It looks as if cultural chauvinism is alive and well. The worldover, it’s not just the tone of one’s skin, or the (form of a) religion by which one holds, which causes folks to create tiered levels of interpersonal response, but other demographics, too, seem to bring to the fore hidden loathing. For the sake of this piece, I am referring to those stimuli as “contemporary fs,” especially as bigotry based on “contemporary fs” is made manifest by young female adults, in general, and by young female adults, empowered in medical situations, more specifically.
Note: my intent in giving over this topic is not to lower public opinion of a particular demographic, but to raise awareness of the nature of and of some of the likely causes of malicious interpersonal communication. I hope, as well, that this writing helps to decrease tolerance for such ill-treatment. Vindictiveness in a medical emergency can be perilous.
Recently, while undergoing important procedures, I encountered many women, all of whom appeared to be in their twenties, who meant for me to submit myself to unnecessary hardships and embarrassments, and, in some cases, even said as much about their intentions by using the word “suffer” conspicuously, and by pointing out that I literally embody “contemporary fs.” I am, b’ayin tova, a fat, frumpy, in-your-face, female, who is well past fifty. I am aware of my body and of my soul. I am neither afraid nor unable to articulate my feelings about myself and about my need to receive adequate care.
People like me, not deliberately, but remarkably, intimidate people who don’t like themselves and/or who constantly worry about how they stack up in the social milieu. As a result, people like me are often subjected to poor treatment. In medical and in other emergency situations, this sort of response, on the part of care providers, is not only unethical, but it is also dangerous.
To understand why people like me are apt to receive inadequate and risky attention from young, female providers, and to understand why the purposefulness of that wrongful tending gets articulated and even vindicated, by them, to their would-be victims, it’s necessary to grapple with the social and psychological nature of “contemporary fs.” It’s also necessary to explore how self-loathing, broadcast through actualized prejudice against women composed, at least in part, by “contemporary fs,” frequently causes serious medical abuse. For starters, this week, let’s look at the nature of “contemporary fs.”
“Female.” It still seems that if a person is missing a certain appendage, that person is an “other than,” i.e. is a substandard human being. Ironically, almost always, the worst offenders, the individuals that most habitually and most severely act on that prejudice, are women. Such gals try to compensate for their mistakenly perceived inferior social status by acting or speaking disrespectfully toward other females; they wrongly think that such bad-mannered actions will curry favor, for them, in men’s eyes. They mistakenly believe, too, that they need to look to just half of the population for their public standing.
“Frumpy.” Likewise, it seems that people are judged by the way they look and act. Less-than-sagacious individuals assess folks based on costuming and on poise. In this matter, too, young women try to ingratiate themselves to men. Either they emulate men in dress or they stress, via showcasing, the ways in which their female bodies differ from those of males. Women, who neither garb themselves in male clothing nor who explicitly flaunt their secondary sexual features, it follows, get dismissed, by those insecure, female judges, as close to worthless.
“Past Forty.” Although mature people often evolve into selves that reject social anxiety, younger people, many times, allow themselves to feel troubled by social vulnerabilities. To wit, the same insecure women, who make an exhibit of their physical femininity and who insult the femininity of self-secure females, employ deceitful communication about self-secure females in the hope that such rhetoric will manipulate their male counterparts into adoring them, the insecure women, and, consequently, into prompting them. They disdain the natural changes that occur in all humans not infused with plastic and see no harm in misrepresenting others as long as the end that is served by such misrepresentation is an improvement in those insecure persons’ (perception of their) social station.
“Fat.” Not only do self-doubting women shave what is naturally lush and undress what is supposed to be kept private, but, in their inflated attempts to please men, many of them also engage in an array of disorders that render them androgynous. It horrifies those gals, the ones who are possessed of distorted body images, to have to interact with woman that are comfortable in their own skins, including and especially with women that are comfortable with a life’s worth of accumulated adipose tissue. Although a shift in the ratio of lean to other mass is a change that necessarily comes with healthy middle age (and that helps to prevent, when not excessive, grave problems such as osteoporosis), those frightened gals see all corpulent women as harbingers of their own social doom and try, perhaps subconsciously, to impair them accordingly.
“Full-of.” Dissonance abounds when unconfident people encounter people who are self-assured. Per the former’s system of classification, the latter ought to be at least as cowed as are they, and perhaps, ought to act even more nervous than them because such “losers” are “missing desired qualities.” Yet, we flesh and blood individuals of the assertive sort often fail to match such expectations, leaving our self-appointed judges with two choices. Either they can change their perspective, accept us as we are, and rethink their view of themselves, or they can act in ways to suppress us, to stifle our confidence. Sadly, because of the distress caused by internal discord, most anxious persons resort to bullying. They act to “take down” people rather than to face their own views’ consequences. This truth is especially found in young women, who attempt to deprive the faculties of older women that have palpable self-esteem.
In brief, socially apprehensive women do not embrace people who are like me, who are complete with “contemporary fs.” Unfortunately, such women feel it is within their rights, even in medical situations, to execute spitefulness because people like me unintentionally unnerve them.
Next week, I will detail the poor circumstances, in which I found myself, at a triage center, at a hospital, and in the main office of a kupa, at the hands of young women with esteem issues. To the chagrin of those frightened souls, the individuals who responded to my complaints of hazardous treatment, were, in every case, middle-aged or older men, the very people whose opinions those girls were trying to flip by acting cruelly.