I’ve changed my mind.

Today hasn’t been such a hot day, self-esteem wise, thanks in part to the whole Kevin Smith/ Southwest assholes story. I know it’s a few days old, but I’m always a little behind the curve when it comes to news. It’s not so much the news stories that get me — the whole thing was unfortunate, and while I am sorry that Kevin had to go through that experience, I am a little bit thankful that the humiliation that nearly every person who has dared to fly while fat has felt has been brought into the public eye. The stories I have read have been for the most part well-written, unbiased, and factual. The problem isn’t the story, the problem is the comments, and more than that, the people behind them.

I realize that it’s partly my own fault. I should know by now that any story about fat people is going to attract more than its fair share of hateful trolls who wouldn’t know logical thinking if it walked up and did a line dance on their face. I shouldn’t read the comments. But this time I did. I think I somehow believed that this time would be different. This would be the time when, thanks to the fact that not only is the story about a real live person, not hypothetical headless fatties, but that person is well known and popular, the hate and contempt would be, if not absent altogether, at least kept to a minimum.

I was very wrong.

If anything, the comments on this particular issue have been worse than the normal parade of ugly. I am not talking about the fat-people-on airplanes debate. There are valid arguments on both sides of that particular issue, and I respect everyone’s right to hold and defend their opinion. If you think Southwest done Keven Smith wrong, great. If you think the policy in question is great, then, as Voltaire would put it, “I do not agree with a word you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it”. The problem here isn’t one of opinions or logic, the problem is the vicious evil being spewed on every website I’ve read.

The comments I have seen break down along these lines. For every well reasoned post about the actual issue at hand, there are also:
-three saying something incredibly bigoted and ignorant along the line of “all fat people are gross/smelly/stupid/the root of all evil”
– one vaguely well-meaning fake concerned “fat people aren’t healthy!”, which is not only debatable but also completely irrelevant to the issue at hand, since last I checked there was no policy about only letting healthy people on planes
-one along the lines of “fat people are the absolute most horrific plague ever to trouble the Earth and should be lined up like cattle and shot”.

I really wish I was making this up. I’m not.

Y’all, I’m not gonna lie. It really sucks to know that there are a whole lot of people out there who have never met me who, based solely on my appearance, think I am disgusting and that I don’t deserve to be treated with basic human dignity, or that I even deserve to exist.

I don’t understand it. I can’t comprehend that kind of hate. I can’t fathom the mind that looks at ONE characteristic, an aesthetic one at that, and determines that anyone with that particular characteristic is utterly without value. I’ve seen it, I know its there, but it gets me every. single. time. Call me naive, call me overly innocent, call me too sensitive or stupid even, but every comment hits me at a personal level, because it is, in fact, personal. When someone says that all fatties are lazy stupid morons that can’t put down the Twinkies, they are talking about ME. Nevermind that I’ve never even tasted a Twinkie. Nevermind that I work my ass off and am pretty much freaking brilliant and really nice, if slightly odd. If that person were to ever meet me, my actual accomplishments, work ethic, intelligence, or personality would not matter one good damn to them, because they have already decided that they know everything they need to about me based on my pants size.

When I started writing this I was feeling pretty down. Weepy even. I’m still sad, but now it’s over something else. I’m not so much sad for myself as for those people who have willfully chosen to live in hate and ignorance and bigotry. As much as it sucks to be the victim of that hate, in the long run I think it must suck a lot more to be the one peddling it. I’m glad I don’t understand. I hope I never do. Maybe instead of being sad that it hurts when I encounter one of those hateful people, I’ll be thankful for the pain, because maybe if it still hurts it means I haven’t become one of them.