A Post on Privilege and Coming Out

When an acquaintance admitted to being very mainstream, part of the dominant Christian culture, and concerned about making others uncomfortable with her ignorance, a few of us chimed in to thank her and offer perspective and suggestions. Here are mine.

Some of the issues that are integral to who we are but that we feel we have to hide are sexual orientations, gender queerness, alternative romantic and sexual relationships, religious/spiritual beliefs and lack thereof, social and political beliefs and activism, and even our passionate support of everyone else in these categories.

Lead your questions with "May I ask ... ?" in a gentle tone. It's very respectful, and I, for one, respond very positively to it—eager to inform and comfortable with declining if I don't want to discuss it in that moment. If someone is brave enough to open up to you, understand that they may or may not feel up to giving you the full alt-lifestyle 101 lecture, and that you are not entitled to be educated by them. There are hundreds of blogs and articles and books about it; ask for reading recommendations if you want to learn more.*

We censor ourselves in front of our family, our coworkers, and new people we meet, ever wary of the climate in any group. Some of us have come out to people who we expected to love us unconditionally and received some traumatic fucking backlash because of their selfishness and close-mindedness. And it's scarier still to imagine how acquaintances and strangers might react.

I'm a very privileged, educated, intelligent, middle-class, cis-presenting, hetero-presenting, conventionally attractive, slim, and able-bodied white woman living in a safe neighborhood. What could I possibly have to complain about?

• But I am terrified to talk about my relationships at work or family gatherings. My family doesn't know that I've been with my boyfriend for nearly 2 years; they don't know about him at all. My coworkers know but not why we can't move in together or marry.
  
• I'm afraid in most spaces to share HAES concepts, because dieting is so firmly entrenched in our cultural narrative and I don't like it when people think me daft for espousing such ideas, no matter how much science backs me up. Or worse, many think me ignorant of reality and my own weight discredits me.
  
• I'm warming to the idea of coming out as atheist, at least in friendly spaces where the issue comes up, but I still kept fearfully silent at a Meetup event this week with an enthusiastic believer.

I admire those out there with the bravery to live fully open, and I try to be kind to myself and refrain from berating myself for not doing the same. I've discussed it with my boyfriend, and we're on the same page of not wanting to spark anger, backlash, and disappointment directed at us; we spend enough energy coping with life's difficulties. I choose my battles and closets carefully, and I still spend a large chunk of my time stressed out, anxious, worried, depressed, and sleeping poorly.

I'm not sure I'll ever feel safe enough to come out of all these closets, but I do think someday I will be strong enough.



*She did, and I led off with Skepchick and Queereka because they're very intersectional. Another friend recommended The Friendly Atheist. What resources would you suggest?

Accounting and Amends

I have a confession:

I was a rabid pro-lifer in high school and wore the ABORTION IS MURDER t-shirt to school regularly. I attended the March for Life in DC* with my youth group twice.

I am SO sorry, World.

Sometime in college it occurred to me through logical, empathetic thinking that unwanted pregnancy must be a very scary and difficult position to be in, and I couldn’t help but have the utmost respect for any woman who made a choice for herself and her life, whatever her choice was. That was a turning point for me, somehow suddenly recognizing the human—the woman—involved in the situation. I was skeptical about different aspects of the Church since** about middle school, but I had no support for those thoughts, and it took a long time to get to where I am today on my own.

There was no argument up to that point that could topple my righteous fight for the unborn, for whom their faceless mothers should feel compelled to give their lives at any cost because they had already had their shot, already made their choice. I believed it all. I'd been raised Catholic, attended Sunday school every week, every year up through the eighth grade when I was confirmed, and then was an active member of the high school youth group.

I was fed a lot of statistics about the relationship between abortion, depression, breast cancer, etc., and I believed it all. They (the youth pastors) told us too that there were far fewer abortions before Roe v. Wade, and that was proof that banning it would decrease the number happening, that the back alley abortion was an insignificant number, mythical almost. I’ve since learned international statistics don’t support that and that all the other stuff is false, too. Banning abortion does not decrease the number of abortions that happen; but it does increase the danger of the procedure and does kill more women.

I try not to dwell on the pain I perhaps caused and the misinformation I spread in the past because it would surely crush me. All I can do is learn more and say more, be informed and inform others, and hope that I will have a lifetime ahead of me to counteract my actions in the first 18 years.

*I have some beautiful pictures of the cathedral that I'll try to find and share.

**Or maybe younger. I know I asked my mom why girls couldn't be altar servers. My parish changed its policy after I was too old to serve.

Recommended reading: Here is a really well-written memoir about one woman's loss of faith in the pro-life movement because the movement is not interested in lowering the number of abortions or unwanted pregnancies. It's long but very informative with lots of good links throughout to support her assertions and statistics.

No Benefits to Intentional Weight Loss

Here is a great interview with Linda Bacon, author of Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight (HAES), about the dangers of intentional weight loss. Here is her peer-reviewed article that compiles information from numerous studies to support the claims that intentional weight loss is detrimental to health, as well as supporting the Health at Every Size approach It’s very long but very accessible and interesting, and I highly recommend reading it. Below are a few excerpts.

Concern has arisen that this weight focused paradigm is not only ineffective at producing thinner, healthier bodies, but also damaging, contributing to food and body preoccupation, repeated cycles of weight loss and regain, distraction from other personal health goals and wider health determinants, reduced self-esteem, eating disorders, other health decrement, and weight stigmatization and discrimination.

Only studies with an explicit focus on size acceptance were included. Evidence from these six RCTs indicates that a HAES approach is associated with statistically and clinically relevant improvements in physiological measures (e.g. blood pressure, blood lipids), health behaviors (e.g. physical activity, eating disorder pathology) and psychosocial outcomes (e.g, mood, self-esteem, body image). All studies indicate significant improvements in psychological and behavioral outcomes; improvements in self-esteem and eating behaviors were particularly noteworthy.

Attempts to lose weight typically result in weight cycling, and such attempts are more common among obese individuals. Weight cycling results in increased inflammation, which in turn is known to increase risk for many obesity-associated diseases. Other potential mechanisms by which weight cycling contributes to morbidity include hypertension, insulin resistance and dyslipidemia. Research also indicates that weight fluctuation is associated with poorer cardiovascular outcomes and increased mortality risk. Weight cycling can account for all of the excess mortality associated with obesity in both the Framingham Heart Study and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). It may be, therefore, that the association between weight and health risk can be better attributed to weight cycling than adiposity itself.

It is also notable that the prevalence of hypertension dropped by half between 1960 and 2000, a time when average weight sharply increased, declining much more steeply among those deemed overweight and obese than among thinner individuals. Incidence of cardiovascular disease also plummeted during this time period and many common diseases now emerge at older ages and are less severe. (The notable exception is diabetes, which showed a small, non-significant increase during this time period.) While the decreased morbidity can at least in part be attributed to improvements in medical care, the point remains that we are simply not seeing the catastrophic disease consequences predicted to result from the "obesity epidemic."

That weight loss will improve health over the long-term for obese people is, in fact, an untested hypothesis. One reason the hypothesis is untested is because no methods have proven to reduce weight long-term for a significant number of people.

Psychologist Deb Burgard examined the costs of overlooking the normal weight people who need treatment and over-treating the obese people who do not (personal communication, March 2010). 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.