Connection between HAES/Fat Acceptance and supporting men in women's sport?

submitted by eddyelric from self.GenderCritical

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[–]MarkTwainiac 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I think age & health conditions need to be factored in to this discussion. My impression is that HAES activists skew young, & are usually people with normally functioning bodies apart from the health conditions they might have related to & perhaps caused by their weight. At the same time, I get the sense that those who scoff at "fat acceptance" also skew very young & are usually blessed to have no serious, chronic health problems or disabilities.

These two groups - young HAES activist & their opponents - do not seem reflective of the larger population.

The fact is, many women & men who were skinny, athletic & quite fit in our youth & midlife fit find it extremely difficult not to gain quite a bit of weight as we age into later life stages. And for many of us, the weight gain that comes with normal aging is added to & compounded because we've developed various serious diseases & disabilities.

[–]Shesstealthy 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

My experience of HAES has been primarily about women gaining confidence to exercise, eat well etc without shame for being overweight or in some cases underweight, not being as fast or looking as good in lycra. The goal is to remove a focus on locking slim and to replace with living well, with good food and exercise. Being fat and eating healthy foods and going to the gym is better than being fat and staying on the couch eating Doritos.

[–]OrneryStruggle 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

And the converse - treating women like they are automatically healthy because they are NOT fat - is a serious problem as well. When I started gaining weight due to multiple serious illnesses, I went to dozens of doctors to talk about what was happening to my body and without exception was told to stop worrying because I "look fine." The fact I threw up all food and even water and tea on the regular and gained 50% of my bodyweight in a couple months didn't matter to doctors because the metric we REALLY use for whether young women are "unhealthy" enough to need a health intervention is whether they look pleasing, not whether they are well. By the time I had become morbidly obese after years of begging doctors for tests, I was finally taken seriously and diagnosed - but haha too late, now I'm informed it is basically impossible to lose most of the weight back, and the damage to my joints, organs, etc. is already done.

Luckily I may be in the tiny minority of people who can lose and keep off weight, no thanks to the doctors who tortured me for years because I looked 'hot', but most women don't have the science credentials I do to leverage against their healthcare providers or trawl the scientific literature for solutions on their own.