Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Next Discrimination Claim: Your Company Sponsored Wellness and Weight Loss Initiatives?

There is hardly any crowd I struggle to understand more than the subculture of delicate, wincing snowflakes on today's college campuses.  Whether it be microaggressions, safe rooms, trigger warnings, free speech zones or emotional support animals, today's colleges spawn the opposite of durable, rugged, individualism.  Instead, the most offended and and aggrieved are elevated to the most exalted protected class.  Against this backdrop, we have this from HeatStreet.  And no, this is not the Onion.  What is even scarier is that these folks are headed into your workplace. It is only a matter of time before a company is sued for this hateful, discriminatory behavior.

... In celebration of “International No Diet Day,” [the University of Minnesota's] school of public health ... invited Virgie Tovar, a self-proclaimed “fat activist,” to instruct America’s future nutritionists, dietitians and social workers on the finer points of “fat oppression.”
Tovar’s talk, entitled “Dispelling Myths: Fat, Fatphobia, and Challenging Social Stereotypes,” was designed to help students understand that “fat phobia” is rampant in a “white, heteronormative society” that is looking to actively oppress people with larger body types. Society’s bias against fat people is, apparently, a form of bigotry and discrimination, evident in everything from sexual preferences to the size of seats on public transportation. 
She even, reportedly, compared society’s anti-fat culture to so-called “rape culture,” and chastised society for its obsession with what she termed “thin privilege.” 
According to Tovar, the students, who study public health (at one of the top 10 schools for public health), shouldn’t push people they deem overweight to shed pounds, even if it’s better overall for health. “Weight loss is not a realistic goal for most people,” she said, declaring that exercise and diet are “social constructs.” She implored her audience to “lose hate, not weight” and rebel against “diet culture.” (Diets are, of course, just a tool of the hetero-normative Patriarchy.) ...
No surprise, Tovar, who lists her occupation as “fat activist,” has a Masters in Human Sexuality—with a focus on the “intersection of body size, race and gender”—and taught at the University of California, at Berkeley, where that is considered an actual academic field of study. ...
Full text: ‘Fat Activist’ Speaks at Public Health School, Denounces ‘Thin Privilege’ by Emily Zanotti at HeatStreet.