blaming the victim

[firecat]

Someone on FB linked to a post from the blog You Need a Budget (YNAB) (which is a software product). The post is called "15 warning signs you're addicted to debt" and it references Debtors Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous. The post said this:
"Whenever I see an overweight person, I automatically assume they’re seriously in debt. Probably just a case of projection – but probably not far from true."

(I'm not linking to the blog but with that info you can probably find the post.)

My thought on the matter:

In fact the person might be right that fat people are more often in debt simply because fatness is associated with poverty, and if you're poor it's a lot harder to stay out of debt because you don't have the resources to deal with emergencies.

There is another connection between debt and fat: both are assumed to be caused by the behaviors of the individual and are assumed to be the sole responsibility of the individual to fix. But both actually have a lot to do with what the individual was handed in life—in the case of fat, genetics and the pressure to yo-yo diet can contribute; in the case of debt, socioeconomic status, and a society that increasingly preys on poor people and conspires to keep them in debt. (See http://strikedebt.org)

Comments

[wild_irises]

Have I mentioned recently that I love you?

Not only do I think this is a great post, but I was wanting to put in a comment about Strike Debt until I got to the end.

[firecat]

*happydance*!

Has Body Impolitic done a post on Strike Debt?

[wild_irises]

We did one on Rolling Jubilee, but not on Strike Debt per se.

[kshandra]

As I sit here with the cup noodle I am eating for lunch because poverty trumps nutrition, this could not be a more timely post.

[firecat]

{hugs}

[jodawi]

strikedebt strikes me as somewhat inept.

Frex, "First, send some angry letters to the reporting agency..." - I think angry letters tend to be less effective. Anger tends to harm the angry person primarily.

Also get annoyed at people who took out ridiculous housing loans while I thought "that's ridiculous, i'll stay a renter" and then want to be bailed out because how could anyone guess that years of talking about a housing bubble would indicate that there was a housing bubble in progress. However, I digress.

Also get annoyed at people not recognizing that much of the outrageous interest deeply in-debt people are likely to pay is going to pay for the losses associated with bankruptcies, where other deeply in-debt people got to escape from the nightmare by shifting it in part to others.

Have vague grandiose visions of replacing for-profit entities of all sorts with for-personal-satisfaction entities (which are much more practical than for-the-good-of-all-humankind entities). There really needs to be a "financially responsible" reporting system that doesn't penalize you for not being in debt or for not knowing that having an unused ancient account is better than not having it.

Plus or minus blah blah.

[firecat]

The thing I like about Strike Debt is their Debt Resistors' Manual. It analyzes the cycle of debt that people get sucked into and how it keeps them in poverty. Most of that hasn't anything at all to do with real estate loans. http://strikedebt.org/The-Debt-Resistors-Operations-Manual.pdf

I don't blame most of the people who took out the ridiculous housing loans that were being offered during the bubble, because education about loans is hard to come by. (I was privileged to get it at home, but I don't remember ever being taught about loans in school.) And because those loans were deliberately pushed to people who couldn't afford them and didn't understand them. The fact that people talked about the housing bubble for years doesn't impress me, because it's not a good survival skill to automatically believe everything people talk about a lot. I'm sure you didn't use "people talking about a housing bubble" as your primary criterion for staying a renter. You did your own analysis, because U R SMRT.

There really needs to be a "financially responsible" reporting system that doesn't penalize you for not being in debt or for not knowing that having an unused ancient account is better than not having it.

Yep.

[stardreamer]

When my now-ex and I were looking for a mortgage for our condo, we wanted a fixed-rate loan. We were educated shoppers, and knew that ARMs were a recipe for trouble.

Guess what? WE COULD NOT GET A FIXED-RATE MORTGAGE. There was literally no lender who would offer us anything but an ARM. The best we could do was one that had a 1% cap (that is, they could not change the rate by more than 1% per year). And they really pushed us to go for one with a 2% cap instead, dangling a lower initial monthly payment.

So y'know, it just chaps my ass to hear people blithely talking about how STUPID all those people must have been to take ARMs. You can't take options that aren't being offered to you! Add in predatory bank lending practices and lack of due diligence on the part of the lenders, and nothing about this mess surprises me one bit.

[firecat]

I couldn't get a fixed-rate loan either.

[johnpalmer]

Some people undoubtedly got a home loan because they were afraid of being permanently shut out of the market, and felt that the housing prices would continue to rise. And a great many people - minorities, especially - thought they were taking out standard loans and were given subprime loans instead. (In many cases, they *did* qualify for conventional loans.)

I can't say whether some form of bailout should be given, but changing bankruptcy law to prevent foreclosure when doing so doesn't harm the lender would have been nice. (e.g., if a person owes $150k on a house that won't sell for more than $100k, if the loan is modified to $100k, the bank doesn't lose anything.)

[firecat]

I like that idea.

[necturus]

Capitalism created the industries that promote negative self-image for profit; capitalism also empowers the financial speculators that are slowly bleeding us all to death.

[lilacsigil]

Not to mention that fatness is not infrequently a result of illnesses and/or medications needed for those illnesses, which also makes it more likely that the person in question is poor. In the US (without a proper healthcare system for everyone) this correlation is vastly more likely due to medical bills.

[firecat]

Excellent points.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Also note that the prejudice against fat people presumably makes it harder for them to find jobs.

[firecat]

Yep, that is part of the reason fat is associated with poverty.

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

what really puts you in debt are diets. First, you spend a lot of money on tiny portions of food in expensive packaging. Then you reward yourself with expensive new clothes. You throw out your fat clothes because you know you will never need them again. Then you gain weight and have to buy new fat clothes. Rinse. Repeat.

It's probably needless to say that people who think they can read your character by your weight infuriate me.

[firecat]

Ayep ayep.

[mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com]

I have an answer to it, but it's violent and nasty.

"Dewd, you're presuming I have no self-discipline. Nothing could be further from the truth. First, I had the self-discipline to learn how to kill with my bare hands. That's takes about five years of study. NOW I am showing self-discipline by NOT KILLING YOU even though I am enraged at your insulting, inaccurate and damaging assumptions."

[firecat]

Hahahaha!

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

hah!

[redbird]

In the U.S. today, that rude remark is likely to be true, for the same reasons that "whenever I see someone wearing socks, I assume they're seriously in debt" or "whenever I see someone with hair, I assume they're seriously in debt": if most people are in debt, then most fat, thin, bald, hairy, pants-wearing, skirt-wearing, or naked people will be in debt, because none of those attributes magically protects someone from being in debt.

The better question is, in the U.S. today, why does this person think "seriously in debt" is anything like a character flaw? It isn't even a neutral aspect of personality (such as liking movies or preferring blue pens to green), any more than "having been born after 1930" is an aspect of character rather than a statistical likelihood for a randomly selected person walking around an American city in 2013.

[firecat]

Excellent points.

[graymalkin13.livejournal.com]

Well put.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Whoever wrote that doesn't realize that what sie would call a "healthy diet" is EXPEN$IVE. As someone I used to know once said, "When you have $3 to buy groceries for the week, and that will buy 1 pound of meat or 15 pounds of potatoes, you eat a lot of potatoes." Starchy, high-carb diets are associated with both fatness (because they encourage it) and poverty (because those foods are the cheapest).

AKA "correlation is not causation" -- in this case, because there's a third factor operating.

firecat

[firecat]

Yes, Ellyn Satter's instrumental food pyramid: "Enough food" must be achieved before "instrumental food" can be a focus.

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/08/10/satters-hierarchy-of-food-needs/

And the third factor is not "lack of self-discipline," like the writer seems to believe.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

And healthy exercise takes money too. Time off work, gym or access to healthy outdoor area, even time/space for exercises in home, etc.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

I do agree with almost everything you're saying, except the conflation of "in debt" and "poor." A lot of people who have very large salaries are in a lot of debt because of poor spending choices, while poor people are in a lot of debt because they started out with a lot of marks against them.

Even when we're talking people with comfortable middle class salaries who are in ridiculous debt, though, it's still a societal problem - we've traditionally encouraged the taking on of debt as a way to "contribute" to society and the economy and we encourage a lot of mindless consumerism and "keeping up with the Joneses."

Not really disagreeing with much that you've said except that in some cases, debt is a choice, while I don't think body size generally is.

[firecat]

Good point, I had forgotten about such people. I read one of those money books, can't remember if it was Your Money or Your Life or The Millionaire Next Door, that talked about people in professional jobs who felt they needed to go into debt to afford expensive cars, houses in fancy neighborhoods, etc., because they felt those were required to present the right "successful professional" appearance.

[graymalkin13.livejournal.com]

My first thought upon reading this was, "There are a lot of fat people in this country, and there are a lot of people who are in debt. Of course there's going to be overlap."

Then I read all youse guys' comments and was like, "Right -- that too."