Episode 187 Transcript
SUMMARY:
Fat discrimination and ADHD diagnosis. 0:00
ADHD diagnosis and symptoms. 3:20
ADHD, weight inclusivity, and anti-fat bias in diversity training. 9:27
Fat bias in diversity and inclusion training. 14:55
Weight bias in the workplace, with examples of job applicants being rejected due to their weight. 19:44
Weight bias and its impact on women's financial well-being. 27:00
Weight-based discrimination in the workplace. 31:25
Body size discrimination in the workplace. 40:28
Anti-fat bias and its impact on society. 46:20
Read the transcript alongside the audio.
Vinny Welsby 0:00
You're listening to the Vickery podcast episode 187 D eyes big fat problem fat discrimination. I'm your host Vinny Welsby Bledsoe.
Hello, welcome to this episode of fish fatty podcasts so glad you're here. If you saw this episode come out and said never monthly episode from Vinay I'm excited and you haven't already consider donating on kofi KOF phi, which is kind of like Patreon and you can do as little as $5 a month or a one off donation. Because cofee is what pays for the podcast? And the more donations that we get on cofee the more podcast episodes that we can get out for you. So yeah, I'll put the link in the show notes. But it's COVID kayo. FYI. First party? Why the hell? They don't call it pronounce it. Car fee? When it's buy me a coffee. Honestly. You missed a mark with that. Maybe actually, maybe maybe it's because it's from a different country and in that country. Coffee is pronounced cofee? Maybe that's what it is. Maybe did I solve the problem? Is that what it is? Anyway? It seems it seems strange to me. Hey, some news. It is might be relevant for about 10% of you. Or maybe if you just want to know stuff about me? Or maybe not. Maybe you just want to know stuff about fat stuff. That's why you're here. In case you're interested me. Know Vinnie, shut up and start telling us about the fat stuff. I just got diagnosed with ADHD with autistic traits, and some exciting and it's combined type. What is it hyperactive and inattentive? Yeah, so fun. And you know, who helped me realize that I have ADHD. Asha from the fact doctor. Oh, my goodness, if you are having any health concerns, Asha does sessions virtually. And I cannot even tell you how wonderful it was to speak to a doctor about health stuff. And then be like, oh, yeah, well, that's because of this and not blame it on on your way. It was just honestly, so affirming. And I've been doing this stuff for years. Right? But to have that relationship experience with Asher, he was just so fucking good. So listen, if you've got any type of health thing, and you just want someone to be like, Listen, this is what's going on this is you know, decoding the anti fat bullshit. Then Asher is your guy. So anyway, Ashley was like, Oh, you have ADHD, right? Because I was just talking about, you know, stuff that I was thinking and doing. And I was like, Ha, no, I don't have ADHD, obviously. Because you know, what I thought about ADHD was that I don't have it, basically. Because I had said to Asher, I could never ever work in a quote, real job ever again. There's no way that I could do that. And also, I was talking about time stuff and how because I'm an I'm an excessively on time person. And as well as not ADHD, because I'm always on time. And I was thinking, Yeah, I'm so on time because I'm so stressed about not being on time that if I have an appointment the morning the next morning, all night, my sleep will be ruined, because I'll be thinking about the appointment and make sure that I'm getting there and then then I'll be early for the appointment and then you know, say is an appointment online, then I'm like, Okay, well, you know, I've got half an hour to the appointment. So I'll just look at some stuff online. And then next thing you know, it's like one minute to the appointment. I'm like, oh shit, like where did that time go? Like what I was early what back? Anyway, that's just the one thing that that actually was like, that was like ADHD. So in Canada, which is where I am, you can get on a waitlist and get an assessment for free by the government. Well, not the government but you know, a healthcare provider. but you can also do private and private is $300, which apparently, in the US people are flabbergasted by how cheap it is. Maybe you should be calling our Canadian doctors and getting an assessment done that way. Because apparently in other places in it, and in Australia, it costs like $5,000 or something, which is bonkers. Why? Why? Anyway, so the assessment in case you're interested, skip ahead a few minutes. If you're like, I don't care about ADHD stuff, stuff. The assessment basically met a psychologist, psychiatrist, one of the two, one that doesn't do prescriptions, but as a doctor. And I had a 90 minute conversation with her. Just asking me about my life, basically, my my childhood and the things, the things that I perceive as issues like, how do I perceive that ADHD might affect be affecting me? And the time from Asher saying, Hey, do you have ADHD, to me having this appointment was probably a couple of months, because I was just mulling it over being like, do it and then writing a list on my phone of the potential symptoms. And I just kept adding it and adding it. And the symptoms became about maybe 60 things long. So I was like, okay, the more I learned about ADHD, the more I was like, Oh, well, this is a symptom. This is a symptom. Anyway, so. So the doctor asked about, you know, sort of what are the things that I struggle with, and a big thing for me is struggling to do a full day's work because there's just no, it's just so hard for me to do that, because my brain is distracted. And as well, too. So that's a that's a huge thing, because it really limits my my ability to work and make money. And the other one is that I struggle with future planning. And so making plans, connecting with friends, and so my friends are the types of people who will be like, Vinny, let's hang on, I'd like to work. Yeah, I'd love to do that. It's really hard for me to, to, to reach out to people and say, let's, let's make a plan. And let's do this thing in two weeks, or whatever, because I'm living it just in the moment. I'm not living in the future in the past, I'm just thinking, What should I do now? So always, like weekends, I get to the weekend, I'm like, Oh, my made any plans. Boring. Unless a friend has forced plans upon me. And then like, so, anyway, I really want to get out of that. Because, you know, it's nice to have a friend who reaches out to you like me, that doesn't do that. And my friends know, right? And I'm not, it's not I'm saying I never reached out to friends, because I do. But it's a real, like, mental energy taking thing when it shouldn't be. Anyway, those are the symptoms. They're the big things that really caused me distress. And then I did some online tests. And it was kind of like play this puzzle and follow this dot around the screen. And some of the tests I scored really well on like 100%, and some of the dust Scott and Marie lajuan. Overall, my cognitive ability was something like 300 out of 800, which is the low side of normal, which has nothing to do with intelligence, it's more how is your brain working? And what is it good at what it's what what is it? Maybe not so good at and so the thing that I really struggled with was remembering strings of numbers. So they'll be like, remember this number 17294842 You know, like that. And then I'm like, 172 you know? So apparently 10% of adults have undiagnosed ADHD. And if apparently the psychologist also, who also specializes in gender affirmation, like writing reports, so people can get gender affirmation surgery. She said that 50% of people who are gender queer, also are neurodivergent, autistic, ADHD, whatever. And I was like, Ha, she said something like the similar thing that's happening in the brain with gender is something similar that's happening with neurodivergent neuro divergence. On one on one wow. So if you if you are a fellow, gender queer person, or if you're a human with a brain, or if you were a woman, it also way less diagnosed, and your adult to weigh less diagnose 85% of people who adults who have ADHD are not diagnosed. I happen to have some Adderall in my medicine cupboard because I was given it by a doctor 12 years ago. I have no idea why the psychologist is like, that's another sign that you're autistic. Because I couldn't remember. And so I've been trying taking a low dose of Adderall and you know, it feels like I can hear for the first time. It feels like I 75 milligrams, but it feels like and it's 12 years old so it's not this probably less potent. Maybe you can kill me who knows. But anyway, I ended yet.
You know, when you're underwater, and you can hear music, and you can still, you can hear still hear sound, but it's, it doesn't sound right. And imagine you lived your whole life underwater. And you're like, that's how sound sounds. It feels like I've taken my head out of out of the water. Now I can see and hear clearly. And it's not also muddled. And I didn't know that my head was metaphorically underwater. And it just feels like calm. It's almost like you don't know the way that you're feeling in your brain is not normal until you get a medicine. Medication that makes it different. And you're like, Shit, this is what quote, normal brains feel like, oh, heads. You're just walking around just just with a brain that clear? What? Yeah, weirdos. Yeah, so I have just got a blood test and check my heart today because because this stimulant medication ADHD stimulant medication, so you need to make sure that your heart is good, and everything else is good. So So then I'm gonna start next this time next week on proper medication. And then you kind of ramp it up. So yeah, next podcast. I'll tell you how I'm feeling. If it works, if it doesn't work, what's whatever, blah blah, blah, blah. bluh bluh bluh it makes me feel better. I know with my my at home experimentation. It's it's so far has helped. And I'm you know, I'm just taking me at random like one if I've got a busy day of this low dose of of Adderall anyway. Yeah. So if you're thinking like, I think I could be ADHD, just maybe just keep a list on your phone. And when you when you see some ADHD meme or something, and you're like, everyone does that, do they? Do they? Because I was thinking in a wolf. My do that. And I'm not I'm not neurodivergent. Yeah, that was clue that the clue that I was neurodivergent? Hey, did you know so that's the end of the ADHD stuff. By the way. ADHD is probably why I'm good at just talking to myself on a podcast, right? Who knows what amazing things I can do because of ADHD. So we're talking about Dei, big, fat problem, did you know that I have a consulting side of my business called weight inclusive consulting. Where I teach humans, businesses, companies, teams, about size inclusion. Now, if you didn't know now you do weight inclusive consulting. The URL for my website is weight bias training.com I'm changing that I just bought weight inclusive consulting. I'm like, Why did I not make the fucking URL? Weight inclusive consulting is my business. It's called weight inclusive consulting. I think I did research and weight bias training was like a top here on what people actually Google. So anyway, I'm gonna keep that that URL in the background. So anyway, weight inclusive consulting, I've not done it yet. So now I've told you, I'm gonna have to do it in the next week. And something that I see because I'm talking to di people I'm talking to so by the way, if you don't know what the EI is, is diversity, equity and inclusion. And the big companies will have a DI team and medium companies might have one di person smaller companies might bring in consultants and a lot of companies do nothing. But that there has been a big push in recent years after George Floyd's murder, to address the EEI whether it's, you know, really actually address it or just looked like they're addressing it. Who knows. But anyway, it's been a topic for for a number of years. And Di Di, consultants and education has been around since the 1960s. Anyway, the big issue that I see is that anti fat bias is never, not never almost never seen as something that's a priority for diversity training. So I did an experiment where I messaged hundreds of people on LinkedIn in dei world, and I said, and my message was just a quick question. Have you ever come across anti fat bias training or any training to do with size diversity? Guess how many people said that they had? And I also surveyed I did this on my Instagram stories, I 50,000 followers 5050 something. Guess how many people said yes and no below? Up until that point, actually the day after I had someone saying, Yes, I ran a I ran a, I ran a training. And I was like, amazing. And fortunately, they said, what they told me about the training, I was like, oh, there, they were in the straight size body. And I was like, No, that's fucked up, man. Because they were saying, Yeah, we talk about the extremes of body size, from really small to really extreme big. I was like, ah, that's not the right language. So 69% of people who I didn't, I did Instagram Stories said that they had had dei training, but zero said that they had had training on anti bias. And then I made a post about my findings. And, and wonderfully, we had some people in the community said that, yes, they have done trainings with anti fat bias, but it was limited. So I was like, well, that's great news. Where you want it to be out there, you know. And I think there's a couple of reasons about this is that one, because body size in most locations is not a protected class, you know, like how race and gender and sexual orientation etc, are protected classes. So the legally you're not allowed to discriminate against people. I mean, people just still do, obviously, and court still allow that to happen. Remember, like the people who were trying to get a wedding cake for their queer wedding, and they were denied service? And then the Supreme Court was like, Yeah, that's cool. That's not illegal. Because the people were religious, who were making the cake. Anyway. So what I think is, is, there's no laws. And so we're like, so I feel like company leaders or dei leaders on the whole, and obviously not everyone, like, well, we don't have to cover this. So we won't. The other side of it is that many people in dei are really anti fat. It pains me to say, you know, when someone isn't Ei, I think, Oh, I thought before I got into the EI, I thought people into EI would be super, super forward thinking and be on the cutting edge of all diversity things. And guess what? They're not. They're not. They're not. It's really I find it really disturbing. I find it really, really disturbing.
And a lot of queer folks have a ton of anti fat bias. I mean, I've been talking to a lot of dei people recently, and honestly, they've been the people who've said the most egregious things to me, honestly, like not, listen, when I say egregious, I mean, like, mildly, mildly offensive, but kind of stuff like that your your relative that you don't see very often what you would roll your eyes at that type of thing. Not like, Hey, you're fat loser, you know, not like that. But stuff that is surprising, surprising, because they're meant to be in that world, but they just haven't been exposed to it. Right? And we all have areas that we don't know about, right? Sometimes people no sane people might be talking to me being like, What the fuck, Vinny knows nothing about ABC. You know, I could be the doing the same thing about a different topic that I'm don't know that I don't know about right. Now, what we know about how fat people to treat at a work is it is not good. It's not good, right? Just so a kind of overview of how fat people are treated, just in case anyone's listening, listening and they're like, do I do I have a case that I can convince my manager to get this training from Vinay or someone else? Or, you know, in in get some training in our company? Here's like an overview of stuff. Here's some overview. Like I'm gonna read some some Thorens. Okay, so quote, the owner of a shoe store tells an employee that they they will be fired if they do not lose 35 pounds in six weeks. a retirement home seeking a nurse's aide rejects a qualified applicant solely because of their weight and appearance. According to Human Rights registration legislation across Canada such actions by employers are acceptable. This is despite The fact that objective the objective of human rights led to Shetland legislation is to ensure dignity and respect for all Canadians by protecting them from discrimination. In fact, the two scenarios listed above outline actual events that occurred in Canada. Carolyn Maddox had been a sales clerk at Vogue shoes in St. Catharines, Ontario for 17 years, when the owner of the store told her that she must lose weight, or have her employment terminated. Sandra Lynn Davidson was a nurse's aide who applied for an open position at a retirement home in Melville, Val Melville, Saskatchewan. Despite her being completely qualified and claiming to be an excellent health she was rejected from the position for the sole reason that she was fat. Here's a quote from an NPR piece called the weight bias against women in the workforce is real. That says, Pat, you think I eat too much? Ginni Rometty asked her boss, Pat O'Brien at IBM more than 30 years ago. O'Brien was talking to Rama tea about her weight, exhorting her to get in quite good physical shape if she wanted to become a high level executive. Rama T recounts she she'd been quote chubby as a girl, gaining and losing weight was a cycle she was all too familiar with. But it was the first time her appearance had come up as an obstacle to her career aspirations that we didn't stop her. Rama T went on to become the first female CEO of IBM in its 100 year history. She recounts this incident in her memoir, good power released last month. So this is a story from 2023. She actually gained weight after that, that conversation, so her weight didn't hinder her own career. But rahmati acknowledges that women are judged more harshly than men on appearance in the work place. And she laments it has that nothing has changed. Indeed, study after study over decades has shown that workplaces can impose an unfair weight penalty on women who were seen as fat. By the way, these things that I'm quoting from, I'm gonna put the links to everything in the show notes, but I'm editing it as I speak by removing the Oh words and not telling you reading out the shitty weight bias stuff that's in there because all of these all these fucking articles on Hey, by the way, weight bias is real and it sucks. All have so much fucking weight by so much anti fat, because you can be like, hey, this terrible thing happened. Dude, you know, there's no Oh, word epidemic and everyone's really fucking fat. Oh, we shouldn't be mean to the vase. Like now? Yeah. So it was interesting that it says Rama T says that her weight didn't hurt hinder her own career, but I wonder if it did, but because she still managed to become CEO. She's not perceiving the ways that it did because she got that coveted position. But is she paid less? Did it take her longer to become CEO? Did she have to prove herself even more? I would assume Yeah. Especially and she's a woman and I don't know what what race she is. And if she has other marginalized identities, gonna presume he's white? Because I mean, if it's a first woman CEO in IBM's history, there probably is probably it's gonna be a white woman. Right? Because they're not going to probably limit let's just Google it. Let's google it. Yeah, she's white. She didn't She's not fat. Well, she is she's not fucking fat for fuck sake. The slightly chubby whatever, blah blah blah. She's talking about it. Okay, let's look a picture from 1980. No, for fuck sake. Whatever. She's allowed to not be fat. No, the way that the way that the way that that's described makes it sound like she's she's fat right? Which she didn't actually say that. She said that she would be a chubby little girl. She didn't say that she was a chubby adult or whatever. Anyway, whatever. She's allowed to be thin. But yeah, she's what? So continuing on with that, that, that article, women apparent penalize while men are spared. Quote, heavier women tend to earn less. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said in a 2011 report which analyzed the results of multiple studies on the topic. These penalties have not only increased over the past few decades, but continue to increase as women age. However, men don't seem to face with similar weight bias. Some studies have found even found that white males seen as small fat actually earn more. However, The wage penalty for women who were seen as small fat was consistent was consistent in each study, economist David Limpert, who worked for the US government for over a decade found in his analysis, that an increase of 10% in a woman's woman's body mass, decreased her income by 6%. So 10 plus an increase of 10% and a woman's BMI, decrease the income by 6%. This wage cut comes on top of the fact that women already earn 20% less on average than men in the US. So when you add the penalty for being a woman, plus the penalty for being fat, for instance, that net penalty is quite large. There's an emperor who worked for the Bureau of Labor Statistics when he did the analysis. Yeah, and as well, what they're missing here is what I just mentioned, is if they are also marginalized, in other words, in other ways, so if they're a woman, what if they're racialized? What if they're disabled? What if they're neurodivergent? What if they're trans, you know, what if they're, etc, etc. And so it's all like layering on top, the weight is just the one thing. And interesting how the men thing. I don't think that it says men are spared that's not accurate from what I've seen, is that men who are smaller fat are more likely to get into CEO positions and women who are smaller fat. But I don't think that saying them being spared is accurate because they are still harmed, but maybe less so. Continuing the bias towards people seen as fat has worsened over times, at Harvard University's a Harvard University study analyzed data from over 4 million tests of attitudes between 2007 and 2016. By the way, there's an Harvard i a t test. So just Google Harvard, I 80. And wait, and you will see you're able to take a test for free to see your bias your weight bias. I have weight bias towards fat people. That's what it turned out of like, even like, Oh, I love the face. Oh, I love them. Anyway. So if you're curious, then you can go and have a little look and get your friends to do it or whatever. And they'd be like, Oh, God, oh, maybe you'd be happily surprised. So anyway, the analysis found that while biased towards sexual orientation, race and skin tone decreased in that period, the period was from oh seven to 16 2016. weight bias increased by 40%, particularly in the early years of the study.
It's very disturbing that weight bias is increasing as the number of people who are experiencing it are also increasing. And that's where they went into, oh my God, there's so many fat people. As women age, the effect of weight on their wealth gets worse and the NIH published a report that found that the financial net worth of of fat people aged 1651 to 61 was 40%. lower than that of straight size peers, the same cohort of Women's Network fell even more to 60% of their counterparts. When they were 57 to 67 years of age. No such pattern could be found for men the report found that women started work with low wages throughout their careers received less frequent rate raises and and promotions leading to an impact big impact in the cumulative wages as the age research also found that women climb higher in the ranks that as women climb higher in the ranks, it can get worse. In fact, female executives in the top echelons can see as much as a 16% wage penalty then fun time that thick so a kind of quick roundup of of the kind of steps I'm going to this is an Instagram posts I'm going to share so you don't need to worry about you don't need to worry about making it or whatever because remembering it because I'm I'm going to this there's gonna be it's gonna be on Instagram. Overall participants of a of a study reported negative implicit and explicit attitudes attitudes towards fatness and I believe that fatness is controllable. So the study in this study that we're talking about, the study findings contribute to the evidence that fat people are discriminated against in the hiring process and support calls for policy development. The next study or or Lincom, the grim reality of being a female job seeker. There's a website called Fairy God boss. So it's not a study. It's just data from this web. So I asked 500 hiring professionals to view images of women and describe their first professional appearance. These women had distinctly different hairstyles outfits tone, skin tones, facial expressions and body types. 20% of the hiring professionals chose to describe the photo of the heaviest looking woman as quote, lazy, while this adjective was selected less frequently for every other woman pictured. Additionally, 21% described her as unprofessional and only 18% said that she had leadership potential. Only 15.6% of respondents said that they were considered hiring her. They have the pitch, they have a picture. I don't know if it's the picture that they showed. It's of a white woman who looks like a small fat person wearing a gray suit, with slicked back dark hair with a white shirt looks clean, tidy professional is smiling. Yeah, so it's a smaller fat person. So I wonder if they had pictures of larger fat people? What would happen and what if there are other variables as well, including race, ethnicity, etc, etc. Okay, the next study says, fact people are paid between 9020 $2,000 less a year than smaller counterparts. This is from 2010 study. Let's take a quote from it. What may be more surprising is the degree to which employers also seem to have internalized the notion that employees weight matters. Rowling's comprehensive comprehensive review suggests that fat individuals are rated as being less desirable as subordinates, co workers and bosses and they are viewed as less conscience conscience conscientious, less agreeable, less emotionally stable and less extroverted than the straight size counterparts. Even though the stereotypes are inaccurate, it appears that in the United States fat employees are viewed by their employers as lazy and lacking in self discipline. Rowling's review also revealed that fat women are consistently judged more harshly in the workplace than fat men. Griffin reported that 60% of fat women and 40% of fat men describe themselves as having been discriminated against in the course of employment. Next study says if a woman was a stone heavier stoners 14 pounds, that's a British measurement. It was a stone heavier for no other reason than her genetics, this would lead to having her her having an income of 2940 pounds less. Let's see what that is three kg. Great British barons to US dollars. 3700. So, if a woman was 14 pounds heavier for no other reason than her genetics, this will lead to her having an income of what do we say $3,700 US dollars less per year than a comparable woman of the same height who was 14 pounds lighter. Fine, and that is from a study of 119,000 men and women have British ancestry. What the fuck that means British ancestry? Does that mean that they're white? Is that a way of saying that white, white, this see how plugin bias is baked into studies? Anyway, the 100 and 119,000 men and women no mention of gender queer people between the ages of 37 and 73. Fun. According to research, over 40% of people with high body weight report they have experienced weight bias from employers and supervisors. Next study, hire white folks are less likely to be promoted be company CEOs and then be in client facing position. Now, we do have laws we do have laws. There's a organization called fat the legal is called flare flare project. You can go find it, if you need help because you've been discriminated against at work at work because of your size contact them. But we do have laws. And we have laws in the US. We don't have anything in Canada. The in the US we've got laws in Binghamton, New York, Madison, Wisconsin, Michigan sate state, New York City, New York, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Urbana, Illinois, Washington, DC and then we have legal cases or legal precedent from state of California and state of Washington and so those legal precedent legal cases would be that there's no official law but they someone has won a discrimination case based on weight probably under disability protections, because that's one way around it is to say that wait is disabling for you. And therefore, you're not allowed to be legally allowed to be fired or discriminated against or whatever because of that, which is a disgrace gray area, right? Because a lot of times, folks are not disabled, or disabled by their body. So organization organizations need to get on board because even though it's not everywhere it's come if common, it's coming. Many people are support, getting protections for people for their body size and shape. And that also includes height. It's, it's a popular policy that people want to, to adopt. And some of these things like this. I think the first one was in Michigan State in 1974. And then I think San Fran was from 1991. So some of these are not new. Right. And of course, New York, happened in the end of 2023. And that was a big thing. And that was supported by by DOE. And flare, which I just mentioned, and of course Nafa, which you should go and support Nafa which is a fat legal rights organization. We also have Asda as well. Okay. So I asked people, I asked people their experiences, right, so this is all you know, studies and bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla, but I wanted to hear some things from humans. And I asked you, I asked you to, first, your experience has been fat in the workplace. And also I asked you, do you think the there's a hope that you would get be able to get fat liberation to EI Training? Let's answer that one. First. People were like, Fuck no. Someone said, in my offices, I'm in my office's dei committee, and frankly, I'm scared to bring it up. I feel Yeah, I feel Yeah. The next person said our dei director is entrenched in diet culture. It's never going to be part of the plan.
I wish but I don't think it'll ever be accepted as important in workplaces dei spaces. Again, so many people live in bigger bodies, right. So why that book is no one talking about this. So this is what I wrote in my article which is on my website, my weight bias training.com website. More reassuring How reassuring reassuringly, however, 20.8% of respondents speculated their company would be open to including anti fat bias in their DEI efforts. 25% said it would be a maybe but unfortunately, 51.4% said it would likely be a no. Okay, so people's experiences, the diet talk people literally saying fat people are disgusting. I've been waiting for a uniform that fits for over a year. The chairs are not made for fat people, but lunchroom tables and chairs are in a fixed position. My boss openly makes fat jokes. I have to swallow fat phobic comments reluctantly. It sucks. No support, but plenty of workplace weight loss initiatives. Someone else shared my bosses demanded after an addiction prevention talk that I bring a kind of certificate from my doctor saying I don't have a food addiction. This kind of talk is for addictions where your senses are impaired. So you can't take proper care of clients. They presumed I was addicted to food because I'm fat. Holy fucking shit. I have no words. I if that happened to me, I would be filled with rage. filled with rage. Can you imagine? Oh wow. Those people need some training. Next person says when the COVID testing centers opened here in Germany and staff were desperately needed. I wanted to help them and work there but I couldn't because they didn't provide protective overalls for fat people. They told me to wear a gown made of permeable fabric in which not all my body would have been protected while the straight size people got the overalls so I declined because I didn't want to risk my house. You just You just risky life. You just risk your life because we can't be bothered to order overalls that fit different body sizes. I wonder as well like think Like, you know, when people are doing X rays, they wear the lead overalls, and I'm wondering things like that of would they come in bigger sizes? No, I bet you don't. I bet you they don't. Yeah. And I wonder about other health and safety things. What about people who are working on construction sites, and they are in harnesses. I wonder if they ever are denied accessible safety equipment. PPE. There's a story that came out last year and I was trying to find the resolution to it. It was a flight attendant who was suing Spirit Airlines because she was fired. For not fitting in a four point harness seatbelt thing now that the story was sensationalized, what by right wing media who were like, this woman says that she was fired because she's fat, and she never more like, look at her. She's so she's so ignorant. You know, if you can't fit the seatbelt, then you can't be a flight attendant. But what the real story was, underneath the all of the bias that she was getting thrown was that she was training. And in the training course, she sat in this chair, and she fitted the four point harness so that you know, when that goes from your shoulders, and your waist, right, versus just over your lap, you fit and she passed the shoe. She was then on an air plane. And on the airplane. She didn't fit it. And apparently, they're not allowed to use seatbelt extenders. Why? I don't know, maybe it makes it less another point where something could fail. So it's less safe, maybe? Maybe, I don't know. Maybe they could and they just haven't. So she was escorted off the plane fun. Can you imagine Oh my god. And then she was put on, on leave. And then she was told you have three weeks to lose enough weight and fit in the harness. And so she tried three weeks later, she still couldn't fit in the harness. So she was fired. What her complaint was, was not size discrimination, but racial discrimination because she's she's black, another flight attendant who was White had the same issue, but was given longer to lose weight in order to fit into the, the harness. And so that's the basis of this. This lawsuit against Spirit Airlines, the media didn't come didn't report it. They didn't you know, the right wing stuff. They were just like, look at her. She's so fucking greedy. The comments, don't even don't don't look, don't don't google and don't don't go do it. But that's a real, that's a real issue there. But, you know, it made me think about well, she doesn't have because it depends where she was in the US. She was from the US, I think Spirit Airlines as a US company, right? She doesn't have probably legal protections for body size. And as well, companies would say, Well, it's a safety issue. And so we need someone to do the job, who has a certain body size. And in some cases that might be legitimate, you know, if there are there if there someone can't do a job because of how their body operates. And it's a core feature of the job, then that makes sense. So this is where people this is where right when people get their knickers in a twist is they think that when fat people what fat people want is for companies to be forced to hire someone who is not able physically to do the job. And that's not what fat folks are looking for. Now, when we say I'm not able to do the job, I think there's a lot of instances where that person would be able to do the job like for example, this flight attendant is it a legitimate safety thing that they can't use a seatbelt extender? then fair enough, but is it is it is it because you know a lot of this stuff is is based on anti fatness and other other type of bias right. And is it a core part of the job? You know, they you know, right wing people really just really just go to the extreme of like ridiculousness, you know, it's like someone who was Say for example, there's a disabled person, and the job was to, you know, do something that then they weren't physically capable of, you know, do backflips or something? I don't know, be a circus performer, I don't know. But even then, you know that there's other ways that they could do the job, right? You know, I'm just thinking, well, they can do this and that and whatever. But, you know, it's not it's, it's, that's not what's happening. Is that a fat person who's, who isn't able to do a certain job? You know, he's being like, well, you, you have to give me the job. Because if you don't, it's discrimination. It's when people are perfectly qualified to do the job or good at their job. And they're being discriminated against because of fatness and nothing else. Is is what it is. And so anyway, if you were having those feelings of like, sounds like maybe they should, they should have been fired or whatever, you know, want to take this stuff with a pinch of salt when we're hearing these these things from from media, even if it's not right wing, there's still mainstream media has a lot of bias towards many different people. And we have to kind of unpick it and be like, what's really happening here? Is this. Is this true there soon? Yeah. So what to do what to do, what to do what to do, with I feel really feel that we're stopped. we're way behind on understanding about fat bias compared to
other areas. And I'm not I don't agree with the, with the sentiment, when you know, when people say it's the last acceptable form of discrimination. That's not that's not accurate. There's not that is not accurate. It can feel like that if you are in left leaning spaces that and you're with people who are interested in social justice, that they would happily defend, you know, women's rights, but when it comes to making fun of Donald Trump, they immediately go and say, look at his he's fat, and he's got a small penis, which I mean, that's transphobia and anti fatness. So it can feel like, hang on in my spaces in my space. In my liberal, left leaning spaces. People don't make these types of jokes, but they will make these jokes and they will comment on people's weight and stuff. And absolutely, that's absolutely true. The left has a huge problem with anti fatness they also have still, you know, so much bias and other areas that we're probably not picking up on. But what we I think what people are referring to when they say it's a less acceptable form of discrimination, is that in moderate or right, right, leaning spaces, people in moderate spaces people people happily make in left leaving spaces, make those fat jokes. But anyway, so what I'm saying is, in right and moderate put in places, they're making fat jokes, they're making jokes about everyone they are they are excluding everyone, not just fat people. So I think that's where that saying comes from is we see in our spaces are more liberatory spaces that people are cool with anti fatness. But in the general population, anti fatness is not the last acceptable form of discrimination because they're our bigger thing for the best of my mind, man. They are. I mean, just right now, like all the anti trans bills that have been passed, right? That's just one example of how committed they are to discriminating against queer trans people. You know, the, they're not doing they're not creating anti fat bills, right? We're not seeing bills coming out saying fat people are not allowed to work in this community, whereas we're seeing bills coming out saying drag queens are not allowed to work in this community. Right. So we want to remember that anti fatness anti fat bias is a problem. However, it's not the only problem and it's not it doesn't trump all other types of oppression and it's all interconnected anyway. I mean, you know anti fatness is anti blackness is is ableism is classism is capitalism. It's all interconnected. So just kind of a little thing there of just in case you know, people are saying saying that, and like shit, I used to fucking say that too. I know maybe like 678 years ago, I remember putting a comment on Facebook and then someone said actually, it's not and I was like, oh shit, your eye. Your eye. Yeah, not to diminish, not to diminish how awful anti fatness is and how the how we're so behind. We don't have laws to protect US whereas other communities have laws to protect them, but those laws are, you know, been scraped back and people are, are breaking those laws anyway. So you know, we all need to be free, we all need to be free. So anyway, if you are a leader in a company and you might want to bring anti fat bias training to your workplace, I can do that I like doing fun, energetic non shaming type training is my is my thing. And I mean shit in a in a few weeks, I'm going to be doing a training that's just 15 minutes long. So great idea, as concept as Call Center has its struggle for to get people off the phones, right? Because that's kind of a pressurized, you know, you need to be on the phone, and every minute is accounted for type thing. Anyway, so they have a 15 minutes for learning every week, which I think is great. And, yes, I'm doing a 15 minutes on anti fatness. And so that'd be fun. It'd be fun. So anyway, I can do do do something short or something more in depth. Also training dei teams, and actually actually, that reminds me, shit, I can't believe almost forgot about this, I have a new training coming up, which is a training just from me. Just for me, it's from me. Dismantling anti fat bias in the workplace, a training for leaders and dei professionals. So this is for people who probably know stuff about diversity, you know a lot about diversity, equity and inclusion but wants to be like, really knowledgeable about the anti fat bias side of things. It's on the 12th of June. That's 12pm, PST, 3pm PST, it's two hour training. It's like a 90 minute training 30 minute q&a Replay available 97 us doll heads or two payments of 49. If you would like a 50% off price that contributes towards economic justice, just email me and I'll give you a code. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, shit. You can even send it if you've got a DI person that that your company, you can just send the link to them and be like, Oh, this looks good. Go do it. Go do it. Or if you want to come along, that's that's cool as well. Yeah. So I want to make it make it accessible. Because a lot of times these, these trainings can be really expensive for people. Yeah, so there you have it, I'll put the link for that in the show notes. Doing it. Now. I'm doing it now. I'm dominant now. And if you want to follow me on my go to my work, the weight inclusive consulting website, then I'll put the link for that in the show notes as well. If you appreciate this fat content and would like to contribute towards the costs of making the podcast, go to Kofi K, oh, dash f i. Fierce fatty. The link will be in the show notes, and links to links to all the studies I've mentioned today. Like I said, like, here's another study, here's another study. But I'm going to link to all of those studies as well so that you have that. And those articles that I read from two heads up, there's loads of anti fatness and all of the stuff all of the studies, they all use our words, they all are on the kind of like, I don't mean to be mean to fat people, but they are gross. You know, and they're on that train. So just a heads up on that, you know, you're not going to die if you look at them, but just a heads up that there is bias there. All right. So if you've got any questions about ADHD stuff, I'm not an expert because I just found out about this stuff. But if you're curious about so far the process or whatever you send me a DM on the Instagrams or whatever will send me an email. Oh, wearing contact lenses today for the first time in like 10 years. It's so weird if I was putting in when I was putting in the contact lenses I felt very silly because I was being a baby. I wasn't being baby I was just being a normal sensitive human and being like, oh my god close my eyes. It was very hard to get in took about 10 minutes away. So look at me with my magic eyeballs. Lasers can shoot from them now because I've got these contacts and I just wanted to wear contacts because the bridge of my nose can get saw from my glasses. I think it's from the style of glasses that I wear or something. But I can get like these not welts but pressure patches I'm sure you know if your glasses were on my nose and I want to give them a rest. So but if these Contact Lenses feel weird anyway whatever I'm gonna stop talking you don't even know about my contact lens life. Alright, thank you for hanging out with me today remember you're worthy you always were you always will be and stay fierce fatty above
Unknown Speaker 55:27
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