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livGrr, I got most of the way through drafting a long post about this article on brain sex differences when I discovered that the article in question had gone behind a paywall between my starting my post and being ready to publish it. Somebody posted it on Twitter, I think gool_duck but now I can't find the link I was looking for, so perhaps it was somebody else?
My point was going to be that I think it might be an interesting starting point for discussion with people who justify sexism because sex differences have a supposedly innate or biological basis. Eliot doesn't sound as polemically feminist as people like, say, Cordelia Fine or Deborah Cameron, both writers I strongly admire, but that's coming from the standpoint of someone who basically accepts their conclusions already. But since the article has now been hidden from public view, I can't discover whether I'm right that it might be more persuasive to a skeptical reader. Most annoying; I really do hate charging readers for access to scientific papers.
Anyway, the bit of my post that I'd already written compared Eliot's article with the NYT article about dieting that everybody was linking to at the end of last year. So I've put the half-written post behind the cut since I think the topic is still at least somewhat interesting even without the key point I wanted to make.
A couple of interesting articles picked up from Twitter recently. I want to make a note of them because I think they may be somewhat useful in communicating two issues that are important to me to skeptics. They're not going to convince conspiracy theorists or people whose whole identity depends on not accepting the relevant point of view, but I think they are likely to be more persuasive than activist polemic to people who are willing to examine the evidence with an open mind, but start out from being inclined against the conclusions. Also, both are good examples of summarizing a whole raft of scientific data in a concise article.
The first is the NYT article The Fat Trap, which pretty much everybody has been retweeting. If you're already on board with fat acceptance / Health At Every Size, you probably don't need this article and may even find it offensive (thanks,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
j4). But I think it may be acceptable by an audience who are inclined to accept the conventional wisdom that being fat is unhealthy and everybody must try to lose weight at any cost. It doesn't really challenge that paradigm at all. Harding's article contains many of the same facts as Parker-Pope's, but it will scare off readers who aren't already on side, because it questions cherished assumptions, and also it's written in Harding's characteristic combative style. Parker-Pope takes it for granted that weight loss is medically and socially desirable, yet she reports clear evidence that sustaining significant weight loss is extremely hard for the majority of people, and that previously fat people who have lost weight do not have exactly the same health profile as people who were thin to start with. There is such a thing as a natural set-point for weight, and it is partly influenced by genetic factors.
Conventionally, everybody "should" be as thin as possible. And conventionally, "all" fat people have to do to achieve this thin ideal is to stop being so lazy, eat less junk food and give up sugary fizzy drinks. The first view is very hard to challenge without sounding like an extreme political activist, because it's such a widely accepted concept, in the medical establishment as much as in the media. However, the second can more readily be countered with facts such as those presented in Parker-Pope's article:
I hope that people who believe in a moral obligation to lose weight can at least accept the body of scientific data showing it's a pretty major undertaking. There are plenty of people who fall somewhere on the spectrum between irredeemably greedy and lazy, and committed enough for an hour's exercise every day coupled with watching every calorie and keeping yourself constantly hungry. For a naturally thin person, simply eating reasonably and not being a total couch potato may well be enough to keep them thin. So it's easy to assume that all fat people get that way by stuffing their faces constantly with sugary, fatty food and never doing any exercise at all. In fact, for a naturally fat person, simply leading a generally healthy lifestyle with a reasonable diet will probably keep them fat; they need to follow quite an extreme regime to get and certainly to stay thin.
gool_duck but now I can't find the link I was looking for, so perhaps it was somebody else?My point was going to be that I think it might be an interesting starting point for discussion with people who justify sexism because sex differences have a supposedly innate or biological basis. Eliot doesn't sound as polemically feminist as people like, say, Cordelia Fine or Deborah Cameron, both writers I strongly admire, but that's coming from the standpoint of someone who basically accepts their conclusions already. But since the article has now been hidden from public view, I can't discover whether I'm right that it might be more persuasive to a skeptical reader. Most annoying; I really do hate charging readers for access to scientific papers.
Anyway, the bit of my post that I'd already written compared Eliot's article with the NYT article about dieting that everybody was linking to at the end of last year. So I've put the half-written post behind the cut since I think the topic is still at least somewhat interesting even without the key point I wanted to make.
A couple of interesting articles picked up from Twitter recently. I want to make a note of them because I think they may be somewhat useful in communicating two issues that are important to me to skeptics. They're not going to convince conspiracy theorists or people whose whole identity depends on not accepting the relevant point of view, but I think they are likely to be more persuasive than activist polemic to people who are willing to examine the evidence with an open mind, but start out from being inclined against the conclusions. Also, both are good examples of summarizing a whole raft of scientific data in a concise article.
The first is the NYT article The Fat Trap, which pretty much everybody has been retweeting. If you're already on board with fat acceptance / Health At Every Size, you probably don't need this article and may even find it offensive (thanks,
j4). But I think it may be acceptable by an audience who are inclined to accept the conventional wisdom that being fat is unhealthy and everybody must try to lose weight at any cost. It doesn't really challenge that paradigm at all. Harding's article contains many of the same facts as Parker-Pope's, but it will scare off readers who aren't already on side, because it questions cherished assumptions, and also it's written in Harding's characteristic combative style. Parker-Pope takes it for granted that weight loss is medically and socially desirable, yet she reports clear evidence that sustaining significant weight loss is extremely hard for the majority of people, and that previously fat people who have lost weight do not have exactly the same health profile as people who were thin to start with. There is such a thing as a natural set-point for weight, and it is partly influenced by genetic factors. Conventionally, everybody "should" be as thin as possible. And conventionally, "all" fat people have to do to achieve this thin ideal is to stop being so lazy, eat less junk food and give up sugary fizzy drinks. The first view is very hard to challenge without sounding like an extreme political activist, because it's such a widely accepted concept, in the medical establishment as much as in the media. However, the second can more readily be countered with facts such as those presented in Parker-Pope's article:
to lose weight and keep it off, a person must eat fewer calories and exercise far more than a person who maintains the same weight naturally... [People who maintain a 30lb weight loss for more than one year]
are incredibly vigilant about maintaining their weight. Years later they are paying attention to every calorie, spending an hour a day on exercise. They never don’t think about their weight.
I hope that people who believe in a moral obligation to lose weight can at least accept the body of scientific data showing it's a pretty major undertaking. There are plenty of people who fall somewhere on the spectrum between irredeemably greedy and lazy, and committed enough for an hour's exercise every day coupled with watching every calorie and keeping yourself constantly hungry. For a naturally thin person, simply eating reasonably and not being a total couch potato may well be enough to keep them thin. So it's easy to assume that all fat people get that way by stuffing their faces constantly with sugary, fatty food and never doing any exercise at all. In fact, for a naturally fat person, simply leading a generally healthy lifestyle with a reasonable diet will probably keep them fat; they need to follow quite an extreme regime to get and certainly to stay thin.
