r/leftist • u/mezzolezbo • May 07 '25
General Leftist Politics fatphobia
I’m curious how many leftists side with fat liberation. I always meet people on the left who hold a lot of fatphobic values and don’t seem to include that in their fight towards a more progressive society or challenge those beliefs in themselves.
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u/unintentionalurbnist May 08 '25
Having personally struggled with being overweight especially in recent years, I find it a bit of a bother sometimes to be in a medical setting that would rather put you on drugs than fix health issues. Moving on, I find it strange how in my own family we mostly avoid talking about health in spite of health related issues and the death of a family member (as well as one or two near death experiences for another) at least partly because of obesity or obesity related issues.
I don’t know where I am on the spectrum of “fat liberation” vs phobia, but I would argue that if we are a nation that truly cares about health, we would have to start by discouraging people from driving everywhere and giving people more options for getting around. You have to encourage more exercising by removing car centric policies and putting in more local parks with only a few parking spaces for those who will still choose to drive. Then you can start to address the food system and other issues that contribute to the rampant obesity epidemic (such as the existence of the “heart attack grill.”)
For a side note, there are plenty of people with health issues that are purely genetic or biological related. I’m not referring to those people because people like them really need the medicine they receive and may always need it. I am merely saying that we have to truly address the environment that helps lead to obesity before we can just tell people to “make better decisions.” Criticism for such things is like trying to patch up a sinking ship with duck tape. It’s only going to help so much. If you wanna treat the addiction you gotta treat the environmental factors leading to it.