I should probably just shut up

[darkemeralds]

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.

Comments

[writerscramp]

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.

[darkemeralds]

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.

[ravurian]

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.

[darkemeralds]

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.