Wait, What? Some BS I Heard on the News Lately

I just wanted to take a second to write about two pieces of BS I heard recently.

The first was a report on NPR where they found the "cost" of being fat. They threw out some figure, in the $4,000 range/year, I believe. They said that is what it cost to be an overweight woman in America. In their figure they included medical bills due to weight related conditions, lost wages due to time off because of weight related conditions, and the wage gap associated with being fat.

See the problem? We're telling someone who is fat, "Hey, fattie, if you'd lose some weight, people would pay you more" instead of, "Society unfairly penalizes fat people with wage discrimination." SIGH. Victim blaming is everywhere, isn't it? Oh, and fun fact, the "cost" of being fat is about half as much for American men. What a great illustration of the intersections of -isms. (I'm not even going to touch the questionable way they probably decided what were "weight related conditions" and the whole health/fat relationship.)

The next is a report I just heard on ABC News about a real "modern family." The segment profiled an affluent, married mixed-race gay couple who just had triplets via an egg donor and a surrogate. In the process of telling their story, they explain that they hadn't expected three embryos to take, and their insurance company told them that to cover the pregnancy, they would need to eliminate down to twins.

One of the men explains how he could have never done this, and the experience made him realize that this was a life and "changed his whole perspective on abortion."

Steam nearly came out of my ears. Honestly, does this rich dude who made an extremely expensive and conscious decision to have babies think his "choice" is anything comparable to the average abortion? Seriously? Let me review, he's a rich, married, supported, established, older man who had been trying to have kids with his partner using various surrogates for years. He has the luxury of an insurance company that had offered to cover a surrogate pregnancy at all (never mind the number of babies involved.) He wasn't coerced into sex. He didn't have his method of birth control sabotaged. He was ready for kids, not trying to pursue an education or career, or hell, even just uninterested in a family. He doesn't even have a freaking uterus. Wait, have I mentioned that he's rich?

I'm sorry dude, you're experience is not relevant to abortion rights.

Get over yourself.

Ok, had to get that off my chest. G'night.