Answering questions: Downsides of volunteerism

I put some time into recent responses on Quora and figured I'd share them here, too, since I clearly need to work on writing more consistently.

What are the three disadvantages of volunteerism?

There are not three specific disadvantages to volunteerism but several issues that one must consider before committing their time and effort to an organization or cause.

First of all, not everyone can afford the time to volunteer since it is unpaid work.

Even if one has the time, their organization of choice may not have volunteer opportunities at a time or place that one can commit to. Many opportunities conflict with work schedules or require volunteers to drive long distances.

Not all organizations can accommodate would-be volunteers who have disabilities or injuries that limit the type of service they can provide. I, unfortunately, had to end my time with one organization because running injuries hampered my ability to participate in the capacity volunteers needed to.

Many volunteer positions require significant physical demands of their volunteers and have injury risks even for fit people. These positions can include building and demolishing structures of varying strength.

• Organizations may provide insufficient tools or tools in poor repair, making the work even more challenging.
• They may require volunteers to provide their own tools and safety equipment such as gloves and goggles.
• They may require long shifts in dangerous weather conditions.
• They may have insufficient shift coverage so that a volunteer cannot even take a moment for water or a bathroom break without leaving their position empty.

Many organizations can better serve their communities or clients with monetary donations than with unskilled volunteer labor.

• It does cost organizations both time and money to train volunteers and provide supervision until the volunteers can confidently and reliably fulfill their roles.
• Anyone can organize a food drive, but food banks can help many more people and provide better quality food with monetary donations because of the tax breaks they get and the connections they have for buying food in bulk. And monetary donations also give food banks the resources to buy specific items that their beneficiaries need more than whatever was in the back of a donor’s pantry.

A lot of volunteer work is boring grunt work that someone needs to do: think envelope stuffing, block walking, phone banking, door greeting, and so on.

Social and political issues and how they impact someone’s paying job may prevent them from volunteering for causes they feel passionate about.

• If one is a public advocate for an organization such as Planned Parenthood, which receives a lot of public censure for providing necessary services, one must consider the potential repercussions if disapproving family, church members, coworkers, etc. hear about that volunteer work.
• If the volunteer is employed in an “at-will” state, they could even be fired for their decision to publicly support certain organizations.

And it can be frustrating to volunteer for an organization that has not planned well or is not prepared to direct volunteers to where they need to be and could leave volunteers with inadequate resources to serve others, maybe putting the unwitting volunteers at the face of complaints from clients or event participants/attendees.

There are, of course, many more potential disadvantages to volunteerism, but it’s up to each individual to be informed and weigh the possibilities for themselves before committing to helping an organization or while deciding whether to continue that volunteer work.

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Answering questions: How do I know if I'm gay?

I put some time into recent responses on Quora and figured I'd share them here, too, since I clearly need to work on writing more consistently.

How do I know if I'm gay?

Only you know and can decide, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It can be tricky because not everyone’s sexual orientation matches neatly with their romantic orientation nor with their behaviors or preferences.

The short answer is that it’s entirely up to you to identify as you wish, and it’s totally valid, too, if your feelings change over time.

The longer answer requires asking yourself if you feel physical or sexual or romantic attraction toward people of the same gender as you, and whether you feel those things toward only the same gender as you or maybe in differing degrees toward people of various genders.

Popular discourse rarely separates the types of attraction, instead assuming that people uniformly feel physical, sexual, and romantic attraction in the same way. However, people can find themselves experiencing any mix of heterosexual, bisexual, pansexual, homosexual attraction paired with heteroromantic or homoromantic or biromantic attraction or even various shades of aromantic, demiromantic, asexual, or demisexual feelings.

These are the simplest definitions (though each has more individual nuance that you can learn about through your own research) for these terms:

• heterosexual – experiencing sexual attraction toward people of a gender different from your own
• homosexual – experiencing sexual attraction toward people of a gender the same as your own
• bisexual – experiencing sexual attraction toward people of genders both like and unlike your own
• pansexual – experiencing sexual attraction toward people of any gender
• asexual – when one generally does not experience sexual attraction toward other people and/or does not desire sexual activity with other people (There’s more info at asexuality.org)
• demisexual – falls under the umbrella of asexual but can mean that one only very rarely experiences sexual attraction toward other people and/or only experiences sexual attraction if there is first a romantic/emotional connection with a person, and many similar caveats (It’s not just “being picky” about sexual partners. There’s more info at asexuality.org)
• heteroromantic – experiencing romantic feelings (attraction/connection/affection) toward people of a gender different from your own
• homoromantic – experiencing romantic feelings(attraction/connection/affection) toward people of a gender the same as your own
• biromantic – experiencing romantic feelings (attraction/connection/affection) toward people of genders both like and unlike your own
• panromantic – experiencing romantic feelings (attraction/connection/affection) toward people of any gender

So it is possible that someone could be both heteroromantic and asexual, someone else could be biromantic and heterosexual, someone could be bisexual and demisexual and homoromantic, and so on.

Most of us have never thought about these particulars and might not know immediately, but knowing there are more spectrums, axes, and nuance to sexual orientation is a great starting point for understanding and determining or defining what our own is.

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Answering questions: Can you be healthy but not fit?

I put some time into recent responses on Quora and figured I'd share them here, too, since I clearly need to work on writing more consistently.

Can you be healthy but not fit?

Yes, but we need to define our terms first.

Americans in the US typically use “fit” to describe physical fitness and athletic capability, whereas other English-speakers in the world may use it to describe people’s appearances and level of attractiveness. The juxtaposition of “healthy and fit” implies the former definition (physical/athletic ability).

“Healthy” has myriad definitions, but I assume the questioner means metabolic health, which includes measures of blood pressure, triglycerides, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, total cholesterol, fasting plasma glucose, etc.

There are, indeed, many people who test in the “normal” and “healthy” ranges on such metabolic measures but who do not exercise regularly and/or may have physical limitations or disabilities that limit fitness endeavors. Metabolic measures are frequently influenced by genetics, so that “health” is not entirely within our control. But those influences can result in good metabolic health or poor metabolic health independently of physical fitness, which takes action and training to achieve.

Physical fitness can influence metabolic health, as metabolic health can influence physical fitness. If a person has naturally high blood pressure, it might not be safe for them to undertake an intense exercise regimen in pursuit of physical fitness. However, researchers have found that “even low levels of physical activity have a beneficial effect on metabolic fitness and the overall health of the individual.” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub...)

Many doctors erroneously mistake weight/BMI as a proxy for health. From the article “Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift”:

• Yet using BMI as a proxy for health may be more costly than addressing health directly. Consider, for example, the findings of a study which examined the "healthy obese" and the "unhealthy normal weight" populations . The study identified six different risk factors for cardiometabolic health and included subjects in the "unhealthy" group if they had two or more risk factors, making it a more stringent threshold of health than that used in categorizing metabolic syndrome or diabetes. The study found a substantial proportion of the overweight and obese population, at every age, who were healthy and a substantial proportion of the "normal weight" group who were unhealthy.
• Psychologist Deb Burgard examined the costs of overlooking the normal weight people who need treatment and over-treating the obese people who do not. She found that BMI profiling overlooks 16.3 million "normal weight" individuals who are not healthy and identifies 55.4 million overweight and obese people who are not ill as being in need of treatment. When the total population is considered, this means that 31 percent of the population is mis-identified when BMI is used as a proxy for health.

So athleticism, metabolic health, and body size are all different variables, and while any one of them can influence another, none definitely determines or defines another. A person can be healthy and not fit. A person can be fit and have poor metabolic health. And a person can be either of these at any size or weight.

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