Obesely Obese Obesity

So, evidently Wired Magazine has decided to define "fatosphere" thusly:

Fatosphere n. A blogosphere of the obese, by the obese, for the obese. Often designated "no-diet zones," fatosphere blogs seek to counter medical claims that obesity is a health epidemic.

Never minding the limiting of the definition to just fat bloggings criticism of the "obesity" epidemic, I'm stunned that when defining the FATosphere, they refuse to call us fat. Nope, must use the socially approved slur of "obese" and use it as much as humanly possible. I'm stunned they didn't invent new forms of the word like an adverb "obesely".

Look, among the things fat blogs should be trying to accomplish is to get ignorant people to STOP calling use "obese". Its a loaded word. I've gone over this, before.

"Obese" medicalizes our bodies. It reduces us to being seen as diseased. Far more than "fat", it used to define us. And not even by our bodies, but by the state of failure and disease those are bodies are supposed to represent. Its like insisting on calling a gay person "homosexual", using the Latin to dehumanize people. Its not a nice way of calling us fat. Its an offensive way of calling us fat. And its worse than "homosexual" because the Latin origin of "obesity" is an accusation of gluttony. The word roughly means "on account of eating". Using the word makes a judgment against us. It reinforces cultural stereotypes and one thing fat blogs should darn well do is reject it and demand others do the same.

If you call me obese, you are not being respectful of me. I'll grant that a lot of people don't know any better, but that's not a free pass. Its a word of scorn and derision and it is disrespectful to call me or any other fat person "obese" or to talk about a state of "obesity". If you didn't know that before, fine. You do know, and I hope you'll act accordingly. I'm not "obese". I'm not "overweight". I'm fat.