eightpersimmons's comments

This doesn't address what I think was one of the most interesting points in the article - weight gain is present even in lab animals with strictly monitored diets.

The implication being, of course, that this isn't the whole story, and we are doing ourselves a disservice by chalking up everything to diet.

(I don't mean to say you are wrong about this fact by any means - I'm not any kind of expert, and you sound very convincing.)

This is one of the most frustrating things about how we, as a society, talk about obesity - we act like you can know something meaningful about a person's lifestyle and health from a single glance. Not to mention the related assumption that a thin body is inherently desirable and worth striving for.

A measurement like BMI, which is a great way of looking at a population, is a terrible way of understanding an individual, and the use of weight and BMI as a stand-in for health is infuriatingly wrongheaded.

The fact that people act out larger, structural systems of misogyny doesn't exonerate them. A person still has agency, and to say that they are acting out something that is part of a larger discourse doesn't mean that they are helpless puppets. Another thing to realize when talking about misogyny and structural injustice is that it isn't blaming any given individual - that's what makes it structural. It isn't a cabal of evil men with a maniacal plan forcing women down or a statement that all men are bad and oppressive, it's a deeply rooted system of oppression that lots of people propagate, knowingly or not, through stereotypes, legal injustice, inactivity, social policing, et cetera.

And I think you are too quick to write off people's actions as evolutionarily programmed - it's a somewhat ironic response, given your first complaint. Whether or not there is a biological instinct to compete sexually, the expression of that instinct is a product of social norms. Arguments for evolutionary psychology have a troublesome and pretty untenable tendency to ascribe a complex, culturally-specific, and socially enforced behavior to some magical mystery determinism gene. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine.

I'm honestly not sure what seems ridiculous to you. In these instances, the female bullies are acting out misogynistic discourses. Can you clarify what your sticking point is?

Absolutely - women sometimes internalize and participate in misogynistic and cruel behavior, and it can be hard to talk about.

I've seen this happen with the "fake geek girl" phenomenon - some women who feel that they are legitimate parts of the community participate in this kind of destructive policing because they've bought into the cultural misogyny and are often rewarded and have their status reinforced in their community.

On a much more damaging level, this happens with slut-shaming and sexual policing. One of the major factors in the recent suicides of teen rape victims was the rejection and shaming by their female peers.

Were this an article about how, for example, people's mothers /sisters/familiar relations favors them, that might be the case.

But it isn't.

And, in case this was a point of confusion, race != family.

What you are talking about is social darwinism, not simply natural selection, and I think there has been enough said on why it is problematic that I don't need to reiterate it here.

)

Sorry. Just a little neurotic. Carry on.

Lack of manners and as..ole men are enabled by a sexist environment. These are symptoms of an underlying problem. Women don't feel safe in these environments because of the behavior of a relatively small number of individuals, but these individuals are enabled by a system problem in which their behavior is rationalized and ignored as just s social faux pas.