A fat person dared to get in my pro-life picture

[salex]

I'm in a fat guy-skinny girl relationship. Generally people assume that I'm with him due to some ulterior motive, because a thin woman cannot POSSIBLY find a big guy attractive. :roll:

I've been the fat girl in the relationship with my hubs, who has ranged from fat himself to thin (32 inch waist) and often just barely plump (44 jacket when a 42 is more the norm.)

I've had people ask me how I ended up with him. Nice. I once was sitting on campus when I was a grad student, and a plump girl came in with a nice looking guy, kissed him goodbye and bebopped off. One of the girls seated near me said to her friend "Shit like that makes me want to kill myself."

Basically, I think the whole world is mad......

[yetanothermeg]

Every time I see this thread title I start chuckling. I'm pro-life!!11!........unless they're fat, then fuck 'em.

[salex]

Every time I see this thread title I start chuckling. I'm pro-life!!11!........unless they're fat, then fuck 'em.

Ask the prolifers if they would abort if they could do genetic testing for obesity and/or being gay and see if they might pause... IN their circles, they are martyrs if they have a child with downs syndrome or some other genetic issue. They are bad parents if they have a fat kid or a gay kid, because those things "can't" be genetic, and if they are, these kinds of genetics can and must be overcome with willpower.

[noni alabaster]

I just spent most of my day riding a city bus because my husband keeps calling me a bulldog. I weigh in at 135, at 5 feet and four. I lost a bunch of weight a few years ago, and my face didn't turn out so well. I went from 163 to 103, then back to 135. Still not skinny enough for this guy.

[Effie]

I just spent most of my day riding a city bus because my husband keeps calling me a bulldog. I weigh in at 135, at 5 feet and four. I lost a bunch of weight a few years ago, and my face didn't turn out so well. I went from 163 to 103, then back to 135. Still not skinny enough for this guy.

What, why do you let him call you that?! How disrespectful! I would tell him to get lost in the forest*.

*That's a Swedish, secular euphemism for "go to hell".

[Effie]

Miss Laura is something that we would call fjortis here. Fjortis is referring to fjorton (fourteen). A fjortis means someone who is either fourteen, shallow and stuck-up, or someone who never left the typical "fjortis"-stage and still acts like a self-centered fourteen-year-old. Yes, Laura is very much a fjortis.

[formergothardite]

She has still not put back the "I was wrong" post and is instead posting about how she "gleans" knowledge and shares it on her blog. I wonder if she "gleans" knowledge from others like David "gleans" pecans?

[alba]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22294205

I know it's a while back in the thread now, but I saw this article about voluntourism in the news today and thought Laura should read it.

[formergothardite]

Well, she has decided to give up blogging for the summer. And she is still going on about us. She says in one of her more recent posts that bloggers should approve snarky comments except if they are from people who are members here. She claims they are cuss filled, scoffing and foolish. I know that several members here left her comments that were none of those things, but I'm pretty sure her pride still gets in the way of her admitting she was the one in the wrong with the situation here, not us.

[Jezebel]

I haven't given her so much as a thought in weeks. When she's not exposed to people unlike her, and thus given a chance to show her ugly true colors, she's boring. Whatever pretense she made of breaking loose from the fundie mold she was raised in was exactly that--just talk, the kind of thing I'd expect of an immature, sheltered teenager who didn't want to risk real disappproval or negative consequences.

Her blog's a snoozefest--too dull to bother snarking until she craps on the rug again. So I can't imagine who might have enough interest in it to leave her profane comments.

ETA: As for quitting for the summer, she'd be better off quitting until she actually has something interesting to say, based on real life experience. As it is, she shows one of the prime occupational hazards of being a SAHD--her world (inner, as well as outer) is too small and her life experience too limited to keep providing fresh, interesting things to write about.

[Guest Anonymous]

I've checked in on her blogs every once in a while. I don't bother to read the book reviews and there hasn't really been anything interesting enough to snark on. However, there was a comment war (I don't know if that's the right term) on her missionary blog a few weeks ago. I watched it unfold and commented on bits and bobs. It was about respecting other people's religious faith (or not respecting it). Ofasingleheart deleted all of the comments and wrote a blog post about it on her main blog. The funny thing is, the argument she wrote about was several steps removed from what had actually happened and she included a bunch of fake quotes. I haven't really thought about it since then, but I've decided to take anything she says about the mean, mean commenters with a huge grain of salt.

[littlemommy]

Her post on the downside of blogging was not half bad, actually. I was thinking, hey, not bad, but then I got to that oh-so subtle Free Jinger dig. Boo. It knocks down your maturity quotient a bit.

[formergothardite]

If there is anyway that she could be in the wrong, she resorts to lies and half-truths.

[JMarie]

ofasingleheart.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-04-30T21:27:00-04:00&max-results=7&start=14&by-date=false

2. Men are equal to you, but you are also amazingly unique. God made us both in his image, and anyone who tells you that you are lesser than men is a liar. Your role as a woman is beautifully, amazingly powerful, but it is unique. You don't always have to be doing what the boys are doing.

"Men are equal to you," so women are equal to men? Isn't that feminism?

[Maggie Mae]

I think she means "separate but equal" which we all know isn't.

[DefraudedByPlaid]

ofasingleheart.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-04-30T21:27:00-04:00&max-results=7&start=14&by-date=false

"Men are equal to you," so women are equal to men? Isn't that feminism?

How dare you use the f-word?!?

[Nothing2CHere]

ofasingleheart.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-04-30T21:27:00-04:00&max-results=7&start=14&by-date=false

2. Men are equal to you, but you are also amazingly unique. God made us both in his image, and anyone who tells you that you are lesser than men is a liar. Your role as a woman is beautifully, amazingly powerful, but it is unique. You don't always have to be doing what the boys are doing.

"Men are equal to you," so women are equal to men? Isn't that feminism?

But if I want to do what the boys are doing, there should be no reason I can't.

[Jezebel]

ofasingleheart.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-04-30T21:27:00-04:00&max-results=7&start=14&by-date=false

2. Men are equal to you, but you are also amazingly unique. God made us both in his image, and anyone who tells you that you are lesser than men is a liar. Your role as a woman is beautifully, amazingly powerful, but it is unique. You don't always have to be doing what the boys are doing.

"Men are equal to you," so women are equal to men? Isn't that feminism?

She doesn't seem to understand what "unique" means. It means singular, one-of-a-kind, unrepeatable.

I have this life, here on earth. I have specific talents, abilities, dreams, and ambitions, and in combination with my temperament and personality, these contribute to my "uniqueness." Nobody else is quite like me, nor am I interchangeable with anyone else.

To insist that I have a specific social and economic "role" to play, based solely on my biological sex (as well as limited by it), diminishes my uniqueness. In my case--I never cared about getting married, never wanted children, and felt it was my calling to pursue educational, creative, and career ambitions rather than domesticity or playing a supporting role to anyone else--attempting to fulfill that sex-linked role would run counter to who I am. I would have to negate who I am--my own uniqueness--in order to fill that role. And when that role is the one every woman is meant to fulfill, that negates the uniqueness of all women.

I am not lesser than any man. If men are allowed individual callings, missions, and professional ambitions, then so am I. If I am not lesser to men, then there is no valid reason why I should submit to them and work in a supporting role to their life's purpose while squelching my own. I am not here to serve a "complementary" role to someone who happened to be born with a penis, at the expense of my own desires, my own calling. I am not here to let my talents go half-used, or unused, so that a man can better use his.

There are a lot of things "the boys" often do that I don't want to do--so I don't, because I don't have to. What others might think of me for that is irrelevant; this is my life, and I'm the one who has to live it, and I've got a strong enough sense of my own worth and what is right for me that irrelevant opinions of busybodies don't matter. If I want to wear a pink frilly dress, I can wear a pink frilly dress. If I want to get out all my power tools and build a shed in the back yard, and drink beer while I do it, and hire a male helper and tell him what to do, I can do that (though I won't wear the pink frilly dress because it's a safety hazard--but I suppose I could). If I want to start a new business, and work 80-hour weeks to get it launched, and hire a cleaning lady to do all the domestic chores, I can do that. If I just want to hire a cleaning lady because I hate housework, I can do that, too--I'm not failing in my "womanly role."

If I have a "womanly role," it's to live the life I genuinely feel led to live, while treating others with honesty and fairness, and doing what I can to make sure the world is a somewhat better place for my having been here--and do these things while, coincidentally, occupying a female body. That's it. If there is a creator God who really wanted me to follow "separate but equal" gender complementarianism, he wouldn't have made me this way, nor the countless other women who want a life beyond housework, children, and submitting to a husband.

Like a lot of the complementarian gender-essentialists, I suspect LauraLea has a tremendous anxiety and self-doubt at the idea of going out into the wider, secular world and accomplishing things on her own. Maintaining her worldview in college? Dealing with finding work, and doing well in the workplace? Dealing with men, dating, and sex? Not knowing what the future will ultimately bring, or if you will be happy and successful one day? Scary stuff, for some. So hiding behind the "God-given" roles of SAHD, then subordinate, dependent wife and mother offers a pretty convincing illusion of safety. Even her intended missions trip is low-risk--far lower risk than traveling for its own sake, on her own, with just a backpack and a list of hostels.

So whenever I see her, or even adult housewives with multiple kids, go on about a woman's "God-given role," all I really see is someone saying, "I'm scared of dealing with the world, and have exchanged subordination to a man for protection from it. And while I may be protected from what I fear, I'm not really happy--things haven't worked out as I expected them to, and sometimes that fills me with frustration, sadness, and anger. But I have no way out of this box--no safe, easy way that will protect me from criticism or condemnation--and I hate being wrong and fear failure, so I'm just going to keep insisting this is what God really wants, and that I'm right. And maybe if I do it loud and stridently enough, nobody will see how unhappy I really am, and what a mistake I've made."

[thoughtful]

I had forgotten all about this woman, until I decided to catch up with the "introduce yourself" thread in SOTDRT. Thought I'd look her up again.

She has a new blog, and she's in Africa, working with these people: rafikifoundation.org/OurWork/Villages/malawi.aspx

The mission of the Rafiki Foundation is to help Africans know God and raise their standard of living.

I'm trying to be kind, because she is still young, but . . .

Some highlights -- a prayer request right before she left:

Here's how to be praying:

-That I will make my connections in Toronto, ROME (that's the one I'm most concerned for), and Addis Ababa with time to spare. If you're in the Eastern Time zone, pray especially around 5-7 pm as that will be roughly the time frame I'm in Rome.

-That my baggage will arrive with me.

-That I will easily fit into the team and not struggle with my assignments.

- That Rome and Addis Ababa connections will go "miraculously well" and that I'll find some English speaking one to help me if needed.

- That Satan & the spiritual warfare that has been going on around here this last week or so will cease. Pray people who are involved will come to a saving knowledge of Christ.

- Pray for me that I will have faith and joy in the journey. Cross cultural life has frustrations and challenges of it's own.

She had several more posts with specific lists of prayer demands requests, but I won't bore you.

Dismissing or insulting others' ways of worship and physical traits still seem to be on the menu:

In case you are wondering, there are also a few Assemblies of God, a Methodist, a Lutheran congregation, several small "Bible Temples" (you get the idea, weird but Christian sounding names on signs slapped onto red dirt adobe houses), and then there are a couple of Catholics here and there who have a church outside of town. Mostly there are evangelical Christians in this area, but Presbyterians are the biggest evangelical presence here and the most organized and therefore reliable congregation.

A side note, I was genuinely delighted to hear from someone that Nazarene churches don't do well here and never have; the Wesleyan version of the "Christian life" doesn't do well at all, it is a Westernized type of "Christian" life that goes against realities of impoverished nations. The "let go" and "let God" and "surrendered" lifestyle are simply not needed- people don't sweat the small stuff here and appear to have a fairly good grasp on what needs worrying about. It proved to me that Wesleyan is a type of religion for First World countries as it tries to address concerns that petty, spoiled people might have.

Now, in Africa, you don't get to pick where you sit. When you come in, you just go as far up as possible and sit next to the person who has available room next to them. So, with combined English speaking and Tumbuka services, people not only sat down next to me as close as they pleased (putting your purse on the seat to give yourself some room is considered selfish and rude) - people kept cramming into pews. I was squished between Joanne and some woman who had obviously been cooking (her hair smelled like the evening does - African wood smoke). And don't forget, this is classic Africa. :-) What's deodorant? What's air conditioning? :-D

Has this trip led to growth, perhaps more of a focus on others?

One thing that I did today was an exercise as part of a Bible study. The challenge was to remember what you were doing one year ago and to marvel at things God has done since that day.

365 days ago, I was living for myself. I felt sheepish and foolish. I had no idea where Malawi was other than on the African continent. I had made the flag in high school as part of my social studies class. I never thought about Africa or Malawi, though. I didn't like the sound of it online when looking at Rafiki in Nov/Dec. I had not heard of Rafiki Foundation. All I wanted was to get married someday, be a writer, and serve Muslim immigrants on the side. I also believed some pretty strange things. :-P My world was centered on the benefit of me, what affected my walk with Christ, what made me happy, what made me content, what made me "fulfilled" and overall... it was a really small world. I sought the Lord, but it was always for what He could do to help me, love me, grant me, heal me, give me, or to do something for me.

Since that time, I've gotten a job. I wrote a full length book for girls that I don't even agree with anymore. I am living in Malawi, Africa by myself in my own house. My neighbors are sisters and brothers in Christ but total strangers. I have 96 kids behind my house who scream and shout in the afternoons. My electricity goes out on a regular basis. I have lizards in my house. I have seen spiders the size of my hand in my shower. I eat nsima and rice and beans most days and on the weekends, paneer this and naan that from all the Indian restaurants in town. I am doing things I had no idea how to do a year ago and had no idea that such tasks existed. I am teaching several classes to African kids. I sit on our side of the fence some afternoons and talk with children on the other side. I know many wonderful people that God has brought into my life who have spoken truth into my life.

At the end of the day, I get to kick back with a glass Sprite bottle, kill a few ants, and watch the big red sun go down behind the elephant rock.

So much deeper and less self-centered, eh? ;) Oh, and the bolding is mine -- makes them sound like a vegetable dish, doesn't she?

I hope this is not as bad as it sounds -- about the small children in her classes who can't pronounce her name:

(They are still working on my first name, which comes out with Rawraree and the teachers are tired of punishing them for saying the word wrong, so we've settled on Harriott for the time being)

:shock:

A handslap to SAHDs, from a very personal point of view:

ahopeandfuture.blogspot.com/2013/09/necessary-rebuke.html

Another handslap, to "short-termers" who only come to Africa to gawk and feel holy. Um . . . OK. Do we have a pot and kettle smiley?

ahopeandfuture.blogspot.com/2013/10/in-which-i-get-tough-on-short-termers.html

But OKTBT, you will be happy to hear that:

Scottish people are AWESOME!!! They have interesting lives and stories and are super humble about it all. I met the guy who was responsible for choosing the colors red and green on early cell phones.

ahopeandfuture.blogspot.com/

[formergothardite]

She always knew how to write things that made her seem better than most fundies. More open minded and less stuck on rules. But her actions here and on her blog showed that she did not actually believe or live any of that. She likes to be holier than though to fundies but basically she is a mean, self-absorbed little brat.

And what sort of horrible Pearl like ministry is she working for where they punish children for not pronouncing her name correctly?

[Sola]

She always knew how to write things that made her seem better than most fundies. More open minded and less stuck on rules. But her actions here and on her blog showed that she did not actually believe or live any of that. She likes to be holier than though to fundies but basically she is a mean, self-absorbed little brat.

And what sort of horrible Pearl like ministry is she working for where they punish children for not pronouncing her name correctly?

She's the perfect friend for Raquel.

[formergothardite]

The most amusing thing is that she found Raquel annoying and shallow. :lol: Coming here and offering to provide links to blogs of SAHDs that she knew(and most likely made her mad in some way) and the way she tried to get us to snark on her ex-friend who she had treated horribly is exactly something Raquel would do. They are birds of a feather but I think they would pluck each other bald if trapped in the same room together.

[OkToBeTakei]

Today I'm sad to be Scottish :cry:

[formergothardite]

Today I'm sad to be Scottish :cry:

But you are just so darn HUMBLE and AWESOME and you have cool stories!!! All of you, since Scottish people obviously are not individuals at all and are one big mass group that share the same personality traits.

[OkToBeTakei]

But you are just so darn HUMBLE and AWESOME and you have cool stories!!! All of you, since Scottish people obviously are not individuals at all and are one big mass group that share the same personality traits.

Yup. You know you are fucked as a race when fuckwits think you are cool.