darkemeralds | I should probably just shut up

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I should probably just shut up

BikePortland, a bike blog I read daily, had some good coverage today of an unplanned bridge closure affecting a whole bunch of bike-riding commuters (including me). The post elicited lots of comments, many of them straying into broader issues of city streets, traffic management and transportation.

Someone said "All of this insanity, just to put in a street car that's slower than walking and poses a major hazard to its faster and cheaper counterpart, the bicycle. But I understand though, fat people need a way to get to Next Adventure [a sporting goods store]!"

I thought for a couple of minutes, decided I couldn't stay silent, and responded:

As a person who doesn't meet your (implied) standards of acceptable physical size, can I just say how very sick I am of fat bigotry? Not to mention transportation bigotry.

I don't love streetcars either, but a) not everyone can ride a bike; b) not everyone who needs public transit is fat; and c) not everyone who bicycles every single day is (or gets) thin. I'm living proof.

So please check your privilege and reconsider comments that demean, hurt, and alienate at least one member of this community. Thanks.

Then I felt all skittish and scared for speaking up, afraid I was going to get reprimanded by the attractive thin people.

The trouble is, on a blog like BikePortland, I'm such an insignificant minority that nobody even bothers with that. I'm just an embarrassment. It's a weird spot to be in.

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Go you!

Thanks. Nobody ever comments back on that blog when I raise this flag, but maybe the message filters out somehow.

I do hope it makes an impact, and that you keep putting on your big girl pants and calling the douchenozzles on their douchery.

LOL!

Well, when you put it like that, how could I not?

Go you, I say, for speaking up. Because wow, that's a whole lot of fail in that person's comment. Heaven forfend that anyone with children, a disability, debilitating illness, lack of funds to purchase a bicycle/gear, or, yes FAT person ever inconvenience the special biking snowflake by riding a form of mass transit disapproved of by said snowflake.

Entitlement makes assholes even assholier.

My guess would be that the commenter is a very young middle-class person who hasn't yet run into any real issues of illness, poverty, or limitation.

Their implied point was a good one--that this incredibly expensive infrastructure push in Portland to build rail-based mass transit that serves tourists and the skittish at the expense of real public transit for real people in real neighborhoods. But boy did they blow it with the fat comment.

Special snowflake indeed.

I completely misread your third sentence for a second as '... anyone with a chicken, a...' and was already nodding before I hesitated and reread, LOL.

LOL! That conjures up the classic stereotypical image of "third world" public transportation, doesn't it?

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see someone with a chicken on a Portland bus. There are a lot of chickens around the city these days. A goat, now: that would surprise me.

As a fat person descended from a long line of fat people, brava to you for speaking out.

It's amazing to me how many slim people actually seem to take credit for their slimness, as if it's something they've accomplished.

Go you. As someone who's had limitations of varying degrees her whole fucking LIFE, I commend you for pointing out that there are many reasons people take transit. And hey, yeah, that some people are fat no matter what they do. And even if they are fat for "their own fault," they deserve respect too.

And here's another thing: the kinds of foods people who are poor can afford to buy tend to be fattening. A friend of mine who worked for a major hunger education organization told me there are mothers who feed their kids Coke because it's so much cheaper than milk. So I guess there are poor people who don't deserve transit, either.

Grrr. So many reasons to be angry about that post. I commend you for being a voice of humanity on that blog, even if you get no support there. They need to live by WilW's words: Don't be a dick.

I LOVE your icon of Fraser at his most politely instructive. It fits perfectly. And WilW's motto is one for the world.

I'm always troubled by the privilogic that thinness is an accomplishment and worthy of praise. I don't know anyone, anywhere, who was a fat person and has become a thin person. It may be true that some people gain some weight through bad choices that actually were choices (and your example of poverty-level food is a good example of where it's not much of a choice), but the statistics are pretty indisputable: people who tend to fatness stay fat, and people who tend to thinness stay thin. And NONE of it has any bearing on the inherent right to respect that we all have.

And as to transportation! This country seems to be systematically stripping away the public good of city bus systems and replacing it with streetcars and light rail that cost astronomically more per rider-mile served, while also not actually serving the riders who need a ride the most.

Wait, what's wrong with streetcars? Though as far as I understood Portland already has one of the best streetcar systems in the US, so maybe it's perceived as more streetcar than Portland needs?

Nothing's really wrong with streetcars--they're kind of nice. But they're incredibly expensive to build for and totally inflexible once they're in. Mile for mile, if a city really wants to move people around, running regular buses on existing street surfaces is a much better transportation purchase.

Some cities--like Vancouver BC, as I understand it--have rubber-tire streetcars, more like electric buses, that run linked to overhead wires but aren't dependent on rails. Apparently they're a little more flexible and a lot less expensive to build for, but I'm not an expert.

Portland is tearing up streets and laying down rails while its bus system is suffering huge service and route cutbacks. The net effect is that lovely streetcars run in attractive tourist and entertainment districts and to and from the airport, while poorer people living in cheaper outlying areas have fewer and fewer options for getting to work--especially if they work evenings, weekends and holidays.

As a minor side-note, streetcar (and light rail) rails and bike tires are a dangerous mix, so I personally don't love riding in streets where traffic might force me into the streetcar lane. Fortunately, I can avoid those streets most of the time.

Ah, now there's a myth - not all thin people are attractive, LOL. Well done for speaking up though. I'm very much in favour of doing so at present. It's one of those odd etiquette dilemmas, though, isn't it. One feels that it almost ruder to draw attention to someone's rudeness than it was for them to be rude initially.

You're so right! The equation of thinness with attractiveness is so deeply ingrained for me personally that even when I stop to think about it, I fail to cut that connection.

In replying to the rude person on BikePortland, I was so tempted to say, "Hey, @so-and-so #14: Fuck you and the bike you rode in on!" but I exercised restraint. Go me!

Good for you! I'll be interested to hear the response.

Which reminds me ...

Which reminds you...? What'd I miss?

There's been no response. Every time I make a comment in this general area on that blog, it goes completely ignored. There is a ringing silence, the silence (I imagine) that precedes embarrassed throat-clearing and subject-changing after a social gaffe.

That's the kind of reader who mostly frequents BikePortland--young, fit, athletic, and sure they're right. I really do read it for the articles (which are excellent), but I get sucked into comment threads now and then.

It reminded me that someone was promised a response after offering a similarly unpopular opinion. I checked. Nothing has been forthcoming, despite three subsequent posts.

As for the young, fit, slender cyclists - perhaps they'll have absorbed something that makes them think twice?

Oh! *headdesk* Duh. Don't you just hate it when your elegant subtlety is wasted on a ditz-brain?

I can only hope that one or two people reading comments on that blog picked up a hint. I don't really need to educate people--I'm reacting more out of a need to speak than to be heard--but if education happens, that's good too.

I don't really need to educate people--I'm reacting more out of a need to speak than to be heard

Yes. That's something we rarely do, I think. Or we undervalue it because there's no concrete pay-off. Speaking even when we don't expect opinions to be changed by it is still worthwhile.

I applaud your courage and your restraint in that response to the schmuck. I have problems speaking up and then when I do speak up, keeping my temper. So, on both counts, go you!

Thanks. The beauty of the internet is that it does allow me to reconsider during that important moment between typing and hitting post!

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I should probably just shut up

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