Ragen Chastain

Companies make unjust policies all the time, and they rarely change them except by public pressure.

A recent article claimed there are certain behaviors that gynecologists don't like in their patients. Here are some myths debunked about your trip to the gyno and some tips on when to fire them!

Alexa Moreno recently found herself the subject of a whole lot of fat-shaming on social media. Normally that would be no surprise since, sadly, there’s tons of fat shaming on social media every day (ask any fat activist), but this was a bit different, in that Alexa weighs 99 pounds — and is a gymnast who had just finished competing in the freaking Olympics.

In the face of funding shortages, Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has decided that patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above, as well as smokers, will be barred from most surgery for up to a year. But don’t fool yourself, this isn’t about health, or healthy behaviors – this is about money, and it’s about the people in charge deciding whose blatant oppression the general citizenry will tolerate. Years of campaigns suggesting that it’s fine for people to stereotype fat people and blame us for their problems have led to a situation where people are comfortable with us being denied the same medical care that they receive. And that should horrify you.

It is a very difficult and dangerous job, and it does require officers to have the ability to make good split second decisions. None of that should mean that it’s OK to be incompetent, or that we should all rush to justify, ignore, or excuse incompetence, racism, ableism, and the inappropriate use of force.

Fat shaming doesn’t have any positive outcomes, but it has plenty of negative ones. A study found that fat shaming leads to eating disorders for some girls.

NBC's The Biggest Loser might be cancelled after allegations of abuse and fat-shaming. Here's why it would be a GOOD thing if the show never aired again!

We could risk the mental and physical health of all the girls in the school by using fat shaming to try to control the way that they dress, or we could just let them wear some damn leggings. Seriously, how is this not a no brainer?

Reinforcing an oppressive sexism system so that you can get what you want is an option, but perhaps not one to be quite so proud of.

In the U.S., we are living in frightening times.