Fat matters?

Fat people are not welcome in out society? Have a look of the attached article first (it's a Q&A about discrimination again fat people), do we discriminate specific type of person or relationship in the intimate world? We get homophobic, we also get virginity-worshipers.

People expect the ultimate direction of a couple is getting married and having offsprings, it helps the continuity of mankind. I think maybe enough people in our world already, do we need more?

Back to the discrimination, have you been in those situation before, maybe not involve any violence interaction, but the questions or 'look' make you uncomfortable already.

The subgroups like single, same sex couple, multiple-partnership, etc. Hope you get support from people around you, within or outside the group.

We don't have to live upon others standard. But we should be responsible to ourselves, sole, mind & body!

- Lilac

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Discrimination Against 'Fat' People: We're a Sizist Society
5/12/2010
Sarah Treleaven

Linda Bacon, author of Health at Every Size, says that fat people face discrimination in all areas of life - from squeezing into a seat on an airplane to buying new clothes off the rack. Here, Bacon explains why people discriminate against the fat and how we can start to change it.

Q: First of all, why is fat the preferred term, as opposed to overweight or obese?

A: If you think about the word overweight, it implies that you're over some weight that must be healthy for you. We know from the scientific research that there is no such thing, and there are plenty of people in that category who are living long, healthy lives. The term implies a bias that's not true. Similarly, if you think about the word obese, the etymology of the word implies that there's a large appetite involved. We know that's not true and we know that people who are in the obese category aren't eating any differently than people in the normal weight category. Furthermore, my larger complaint with both of those terms is that they pathologize having a certain body type, and that's not necessary or helpful. The reason the term fat is more commonly used is because it's a term that has been chosen by civil rights activists to define their own community. The idea behind using the term fat is to recognize that it's just a descriptive term and can be stripped of all of its pejorative connotations. People are trying to own the fact that they're fat and not letting it shame them or be used against them.

Q: In what ways are fat people most commonly discriminated against?A: The evidence is fairly overwhelming, and there is recent research that shows that discrimination against fat people is more prevalent than discrimination based on race or gender. They're noticing discrimination in many areas - whether or not people are hired for jobs, how much room there is for advancement, salary, college acceptance, the availability and price of fashion, attitudes in the service industry and airline seats. When you start to look at all of this, you see that it's tough to live as a fat person; there are so many judgments.

Q: It seems like people are less concerned about being perceived to discriminate against fat people. The word "racist" carries so much weight; "sizist," not so much.

A: There's a lot of cultural support for fat oppression. One reason is that we have different views of what causes fat. You can't change your race, but many people believe that weight is something that is personally controllable and that it's controllable through diet or exercise. People think that fat is about having bad personal habits and a lack of control. Also, people who are thin can get very self-righteous. Let's say you have someone who is struggling with their own weight but who manages to keep it in a place that's socially acceptable. They invest so much of their own time and energy into trying to stay thin that if size didn't matter, that would really deny all of the pain that they're going through in their life and would mean that all of the control they've exerted is meaningless.

Q: Does fat discrimination affect men and women differently?

A: It definitely does - and not just men and women, but also people of different social classes and races. We're still at an uncomfortable time historically where we judge women more on appearance and men more on performance. Women are much more vulnerable to fat discrimination.

Q: What impact does discrimination have on fat people?

A: It really weakens people's self-esteem when you hear the message so much that there's something wrong with you. You start to believe it and it's very painful. When you try to break out of it, there's a lot of resistance. You can't get your voice heard because no one trusts what you have to say. If a fat friend and I were to say the exact same thing about weight, for example that weight doesn't play as much of a role in our health as we've been led to believe, people would be far more likely to believe it from me than from my fatter friend. It gives people a sense of a lack of power that is really disillusioning.

Q: I've also read that pressure to conform to a specific body type can lead people into unsafe patterns of behaviour, like yo-yo dieting and other things that can have a very bad impact on someone's health overall.

A: Yes, definitely. First off, there are a lot of myths out there about how to get thin. Let's say they're getting some discrimination from their doctor who's telling them just to lose weight. They might try some of the methods that are suggested, like dieting, that aren't healthy and have no proven track record of success. They just contribute to people's personal sense of failure. We also know that there's a clear physiological root between stress and disease. I would expect that much of the association we see between poor health and high weight can actually be explained by the stress and discrimination people are receiving. If we could level the playing field and make it a more fair world, we would see much of the health risk associated with being overweight disappear.

Q: So what can we do to make the world an easier and more navigable place for people who are fat?

A: I'd like to work on several different levels. One, I would like to encourage people to enjoy and appreciate their own bodies. Two, people who are thinner and are given more privilege in the world have to learn how to respect that; we have to acknowledge that all of the advantages we've gotten - whether it's easier access to jobs or more success when we go shopping - aren't earned advantages and are often based on the fact that other people are discriminated against. When I'm given a forum to speak about fat acceptance, I think it's really important to point out that we should be giving fat people a forum to speak about their own lives. Three, we also have to make changes on an institutional level; it's not OK for insurance companies or airlines to charge fat people higher rates. We have to make it easier for people to be in the world in larger bodies.

Cohabitating couples need legal rights

What legal rights cohabitating couple need? I think they should be protected against domestic violence and their children receive same welfare like any other children with married parents, education and caring.

But for the cohabitating couple, do they need to be protected financially? I don't think so. When they choose the partner, they already have compromised their financial situation, if they feel insecure enough that he/she may need to share half of the wealth in the future when they divorce, and they still have an option to maintain the relationship in a cohabitation mode. However, when the legal protection will cover this area as well, he/she may only maintain the relationship into a more casual mode to prevent those trouble later. Also, it's relatively easy to prove a married couple than cohabitating couple. How many night per week they need to spend together? How about sleeping in different room? There will be more argument to define cihabitating relationship when someone wants to protect their own wealth.

I'm not against cohabitating couples, but only when the statistic is telling us that more people are in habitation instead of marriage, it means to me that people need options and marriage is only one of many ways. If the government makes habitation just like marriage, people will work out different way they find more comfortable.

Also, they are not forced into any relationship, neither habitation nor marriage. They should be more responsible to their decision.

Precaution steps are always recommended to all couples!

- Lilac

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Cohabitating couples need legal rights
Yvonne Roberts
by Yvonne Roberts

A new attempt to reform family law could finally win security for Britain's 2 million cohabiting couples – and their children

Here we go again. For 15 years, various organisations, lawyers, bishops and lords included, have tried to establish legal rights for cohabitees. On every occasion, the "don't put marriage in peril" band have unfairly won the day – making more children vulnerable to life on the breadline. On this occasion, Nicholas Wall, the head of the family law division, has said that unmarried partners should be given the right to each have an equitable share of assets and money should their relationship break down

Wall told the Times, "Women cohabitees, in particular, are severely disadvantaged by being unable to claim maintenance and having their property rights determined by the conventional laws of trusts." Wall said that, in one recent case, a house was bought by an unmarried couple jointly. "They had lived together for 10 years and had two children and the judge divided 90% to the man and 10% to the woman. We [in the court of appeal] reversed it and said it should be 50-50." The case is now going to the supreme court.

Resolution, an organisation of family lawyers, can point to any number of cases of women and men who have found themselves, after years of cohabiting, with no money and no roof over their heads and those of their children after a separation. Trust is fine when Cupid is still firing his arrows but once the end is in sight (or one half of the cohabiting couple dies), if the mortgage is in only one name, the other person could find themselves without a home or a share of a pension and assets.

Britain has more than 2 million cohabiting couples. Common-law marriage was abolished in the 1750s but according to a British social attitudes survey, many believe it is alive and well. 2% of people cohabited in the 1960s, now, at least 70% of us cohabit before or without marriage. Cohabitation is associated with higher levels of fragmentation. While 27% of couples split before their child is five, that compares with 9% of those who are married. But if critics of cohabitation rights really want to boost marriage the best path is one of redistribution; boost everyone's income substantially and improve education considerably.

People who marry, according to research collated by the charity, One Plus One, tend to be wealthier, have better education and may have a faith. Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher's book, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier and Better-Off Financially, uses studies to prove exactly what they proclaim in the title. What the two don't tackle nearly so well is the chicken-and-egg dilemma. Namely, does marriage make people happier and healthier – or is it the happy, healthy people who tend to get married?

If the answer is the latter, cohabitation rights aren't going to make much different to the state of our nuptials. Many who cohabit say they don't marry because they lack prospects and the money for a proper wedding and house, or the man doesn't have a wage. Others cohabit because one partner won't commit to marriage. Some drift into cohabiting. So, say a girlfriend is chucked out of her flat, and temporarily moves in with her boyfriend, pays half the mortgage, that interim arrangement stretches into a couple of years. The relationship breaks up, should she then be eligible for half his assets, even if there are no children? (Hopefully, such a couple would be able to come to their own arrangement, but heartbreak can be a vengeful business.)

Earlier attempts to improve cohabitation rights (and the rights of dependents living together, for instance, two sisters) suggested a minimum of two or five years' cohabitation and children having been born to the partnership before a fair division of assets takes place. It's difficult. What if a woman has a child within 18 months of cohabiting? And what too of the right to dissent? Some people cohabit precisely because they want a relationship in which the state and the law play no part. That may not seem like the stuff of romance, but aren't these couples entitled to their own particular kind of happy-ever-after too?

What if your wife .... more than you?

Do you have some ideas about what's the role of husband and wife in the relation and the family?
Husband: bread winner?
Wife: care-er?

As a husband, will you help your wife being a successful business woman by taking care of the family, so that she has more time on her work?

As a wife, will you help your husband being a successful family man by earning more money for the family, so that he has more time to cook, decorate home and take care of baby?

Sometimes, it's hard for us to imagine a very reversed situation, but we can think about how flexible we are. And usually, we also find the quality of the relation would allow us to become more flexible in the gender role.

- Lilac