Jordon's Amazing Tumblr Blog

Xkcd is more often than not completely relatable.

christinamused:

The boy, one of my first regulars for credit recovery, is the same now as I’ve ever known him. The adults at school speak reverently about the Corner He’s Turned and the Changed Man he’s becoming, but that must have been before I got there, because far as I know, he’s always been just what he is….

To Whom It may concern,

When my brother performed a google search on my name, he found an entry on tumblr which contained private information of mine made public without my permission, this is the article in question.


…

Can you see where this is going? I will add in some more points as I explain it, not proper essay etiquette I realise. Ok so a kid is born poor, he has behavioural problems and ins’t encouraged (it has been documented that children of low SES have behavioural problems much more commonly), so they don’t do well, if they are intelligent it isn’t taken advantage of and they end up poor, this is a cultural problem, and a viscous cycle. It is awful granted, but this child does not have the skills that would be granted to a child who, grew up in a middle class home, (who could be overweight, but relating to my example before, if they dress well and don’t speak with a nasally accent, I wouldn’t make these assumptions about them), the child from the middle class home would be more likely to engage in extra curricular activities ( like sport and therefore would be less likely to have weight problems), and to have been encouraged in school and developed skills that are useful in dealing with the world (such as a stronger work ethic, and better attitude towards the relationship toward work and reward), thus leading to better education, more wealth, and more useful and measurable intelligence. 

Now in discriminating in the fashion I have advocated, one selects for friends/employees/study project partners/mates who have over the period of their life accumulated these little advantages and are more generally useful/successful and make better friends/acquaintances/employees/study project partners/mates by selecting for traits that people outwardly show that indicate these things,this is the reason that QANTAS looks at people’s shoes in an interview, the sense to wearnice shoes to interviews is one of those traits. 

Another issue that was brought up by someone called DRST is the genetic factors involved in weight gain, which having read on the subject seems quite likely. Findings that weight gain is 70% inherited are interesting. If that’s the case I would concede that the point I made about fat being a choice in my original email is greatly weakened. I do however have a gripe with the studies in that they did not control for the participant’s muscle mass, they just starved and overfed the participants (who were chronically overweight and prisoners respectively, in an example study). My understanding is that muscle mass is quite related to calories consumed during exercise, and they did not see what happened when the overweight individuals became even more overweight (for obvious reasons, however this is rigour that would have been appreciated).

Having said that, it’s largely irrelevant that it’s genetic from the point of view of deciding whether or not to discriminate, what matters is the correlation with negative traits, such as poor health, low SES/intellect and not to be hateful, but large amounts of fat on anyone is unattractive,(I still am paranoid about gaining back the weight I had as a teenager), also negative traits that can be caused by being alienated as a result of weight problems and the resulting bullying, such as poor social skills, depression etc (alienation could also be caused by these undesirable traits which could in turn cause other problems that lead to obesity).

Weight is not the only grounds on which to Discriminate, the example of nasally accents and heavy metal band shirts also come to mind, and people do buck the trends obviously, but this is less likely than following the trend, that’s why its a trend. 

I will illustrate this, and this is just an example, and not a rigorous sample. In my high school year, there were three obese students, one of the boys went to a local bible college (He was taken in by pentacostal recruitment strategies that target kids who don’t fit in well), the other boy now attends a TAFE, which is a “tertiary” education institution that only gives 2 year diplomas (he is not studying a 2 year diploma, he is studying a certificate in something), the girl does not attend university (information gained in talking to one of her friends) I do not know what she does, possibly TAFE or possibly nothing. There was one other obese girl who would have gone to the same school in the same year group, but she dropped out in grade 8, she had 3 kids by the time she was 19, she lives across the road from my family home in government supported accommodation.

The two boys, were the only members of the group of friends I went to school with who did not end up going to a proper accredited university. The one who went to bible college could have gone, however he was just waylaid by his need to be wanted and so chose to go to bible college and shut himself off from the rest of the world.

@ margitte I have stated my arguments, and backed them up with some evidence, obviously not conclusive evidence, but evidence appropriate to the arena in which the debate is held. You have not even attempted to support your claims except by consensus of the ignorant which is, I might add, logically fallacious. I originally intended to have a private discussion with you, you took it to a public arena (and violated privacy laws by revealing my email address) where you would be surrounded by like minded supporters and I would not. You failed to properly address my arguments, although to an extent I have been properly received for debate (although most if not all of them were arguing ad hominem/offensive)  by readers of your blog.

I won’t reply again, it is clearly a waste of my time, you don’t seem to be listening to what I am saying let alone addressing it, didn’t you ever take that class on intellectual honesty? I am sure you are quite an intelligent woman, but in this particular instance you didn’t use it well.

PS: Many people seem to be unclear on what constitutes a social science, Linguistics is a science, and it is about human behaviour ergo social science, psychology and sociology are social sciences as well, anthropology is not, as it is not a science.

PPS: It is Christmas afternoon is Australia, and I am sick of writing (and overdue for some exercise) so if there are mis-articulations or mistakes try to bear with me.

bigandelicious:

red3blog:

riotsnotdiets:

I just received the following email. I don’t have the emotional energy or brain power (probably because I’m lazy and stupid, as all fat people generally are) to answer this person at the moment, but I’m hoping that some of you do. I highly…

(via holagordita)

drst:

riotsnotdiets:

I just received the following email. I don’t have the emotional energy or brain power (probably because I’m lazy and stupid, as all fat people generally are) to answer this person at the moment, but I’m hoping that some of you do. I highly suggest you contact them via email.

From: Jordan Morrissey, jordon.morrissey@uon.edu.au

Dear Jordon,

Hi. A friend of mine who is involved in Fat Acceptance forwarded me your email and suggested I might be able to address your concerns, given that I am an Assistant Professor of communications here at a university in the US. Hopefully I can speak your “student of the social sciences” language!

“Firstly I find it difficult to see how discriminating against obesity is unfair discrimination (such as discrimination based on homosexuality or gender), as it is a persons life choices that lead to their obesity. How is it different from discriminating against drug addicts or alcoholics?”

Discrimination is never legally or morally justified, Jordon. That’s why it’s called “discrimination.” Please take an ethics class before you graduate or you will end up on the wrong end of a lawsuit and cost your employer a lot of money.

Weight is 70%-80% genetic, according to Dr. Albert Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Jeffrey Friedman of Rockefeller University. It is influenced by genetics to about roughly the same degree as height is. Discrimination against people for sexual orientation or gender is considered wrong because people are born with them, just as they are born with their bodies. It would be nonsense to discriminate against tall people because they had tall parents and grandparents who passed down those genes to their children. The same is true of any other aspect of body type.

Also, it is wrong to discriminate against people who suffer from drug and alcohol addictions. These are people with a psychological problem, as I’m sure you know, being a student of the social sciences and psychology being a social science. People who suffer from addiction should be given support and treatment, not treated as criminals.

“People can choose to exercise and eat well or they can choose not to and the consequences are theirs to bear, and one of those consequences is perhaps not undeserved discrimination.”

First, please look up the phrase “food deserts” as I’m sure Australia has them as much as the U.S. does. Not everyone can choose to eat well. Fresh produce and fruits are significantly more expensive here in the US than processed food, and also do not last as long. “Eating well” requires easy access to a grocery store, which is not always possible in urban and rural food deserts. Many people live where even if they had the money to purchase fresh food, they don’t have anywhere to go to buy it.

In addition, to “eat well” requires time and skill, as cooking food from scratch takes more time than pre-prepared meals, and requires knowing how to cook. People who have to work more than one job, or work extra hours, or travel significant distances to get to work including long waits on public transportation, often find they have little time, much less energy, for cooking from scratch when they get home.

Lastly, no, many people cannot choose to exercise. Millions of people suffer from physical impairments that keep them from being able to exercise. Others live in areas where there is no place to exercise - I live in a very rural area where even if I wanted to, there is no safe place to go for a walk because there are no sidewalks. People who live in urban areas also suffer from lack of access. And again, the working poor spend enormous hours working just to stay afloat. To try to justify shaming them for not coming home and doing a two-hour workout (somehow - apparently you expect them to be able to either afford a gym membership or expensive home equipment) when they’re probably tired and may have a spouse or children who need their time and attention is a flawed premise you need to re-examine.

“how do you go about affecting sympathy for your cause when such attitudes predispose people more to disdain and a lack of sympathy to overweight individuals?”

Convince prejudiced people to take their heads out of their pompous asses and look at the facts?

“One last thing, it seems from my encounters with overweight individuals and being an overweight child growing up (which is no longer the case) that weight problems correlate with things such as immaturity/emotional maturity and a lack of intelligence/low SES.”

Either you just told us you were stupid as a child or you implied every fat person on earth is stupid. You also implied it’s okay to make laws that discriminate against stupid people for being stupid. Please never become a teacher.

I really hope your methods classes are teaching you to set up your hypothesis on stronger grounds than your personal experiences. No professor anywhere should be accepting papers that offer no data to support the hypothesis.

Fat people are fat for a wide (heh) variety of reasons. We are fat because of genetics. We are fat because of illnesses. We are fat because of drugs we are on to treat other conditions like depression. There is no single cause for fatness across the entire human race. Therefore, logically, applying a single solution is clearly irrational.

“One last thing, do you think it is possible that your perception of these issues is biased?”

Jordon, you are basing your entire argumentative framework on your personal experience. You exhibit clear cases of confirmation bias - that’s seeking out only data that will uphold your conclusions and excluding data that may weaken it, if you haven’t taken that class yet - and you present no data, no facts, no references to back up your claims that all fat people overeat which is why they are fat and they are fat because they’re stupid. If you ever actually finish your degree, hopefully you’ll learn how to formulate a hypothesis based on data rather than conjecture.

However, I think you would be best served by dropping out of college and going to work at a gas station, since you can opine from behind the counter about people without having to be concerned with pesky things like facts and data and rational arguments and assure yourself that the stupid fat people are really fat because they’re stupid and so on.