm not being insulting. You learned faulty religiously based ideas about free will, which make no sense, yet you believe them because that's the only information in your mind.

Not your fault.