stop ignoring us. wear a mask.

-anti whiteness isnt real

-misandry isnt real

-Misogyblanc isnt real

-Brown men get paid more than brown women

-transandrophobia isnt real

-trans men are paid more than trans women

One day, something in space is going to look at humans the same way. You go to a new galaxy and there's freaking humans in there, like they just spontaneously manifest on random planets that have the ability to sustain them. All you need is an atmosphere with enough oxygen, some form of water, and that's pretty much all you need before they seem to just pop out of the ground and start terraforming it.

The mystery of the lake fish has been solved, by the way. It's waterfowl. Much like the birds that eat seeds and spread them around, waterfowl consume roe from the water, and while the number of fertilised fish eggs that pass through the digestive system of a duck or wild goose alive and unharmed may be small, it's not zero. A goose will shit in the lake water, and through comes the roe. It happens just often enough that lakes and ponds become - and remain - populated with fish.

Humans don't pop up on unknown planets and and unreachable galaxies on purpose. They couldn't get in there any more than they could get out of there, they have no choice but to claim the most viable-looking planet they can reach and start terraforming it. But how did they even get there?

Khelif was defended by a large portion of the internet. There were articles about Rowling going too far. People flocked to Imane to call her beautiful and pay for makeovers for her and her accomplishment in the Olympics is ultimately uncontested in an official capacity.

Lia was the center of a right wing hate campaign for years, and even liberals would shrug and go “Well maybe there are some concerns about her being there.” The second Trump got into office, her school erased her swimming records, removing her name from her accomplishment.

"I don't have a choice, I'm just following orders"

"I'll get dishonorably discharged"

Okay at least you wont be killing innocents in the name of imperialism

"I'll go to jail"

"I've lost so much weight I'm so healthy" your stomach is mutilated.

"My doctor is praising my progress" your stomach is mutilated.

"I fit in so many more clothes now"

Because an essential, life sustaining organ in your body was cut up and your digestive system rerouted.

Health isn't the end all be all of value, humanity or importance but I feel like there is a huge lie here when this is "healthy" and it's just ignored.

Sorry to just bring this up out of no where but I was reminded of how little this is really talked about in bypass circles. Like, no matter what, you are now unhealthy. The spector of health continues. The Ouroboros is unbroken. Only this time it's doctor approved.

This is the lap band. Often touted as being the safest because the band can be removed or at least opened up to allow more food through. What does it do specifically? Makes it so that you can only eat as much as will fit in that teeny tiny little pouch. The issue is that the stomach itself as a full functioning organ is designed to stretch to hold food. The artificially made pouch is not. Eat a bit too much on a normal stomach and you typically just feel bloated and full and need to lie down for a while. Eat a little too much with a lap band, and you can cause the esophagus to stretch out too much and stop contracting. This can lead to severe acid reflux and loss of the ability to swallow properly. In an extreme case this could instead rupture the esophagus and/or stomach which is a medical emergency for obvious reasons. The band can also slip out of place and construct the larger part of the stomach, causing severe pain and discomfort. This is the only one of these procedures that is reversible.

Gastric sleeve is another form. It amounts to removing 80% of the stomach, permanently limiting the amount of food you can eat at a time DRASTICALLY. It can also cause frequent or constant drops in blood sugar, hernias (the small intestine may enter the incision site, or the mutilated stomach may slip out of its place and interfere with other organs), severe acid reflux, malnutrition, and frequent vomiting. Incision site can also build up scar tissue that further obstructs the stomach and prevents eating normally.

This "medical device" literally locks a person's jaw shut so that they physically cannot open their mouth to eat. The person is supposed to survive on a "liquid diet," but that doesn't work. It's starvation enforced by locking a fat person's mouth shut. I also purposefully chose this photo instead of the photo of it actually in a person's mouth because that photo is disturbing and horrifying as fuck.

Some quotes about the device:

University of Otago Health Sciences Pro-Vice-Chancellor Paul Brunton called it "an effective, safe and affordable tool for people battling ob*sity."

...

In the study, the authors say that the main barrier to successful weight loss with dietary advice and restriction is "poor patient adherence." DentalSlim does solve that problem, as people will be forced to adhere while their jaw is bolted shut.

I'm not even going to explain how the word "ob*se" is a slur because people on this website who even claim to be progressive have shown me that we apparently can't handle critical thinking about "a medical term" being bigoted and discriminatory.

What's so wickedly disgusting about that second quote is that there is no scientifically-proven method of long-term, sustainable weight loss. No matter how hard a person tries, no matter how much "willpower" they have, they will gain back the weight. The failure rate of weight loss within 3-5 years is 95%. I don't think a 5% success rate would exist if weight loss actually was "that easy" and "just a matter of willpower and lifestyle changes!!!! uwu" So that second quote is saying that because human bodies physically cannot intentionally lose weight long-term, it's okay to pretend it's a fat person's fault and punish them by locking their jaw shut so they can never eat or speak for as long as they're forced to wear that device.

There's also jaw wiring surgeries:

And then there's this horror:

This is literally, in all senses of the word, medically-approved bulimia 2.0

I'm disgusted the name of this device is "Aspire Assist" because it literally means "Aspire to be skinny and we'll totally help you achieve that we swear just give us your money 😇" This cruel device is used to make the process easier for a fat person to throw up in a toilet after eating. Because, you know, eating disorders don't count if the person is fat, right? I mean, that's what my own OBGYN implied to me when I told her I had been severely suicidal for two months and was starving for 8-12 hours a day due to anorexia. Being told that I was doing a good job and to "just do it in a slightly healthier way. Intermittent fasting is good as long as it's due to choice and not mood 😊" when I was struggling not to die was incredible. And all because I'm a fat person with PCOS, which just makes her words extra disgusting because PCOS causes weight gain and prevents weight loss, making that 95% failure rate even higher for me. But as long as a fat person has an eating disorder that gets the job done, that's all the world cares about.

Inserting a tube into a fat person's stomach so they can throw up with the press of a button is a-okay in this world that oppresses fat people so horribly, and in far more ways than just surgery. Which, by the way, fat people have these surgeries FORCED on us. If we want something like knee surgery or top surgery or what have you, we're told to somehow beat that 95% failure rate and to do so by literally mutilating our bodies if we have to. I will never forget the person who told me about their twin brother who needed an organ transplant and was told they wouldn't give it to him unless he did one of these surgeries. He refused and died because his doctors didn't value his life enough to give him an organ transplant while having a fat body. The NHS also decided a great way to save money was to not allow fat people medical care like surgeries until a fat person magically lost weight.

I implore everyone to read this post about the plethora of ways in which fat people's oppression is deadly and horrid. Not even supposedly "progressive" people talk about fat people's oppression. In fact, I have been harassed by "progressive" people who get angry that I dare to point out that fatphobia is a real form of oppression that is not lesser to other forms of oppression that people actually give a shit about. I have been told shit by "progressive" people like "You want to be oppressed so bad." Do you know how disgusting that is to say to a fat person who the world is actively trying to kill every day for daring to live with the body they were given and not conforming to the world's body and beauty standards?

Here is another post about the hypocrisies of people who claim fatphobia "doesn't exist" and other fatphobic rhetoric.

Here is a post that describes how much fatphobia runs rampant in the queer community. Now imagine how much fatphobia affects other marginalized communities as well.

Here is a post about how horrible diet culture is, which is mainly used to harm fat people and encourage fatphobia in the medical field and our societies.

Here is a post about how badly fat children are bullied yet are viewed in this world as the aggressors because their bodies are "intimidating."

And here is a podcast co-hosted by prominent fat activist Aurbey Gordon that debunks the wellness industry. She also has published two books about fatphobia and written articles online if you'd rather read than listen to a podcast. Though the podcast's website also has transcripts.

Please actually give a fuck about fat people. Stop using our bodies as your acceptable punching bags. Stop using our bodies as metaphors for evil and bigotry and "ugliness." Stop making all of your bigoted villains and corrupt politician cartoons and greedy CEO characters fat. Stop portraying police as fat people overeating donuts while you call those fat bigoted caricatures "pigs." Stop using Trump's fatness as symbolism and your "hilarious" "progressive" joke. Stop bullying fat children. Stop accepting fatphobia in progressive fields like social work. Stop selling progressive merchandise without plus sizes, and especially don't charge fat people extra to wear your damn "progressive" t-shirt.

If you do care about equality, then it's time to care about fat people instead of continuing to use us as the bottom rung of your ladder to the top. Fat people fucking matter.

The "(good)" in that sentence is carrying a lot of implications that thousands don't see. We don't see the good doctors.

As a demographic we get shit doctors.

Like the weight first people who refuse even cancer screenings and then shocked pikachu face when the back pain is a tumor.

"As last resort" is....hopeful. It really speaks to the ideal and even then it falls short.

As an aside. How is the magnetic clamp on a jaw any more barbaric than ruining a healthy stomach? Given the rates of weight gain after surgery especially? Because honestly? It's not.

Idk. I guess the point is, thank you for the info on the surgeries that are used/not used but we don't live in an ideal world and good doctors are rare, these surgeries are pushed on fat people by bad doctors and changing doctors depends on insurance.

Mentally I'm going in circles rn but yeah.

But holy crap that statement can and so strongly does coexist with "our medical field is so fucking fucked up focusing on weight all the time holy fucking hell." Like, a doctor saying you need to lose weight before they'll even consider other "potential" causes? If we fired all the doctors who do that, our health care system wouldn't be the most expensive in the world any more, because we'd have so few left. We might be better off for it.

The medical field really needs an attitude shift, and it's happening, but dear gods it's slow.

If you have to interact with idiot doctors, at least get them to document everything they don't do in your chart. And go with a friend if you can. The general advice for the disabled communities dealing with hostile/unhelpful doctors might be useful.

It's slow to charge attitudes, especially in the face of capitalist advertising. But we do make progress. If nothing else, we don't wire teeth together regularly. And more people who are around kids and going to a gym, even if it is 100% because they want to lose weight, say it's because they want to be stronger.

Weight loss as an intervention fails for virtually everyone. Weight loss surgeries not only carry a risk of side effects, including death, they aren't actually successful at keeping all that "excess" weight off. Even the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery says most weight loss happens in the first two years, and weight regain is common by 5 years. They also say that most people don't actually lose all the weight that the doctors said they should.

If you think that two years and five years sounds familiar, you're right.

Additionally, all those things we are told that being fat causes? Like heart disease, joint pain, diabetes, etc.? For one, they happen to thin people too. For two, they don't automatically happen to all fat people. Not even the fattest person you can think of. We've all been led to believe there is a clear causal relationship between fatness and ill health - namely, that fatness causes ill health. There is no such clear and obvious causal link that has been found in research.

There may be a link, however, between WEIGHT CYCLING and ill health. Weight cycling is what happens when you are in that 95%+ of people who regain all the weight lost (plus usually a little more) within about five years. And then you diet again, and repeat the cycle. And again. And again. Like a lot of people do. THAT turns out to be a better explanation and causal factor than actual weight.

There's also a link between fat stigma and ill health - yeah, being shitty to fat people can and does negatively impact their health. Doctors refusing to run diagnostic tests amd instead attributing all health problems to someone's weight negatively impacts health.

You know what we do know usually improves people's health? Your basic ass "healthy lifestyle" stuff like engaging in comfortable, joyful movement every day. Having enough good food to eat. Having a good social life and social supports. Having things you think are fun and doing them. Being treated with the dignity you deserve just by being a human being. We have way, way better evidence for these things helping, regardless of a person's weight or health status, than we do for weight loss (which is frankly a low bar to clear, because we don't actually have any good evidence for weight loss, but nonetheless, basic shit like this goes soaring over it).

And you know what else we know works for joint pain? Addressing the actual issue, such as arthritis, injury, hypermobility, etc. Things like pain relief, physical therapy, setting the damn broken bone.

You know what we know works for diabetes? Addressing the actual issue, which is a fucking endocrine disorder that has a strong hereditary component and has to do with how your body makes or processes insulin. (And fun fact, there is growing evidence that Type 2 diabetes is also autoimmune in origin, and that COVID can trigger it.)

You know what works for sleep apnea? (And as an aside, it boggles me how many people think being fat is a one-way ticket to sleep apnea. Do you think there are gobs of fat just hanging around in people's noses and throats and lungs, impacting their breathing? Really?) Addressing the actual issue, like craniofacial structure, edema from other medical conditions, or issues with upper airway muscle function.

We actually have evidence-based treatments for heart disease, high cholesterol, joint pain, diabetes, sleep apnea, thyroid disease, high blood pressure, all the things we are told that being fat puts us at risk for (which, by the way, again, we don't actually have great causal evidence for that). Those evidence based treatments work for fat folks, too, every single day. Weight loss does not.

So yeah. It's shitty for doctors to tell people to lose weight before any other treatment. But it's shitty for them to tell people to lose weight during or after other treatment, too. Weight loss does not work, and it in and of itself can raise your risk for a lot of conditions.

It's shitty.

When the assessors from the Joint Commission go to a PCP practice, they pull patient records at random to look at what kind of care is being offered. If they pull a fat patient’s record and it doesn’t show that they were counseled about their weight in some way during every visit, that’s points off of the assessment for the practice.

This is why we go to the doctor for carpal tunnel or chronic sinusitis and get asked if we’re interested in weight loss surgery.

And it is always weight loss surgery. It’s never “what’s your diet like?“ Or “are you on a weight loss plan?” It’s never “talk to me about how you exercise.” It’s “have you considered bariatric surgery?“ Or “we partner with a good bariatric practice, they have seminars about weight loss surgery, can I put you on their schedule?“ Or it’s what I got the last time I saw a new doctor: “why haven’t you considered surgery to do something about your weight?”

To say that these procedures are only considered as a last resort for patients in dire medical circumstances is patently false. These procedures are routinely suggested to every patient who meets the weight criteria, even if they have other issues that make them a poor candidate for surgical procedures.

And now, if you are hesitant about mutilating your body with surgery to create functional anorexia for some temporary weight loss, the next thing that will be suggested, or perhaps the first thing, before surgery, will be the off label use of diabetes medication to create medical anorexia. Is it safe, especially long term? Probably not. Are patients experiencing gastroparesis, an extremely painful and extremely dangerous condition in which the gastrointestinal system becomes paralyzed? Yes.

And then that one person in support of these surgeries who literally censored the word "fat"? That is all I need to know about that person's views. If you can't even use the most basic word for my body type because you believe it's a taboo slur, but the ACTUAL slur of "ob*se" is okay to you, then you have no right to decide what is and isn't fatphobic. Period.

People in the US can't easily switch doctors. We have these surgeries and weight loss in general forced on us every day. Even by our own families and friends and EMPLOYERS. I have heard multiple times of fat people who were encouraged by their employers to go get a weight loss surgery so that the fat person would "look the part" for the company's brand. My own father who is a doctor has suggested to me weight loss surgery when I was barely past the age of 18 and was a size 20. His wife has gotten a weight loss surgery. I go to a PSYCHIATRIST who has a giant sign outside her practice that says "MEDICAL WEIGHT LOSS" because she makes money off of fat people who are desperately trying to escape our oppression. There are billboards and advertisements everywhere for weight loss surgery, let alone weight loss shit in general. When I was trying to get tested for autism and ADHD, the office that would do the tests also does "bariatric evaluations."

I am physically disabled due to a birth defect in both feet that wasn't picked up until I was 23! I have PCOS! I have also been told I need WLS rather than any attempt to correct my malformed limbs.

My stepmother was told she needed WLS in order to qualify for her SECOND knee replacement. They'd already done one!

A friend who is a liver transplant patient, who has FOUR hernias, and has compromised kidney function, who is functionally bed bound, has had his liver specialist arguing his case because the hernia surgeon wants to give him WLS while repairing the hernias.

This is not fucking uncommon. Its barbaric AND it causes chronic illness.

Here is the link to the post that discusses how deadly fatphobia is and how fat people are killed every day because of oppression.

Here is the link to the post that explains some of the ways diet culture is widespread, illogical, deadly, and dangerous.

samah and her family have been stuck at the hospital all week, and she was forced to use some of the funds raised for the passport to pay off the remainder of the cost of the iv fluids, with barely anything being made to recoup those costs

so, the transport costs were never paid for, and now we have that same amount to pay this week so they can return home

the most urgent of these funds is the money for ammar's digoxin injection, as well as ammar's food - he needs 3 meals a day at $5 in cash per meal, and we have to have 3 days' worth

that's $1260 we need to raise first, and we need this by tuesday 4 pm at gazan time. currently that's about 48 hours from now, and i hope you'll be willing to help raise this amount

if he doesn't get this in time, he would need an intensive injection that costs $6k+ total alongside the fact he would need extra medicine and this original injection too

$0 / $2667

vetting

adopts for donating

pwyw commissions for donating

further offers for donating

unfortunately, even though it is now 10 am wednesday for samah, which was the deadline where ammar required his immune globulin injection by, we have not managed to raise very much

we still need $905 to pay this off; we raised $80 for this purpose

usually ammar would now start needing iv fluids at extreme prices because we hadn't raised the immune globulin injection in time; however, the doctor was able to find a different kind of immune globulin injection, and ammar will be able to wait for another day without requiring it

however, we really need to raise this in as quick a time as possible. it is still a very urgent need. please don't make samah have to worry too much when it's eid, and she hasn't even been home in over a week

samah has informed me that we have until 12 pm tomorrow her time as the deadline. that means we have 25 hours from now

we are an hour past the final deadline and we still need $842 more in order to pay off the immune globulin injection.

what's worse is, the pharmacy is refusing to let us borrow the IV fluids in advance. they say, because it is an emergency situation for them (presumably due to the recent attacks on the hospital), they need the money first before we can use them

essentially, this means we can't use them at all. if we could pay the money in advance, we would just pay for the immune globulin injection in the first place and not waste money getting that!

we need this money immediately.

ammar has had a seizure for the first time in his life just now due to passing the deadline without getting his injection, and the doctor has said that delaying the injection any longer will cause further complications. his health is already worsening as it is without that

we can't afford anything but to get this money as quickly as possible. help him now, i beg of you, because we need this money. this is just as dire and health-threatening as his digoxin injection

without your assistance, we have nothing and no money to keep him stable. without your help, he is going to die.

and all this during eid, when samah should be able to celebrate with her family.

as if the situation could not possibly be bad enough, the hospital is now actively under attack. they are being bombed and samah urgently needs ammar to have his injection and then evacuate with him

previously, i mentioned that ammar had been admitted to the intensive care unit with a high fever and non-stop tremors, which is an addition to the complications mentioned before because we have now delayed the injection for literal hours.

though the pharmacy didn't accept us borrowing IV fluids, the situation was so urgent that the doctor bought it for us first. this means we now owe him $69 in cash, or $194

we still need $1395 more in order to pay all of this off and allow them to urgently evacuate

i am begging you to help them so that they aren't left to die like this. people barely donated for ammar's urgent immune globulin injection goal already, which was much smaller, but we absolutely need your help now.

[May 29, 8:05 AM] Samah: Brother, please help us! There's a lot of fighting coming from the hospital. Please tell everyone that we have to get the injection and escape from the hospital. I beg you, help us! We're dying 😭😭😭😭🙏

[May 29, 8:09 AM] Samah: Brother, please don't leave us like this. You're our only lifeline. 😭🙏🙏

$1370 left total, $754 of which will pay off injection

we still have received extremely little in the way of donations. while i thank each and every person who has been helping, we need more people to help.

it has been the most urgent and dire that the situation has ever been, and despite that we only received 5 donations total today. this just isn't enough. we badly need more people to help - even as little as $3 will build up, but we need donations at all for this to happen

please, please. the iof's planes and drones are still flying over the hospital, and we need this money as urgently as possible so that we can evacuate samah's family and allow them to return home

ID: Two drawings of yellow people using purple power wheelchairs. The first person has their hand on a joystick and does not have an AAC device. The second person has an AAC device on a mount attached to the chair. End ID.