Discussions of who “costs” too much are the politics of oppression.

catwinchester:

thisisthinprivilege:

ok2befat:

We often hear that fat people are somehow “costing” society too much.

Leaving aside the fabricated numbers that often go with such claims, I would ask you this-

Do these people ever talk about the costs of misogyny or racism?

How much does it cost society that 3 women a day (in the US) are murdered by their male romantic partners? How much does it cost for the trials, the prison, the loss and grief surrounding the never ending violence against women? 

Are these penny pinchers really concerned about costs? 

Or are they just looking for a way to stigmatize fat people and bring the full weight of government sanction and interference into our lives to punish us for what we look like? 

I think you know what the answer is. 

There’s also often an assumption in these arguments of what a good society is supposed to look like, and what good citizens are supposed to be compelled to do for one another, that ignores other perspectives on what a good society looks like. I do not believe that human sympathy, and ultimately the society emergent from that sympathy, is served by forcing some people to pay for things they don’t want to pay for. My hypothesis is that there are bad unintended consequences of such programs, and virulent fat hate and ableism is clearly a bad unintended consequence from presuming that a good society is one in which everybody is compelled to be monetarily responsible for the health of everyone else. That’s not to say that fat discrimination is better or worse in those places than others, just that there are specific consequences from first labeling fat people as unhealthier than everyone else, then compelling everyone to pay for the health outcomes of other people. Socialized health care systems are going to need to grapple with this issue some time, the sooner the better. 

-ATL

Using figures from 2003, in 2007 in Belgium they studied seventy two of the eighty two local sports federations and discovered that their sports related injuries cost the local health care system over fifteen million euros, and the indirect costs were estimated to be over one hundred and ten million euros. If you factor in all the people who do sports or exercise but aren’t members of a sporting federation, the costs could easily be double or triple that, or more. 

If costs really are a basis for discrimination, then people who play sports or engage in any high-risk activities, should be discriminated against too.“