The Smutty Ones

So there has been a bit of “what if humans were the weird ones?” going around tumblr at the moment and Earth Day got me thinking. Earth is a wonky place, the axis tilts, the orbit wobbles, and the ground spews molten rock for goodness sakes. What if what makes humans weird is just our capacity to survive? What if all the other life bearing planets are these mild, Mediterranean climates with no seasons, no tectonic plates, and no intense weather? 

Human: “Honestly we can tolerate anywhere from -40 to 50 Celcius, but we prefer the 0 to 30 range.”

Alien: “……. I’m sorry, did you just list temperatures below freezing?”

Human: “Yeah, but most of us prefer to throw on scarves or jackets at those temperatures it can be a bit nippy.” 

Other human: “Nah mate, I knew this guy in college who refused to wear anything past his knees and elbows until it was -20 at least.”

Human: “Heh. Yeah everybody knows someone like that.”

Alien: “……. And did you also say 50 Celcius? As in, half way to boiling?”

Human: “Eugh. Yes. It sucks, we sweat everywhere, and god help you if you touch a seatbelt buckle, but yes.” 

“Yup, with blizzards you cant see through every other day just about.”

“Amazing! when did you manage to send drones that could survive such temperatures?”

“… well, actually…”

“… what?”

“…we kinda……. sent……….. people…..”

“…”

“…”

“…what?”

“we sent-”

“no yeah I heard you I just- what? You sent… HUMANS… to a place one hundred degrees below freezing?”

“y-yeah”

“and they didn’t… die?”

“Well the first few did”

“PEOPLE DIED OF THE COLD AND YOUR SOLUTION WAS TO SEND MORE PEOPLE?”

aka The History of Russia

aka Arctic Exploration

1. Learning to recognize all forms of animal tracks in the wild so you can avoid bears and moose and search out rabbits and other small animals to eat.

2. Extensive swimming and climbing on glacial pieces with competitions to see who could last the longest, followed by a group sit in the sauna so we wouldn’t get hypothermia (no, not kidding, I really did this many times as a kid!)

3. How to navigate using the stars to get back to civilization.

4. How to select the right type of moss from the trees to start a fire with damp wood (because, y’know, you’re in a field of snow. Nothing is dry.)

It only takes one try before the reality of the situation sets in: human definitions of ‘taming’ and ‘habitable’ are woefully incomplete.

“Why did you not eliminate the venomous plant life?” Grahssk’ti moans, clutching one limb.

“Those?” The human laughs. “Why bother? They’re not that bad. And they eat the mosquitoes.”

Grahssk’ti shudders. The ‘mosquitoes’ are… not to be mentioned. Just one swarm of them caused a landing shuttle to crash three planetary daylights ago.

“And the acid storms? Why did you not warn us of them?”

“I mean, they’re annoying,” the human says, shrugging, “but we figured the cool sunsets made up for it.”

Grahssk’ti flails helplessly. “What about the ten-meter tall Fanged Death Bringers? They can eliminate an entire settlement in under an hour!”

Without fail, a decent number make it a point to settle there because “Fuck You That’s Why.” It doesn’t matter how uneconomical it is, how difficult the conditions are, how utterly ridiculous it may seem, there will be at least one human who will attempt to do it only because someone else regardless of species says it is improbable or WORSE impossible. 

“Well yeah, but only up to about Category 3 strength.  Then it’s time to pack the car and head inland for most people, although a few hardy souls stick around and ride them out.”

“Oh good.  Category 3 is what again?  Winds up to 75 kilometers per hour?”

“It’s a planet completely made of ice.”

“Yeah! Let’s send some scientists! Or I could be the youngest person there!”

“You’d die, it’s below freezing level!”

“But the blizzards are so pretty!”

For when encountering some of the most dangerous, deadly, and destructive species, it became apparent to many alien species that humans have two default modes of operation:

1) to kill the creature with excessive violence

2) attempt to bond with the creature and tame it into what they call “a pet”

And bizarrely enough, the order of those actions are switched and killing becomes SECONDARY!

For instance, the Grexillian emperor reports how he visited the human party they sent to terraform their coldest moon Nephtalia. And not only had they built bizarre ice structures that preserved their body heat, several members of the party had made pets of the Frost Fels! Yes, these bipedal lower life forms, with the bizarre clothing and basic space travel technology, were able in the matter of weeks to tame a pack of vicious frost fels that not only aided them in hunting for food below the ice but also would laze around in their laps.

Why the poor Grexillian emperor’s three hearts nearly gave out when he saw one of the male humans cooing and rocking a baby Frost fel in his arms, rocking it back and forth and talking to it in the curious way humans talk to their young.

Alien: “……. We’ve got like 50 uninhabitable planets we think you might enjoy.”

One of our baby girls is fat, in the 99th percentile for her age. She is super cute and sweet. Lately, she has been sick with various breathing issues, so she has been reluctant to take her bottles. Normally, she’ll take 4 ounces of formula at lunch and 8 ounces in the afternoon. Today, I was lucky to get to her take 5 all day.

There was a substitute covering a lunch break in my classroom today. We emphasized to her that we need to keep trying to get the baby to drink her bottle until she finished it. She said, “Why are you guys so worried about taking her bottle?”

My coworker replied, “That’s where all her nutrients are. She needs the nutrients and the water.”

To which the substitute replied, “But she’s so fat. She doesn’t need it.”

By starving her. She insisted that her baby was ‘too fat’ and had an aim to remove any and all ‘chubbyness’ so her baby would be thin. She’d already been warned by her doctor about the baby not getting enough food, but insisted she knew best.

After several months of this her baby passed out cold one day and was rushed into hospital where the doctors found her to have severe malnutrition, a low body temperature and low pulse rate. They asked my cousin what she’d been feeding her daughter and she said “one bottle of skimmed milk a day. I don’t want her growing up fat.”

Even after nearly killing her daughter my cousin maintained her view that fat = bad and ended up with all her kids taken from her because she was starving them and neglecting them.

When your fatphobia leads you to starving your own children then you’ve got serious problems.

Is

Real

She backed off saying, ‘Well he looks fine!” – proving once again that weight bias is not truly about health – But I know many other parents who are not as informed as I am about weight science and size diversity would react to this interaction by policing their child’s food intake, if not as an infant, then when he was an older child. This is exactly the type of seemingly-inconsequential interaction that starts the ball rolling on a lifetime of dieting, disordered eating, negative body image, and weight-based abuse for too many fat people.

Years later when he was five, another doctor measured his weight and height and commented that he is off the charts on both, but “at least he is in proportion.” And if he was not “in proportion,” I am sure I would have been advised once again to “watch his weight.” 

I no longer allow healthcare providers to weight my children unless it is absolutely medically necessary. They are unable to control their weight talk, which is a known harm for children.

1. The 4 years old daughter of a friend of mine came to our house to spend the weekend. She gave me a letter from her mom that said that the child was in a glutenfree diet because she was getting ‘awfully fat’ when eating cookies or bread (my celiac ass; who gets dhiarrea and loses a scary amount of weight whenever I eat something with gluten was like ’???’).

You can bet that I went to the supermarket with the kid and told her ‘go & take whatever you feel like eating’ and the poor child came back smiling with her arms full of biscuits and cupcakes.

She didn’t got sick (as a celiac would get) and told me later that she hated the diet her mother made her follow; because her cousins didn’t had to pass through that.

And what’s the scariest thing about this story? Her mother was a NURSE. A fucking nurse who didn’t have a clue of the harm that she was doing to her daughter’s body!

2. My little sister started to feel fatigued and dizzy at 9 years old. She felt nauseated at the sight of food and had abdominal pain that increased with physical activity.

Mom got her to the ER and the doctor dismissed it saying: ‘she’s fat and probably is feeling ill after eating too much burgers, get her to make some exercise and she will be better in no time’.My mom didn’t felt ok with the diagnosis and took my sister with a second doctor who also told her that ‘the child was just fat’.

My sister’s skin was starting to get yellow as the days passed and the abdominal pain was getting awful so my mom (heaven bless her!) got her to the ER for the third time:

SHE HAD STAGE 4 HEPATITIS AND WAS ABOUT TO DIE.

She survived after a long and painful recovery who involved being in bed for a whole year (remember that we’re speaking of a 9 years old child). Luckily they saved her liver and she didn’t went through a transplant… but let this sink:

If it weren’t for my mother, fatphobia would have killed her. Fatphobia kills kids and teenagers, fatphobia kills inocent people everyday. It treats human beings as lesser than others and hurts them in their most vulnerable times.

FUCKING TAKE NOTE OF THIS!

For Want of a Spouse - Chapter Seven

A Consummation of Events

For Want of a Spouse - Chapter Seven

A Consummation of Events