{"id":22601,"date":"2010-11-07T10:21:36","date_gmt":"2010-11-07T17:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=22601"},"modified":"2010-11-07T10:21:36","modified_gmt":"2010-11-07T17:21:36","slug":"no-this-is-not-a-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=22601","title":{"rendered":"No, this is not a joke"},"content":{"rendered":"

But it IS<\/a> another reason why I have no regrets about leaving academia:<\/p>\n

This is the first time that GWU has offered a class devoted specifically to Fat Studies, and its diverse enrollment is an important victory for the subject. Fat Studies scholars say their mission is to promote weight awareness and acceptance among populations of all types. The sociological study of obesity has been creeping into academia for over a decade, often as a subtopic of Women’s Studies or Health Sciences. But only recently has weight become a subject of study in its own right. “There would be no Fat Studies if there were no obesity epidemic,” says Esther Rothblum, a lesbian studies professor at the University of California, San Diego, and one of the earliest to research the psychology of weight bias.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, Esther, there would be no “Fat Studies” if universities didn’t recognize the importance of creating and legitimizing ever new grievance groups — and setting up “enemies” to those groups as foils — in order to pad their course offerings and fleece their students (or their students’ parents) out of thousands upon thousands of dollars for the privilege of a completely manufactured sense of self-righteousness (and the corresponding hatred for those who haven’t “studied” weight issues — and remain both its victims and<\/i> its perpetrators).<\/p>\n

It’s a scam.<\/p>\n

The only epidemic at issue here is the epidemic of grievance-mongering passing itself off as legitimate “scholarship.” A course on the psychology of creating and empowering ever more oppressed victim groups and the new politically correct vocabulary (and corresponding “hate speech”) that will grow around them — from conception through justification through architecture and departmental approval to social trajectory — would be far more valuable for students, particularly if what we are after is an understanding of how precisely “bias” plays a role in the academy.<\/p>\n

But then, that’s probably way too meta<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(thanks to Carin<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But it IS another reason why I have no regrets about leaving academia: This is the first time that GWU has offered a class devoted specifically to Fat Studies, and its diverse enrollment is an important victory for the subject. Fat Studies scholars say their mission is to promote weight awareness and acceptance among populations of all types. The sociological study of obesity has been creeping into academia for over<\/p>\n

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