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

[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.