I Am Not A Disease

I woke up this morning to learn I have a disease. Or, rather, that I AM a disease.

No, I did not receive a phone call from a doctor with some upsetting test results. I am exactly the same as I was yesterday, except the American Medical Association has decided to classify the body I have been living in for 29 years as diseased. Why? Simply because I am fat.

"Obesity" (which I put in quotes because, since it's calculated using the outdated BMI system, I consider it to be an abstract, arbitrary, and fake classification), they say, should be called a disease so we can have better "treatment options." In case you weren't aware, "treatment options" means "weight loss." Or "ew, fatty, stop being so fat."

Except, you know, the diet industry literally makes billions of dollars every year. The medical establishment already treats fat people horribly, many doctors are downright abusive and act like we are non-compliant, insolent children if we stick up for ourselves. They ignore the fact that practically no one keeps weight off (there's a 95 percent long-term failure rate), even after resorting to extremes like surgery.

Let's take this headline, from Forbes, into account:

That says it all to me. This is a way for drug companies to claim legitimacy as they waste time and resources to develop more diet pills that ultimately will have no more long term "success" (if you consider thinness a success) than anything already out there. They will divert scientists and efforts from researching things that actually plague us, like cancer, AIDS, and other diseases, or actual nutritional woes like world hunger.

On Twitter, there is a hashtag gaining some speed: #IAmNotADisease. It really shouldn't be necessary to start a social media campaign to point out that fat people are human beings, not walking illnesses, and that we deserve to be treated as such. But there are a few great tweets being sent:

The medical establishment needs to stop pathologizing body types and start promoting health at every size and basic human dignity. Let's focus on actual diseases instead of creating new ones where none exist.

Facebook's Sex Trafficking Problem: A Follow-Up

So, the Sonagachi Facebook page has finally been removed. This is a good thing, and I'm proud to be part of the group of people who worked to have it done.

But I'm also incredibly disappointed in Facebook. Why did it take this much work to remove a page that was blatantly graphic and in promotion of human trafficking? Why was this example of violence against women not immediately recognized as a violation of their terms of service?

In light of WAM's successful campaign to get Facebook to agree to give gender-based hate speech the same treatment as homophobic, anti-Semitic, racist, Islamophobic, etc, hate speech, it seems especially appalling that it took as much effort as it did to have this removed.

Here is a brief overview of the process of reporting this page:

June 4
-My friend Liz discovered the page while doing research into the Sonagachi district for a blog post she is writing.
-She shared the page with a Facebook group that we are both members of, asking anyone who could stomach looking at the page to please report it.
-Many of us reported it as sexually graphic content.
-After a short period of time, those of us who reported it began receiving the emails saying it would not be removed (I included the language in my post last night). Many of us filled out the feedback form with some strongly-worded disagreement.
-Some of us reported it a second time, only to receive the same email, and fill out the feedback again.
-Liz wrote about the process on her own blog. Another friend, Slay Belle, wrote about it for the Powder Room section of Jezebel.
-We share these posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, sometimes tweeting at well-known feminist activists and groups who might also promote the issue.
-Emails were sent to WAM

June 5
-The Jezebel post was promoted to the first page of the site.
-More people tweeted at Nick Kristof, Anderson Cooper, and other individuals they thought might be interested in the story.
-Women's Media Center shared Liz's blog post
-Liz's post was also published on Persephone Magazine
-The Daily Dot picked up the story
-Another member of the same original Facebook group created a Change.org petition (which has been refocused to be a more general plea for the site to take trafficking pages more seriously)
-The Sonagachi fan page was removed

I repeat my question: why did it take almost a full day, dozens of reports, a social media barrage, and blog attention to get this page removed? Why was it not enough that it was full of graphic imagery and victimization of women, many of whom appear underage?

Why, despite their recent promises, does Facebook still not care about women?

Phone Calls, Anxiety, and Picking Your Battles

I hate the person who yells at waitstaff for a mistake the kitchen made. Or the person who yells at a cashier for upholding a storewide policy they didn't create. It's that whole "don't shoot the messenger" thing and it's incredibly rude and short-sighted.

It can be really hard not to immediately unload your frustrations on the person who is sending them your way; I get that. But it's not alright to do so.

This comes up because of something that happened (or, really, didn't happen) this week. I was running low on my prescription, and I called my doctor's office to get them to call a new set of refills into my pharmacy. I get really anxious when I make phone calls, and I have to psych myself up to do each one, so this wasn't easy. The first time I called was Wednesday, and I had two or three pills left, which I told the receptionist. My doctor wasn't in the office that day, but would be the next, so if she couldn't get someone else on staff to sign off, she'd call it in Thursday.

As of Friday morning the pharmacy had nothing. So I called back. Left a message. Waited a couple of hours, checked with my pharmacy and still, nope. So I called again. It was an answering service, who said maybe the doctor was just out to lunch, so I left another message. I took a shower, had lunch, read a little, and about two hours later I called again.

It was the answering service, who this time said maybe they had closed early for the holiday weekend. My frustrations bubbled up, and I came very close to unloading on this poor woman named Bambi who had answered the phone.

I started to, saying "yeah, well I've been trying to get this done since Wednesday." But I stopped myself, because there was no point in yelling at Bambi. She worked for an answering service; she has no control over what my doctor's office had been doing (or decidedly NOT doing) all week. So I just  said there was no point in leaving another message, thanked her, and hung up.

The merits of walking away (or hanging up) can be great. Beyond being concerned for others and general courtesy, when you yell at someone, you make them less likely to help you solve your problem. To use cliches, why burn a bridge or shoot a messenger when you don't have to? When something can't be fixed, excuse yourself, work on a new solution, and maybe just complain about it to your friends. That can go a long way.

By the way, my pharmacist was nice enough to give me four pills to get me through the next couple of days. The battle resumes Monday.