From: avery@netcom.com (Avery Ray Colter)
Subject: Re: CHOOSING to be attracted to someone
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 92 23:19:41 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

sheryl@seas.gwu.edu (Sheryl Coppenger) writes:

>Oh, come on.  Attitudes don't happen in a vaccuum.  The media play
>a big part, and laws play a big part.  Both can condone an attitude and
>make people more willing to express it.  Think about how much attitudes
>have changed about SO many things just since the 50s.  WE are shaping
>today's attitudes and the attitudes of the future.  The question is,
>how many of us will recognize and exercise our power (limited thought it
>may be) and how many will just roll over and die?  

People made the writings in the media.
People made laws.
People made newsgroups like alt.support.big-folks. :)

Sure, attitudes don't happen in a vacuum, but to try to make a deterministic
interpretation of it all seems to me like trying to write the equation of
motion for more than two bodies affecting each other by the inverse-square law.

And I'm still wondering who condoned my attraction for large women, at least
at the time that I was resolving to myself, "alone and in a vacuum" (or so it
felt), to own my feelings and defend them as best I could.

I CAN make myself attracted to a thin woman physically if I REALLY have to.
But there's just something a little cold about MAKING oneself be attracted
to someone.

Our own power includes the power of boundaries. Not only defining them,
but raising the defenses without which the definitions are easily violated.
There is as much danger in being too open as in being too closed.
Applying that fact to this case might strike some as ridiculous, but
I have to do things which don't please everyone. And frankly, it seems
at times like "peer pressure" is at work yet again with the idea that
since everyone's body is beautiful to SOMEONE, that everyone's body can
be attractive to EVERYONE who follows some mind-cracking procedure.

>I'm not so cynical as Avery.  I don't think we have to replace one fascism 
>with another.  

Whoa, I'd better go back and see if I fell asleep while writing.
I thought I had written that others' attractions don't upset me,
so long as they don't try to enforce them on me. If I gave the
impression of wanting to make society glorify fatness and denigrate
thinness, that is definitely not what I was thinking. For one thing,
it would be rather hypocritical and self-injurious on my part for 
nothing else than the fact that I'm "of the thin race". Someone else
is perfectly free to tell me of their ways, to be proud of them, to
tell me how it enriches their lives, to explain in this case what
"physically attractive" means to them or if it means almost nothing to
them. But the final word on whether I choose to change my ways is mine.
Otherwise the opportunity for fascism does indeed raise its ugly head.
(Uhhh, assuming we have a consensus that fascism is ugly? ;) )
Unfortunately, I'm beginning to wonder who is worse, those who used to
try to convert me to being attracted to thin women, or those who are now
trying to convert me to being attracted to every woman in existence. The
latter strikes me at times as the former with one step removed, namely
the exclusion of the attractions I presently harbor.

Please tell me what replacement of fascismi you feel I'm proposing.
I am unaware of proposing one fascism with another.
-- 
Avery Ray Colter ("Elfcat") - 	avery@netcom.netcom.com (IP 192.100.81.100)
(510) 656-1902          	"A R Colter" on America Online
"Heaviness is the root of lightness; calmness is the controller of haste"
Newsgroups: alt.support.big-folks