I’ll preface by saying that I am a student of social sciences from Australia and I have some questions to ask. I have highlighted the questions from within the framework to aid in addressing them directly, as I find people often struggle to actually answer my questions in this type of communication.

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? 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.

Of course there are people who have disorders which make it impossible for them to maintain a healthy weight, and I would concede that some people at a healthy weight would be discriminated against if their weight was perceived to be unattractive.

This attitude of allocating responsibility to overweight individuals is, it seems, the predominant attitude held by individuals I have encountered, 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?





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. Now while this is probably not the case with all overweight individuals, it seems as though these could be causitive factors, and if that is the case, would that not justify some discrimination based on weight as an indicator of these problems?



I will make a note about low SES, I have observed that low SES populations tend to have a higher density of overweight individuals, and that these lower SES individuals who are overweight also seem more likely to remain in low SES situations, although this is largely conjecture on my part.

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



Jordon Morrissey

Margaritte