keryx: (cure)
[personal profile] keryx
If you haven't seen it yet, you should: at least one company cutting employees' pay for being fat. Apparently that's serious. I assume someone will press a legal challenge, but since fatness isn't exactly a protected -ness... Well, that's an argument in favor of the we-can't-help-it-fat's-just-like-gay position, right there [Leaving aside that fat is, in my mind, a lot like gay - a complex and individual combination of nature, nurture and choice just like many many other things].

The fucked up thing about the fat clause (which I don't expect will really take off, legal challenges aside - it doesn't seem like something most companies could sustain) is that it not only penalizes people for a -ness they may or may not be able to change, but it's not a -ness associated with disease. If I have normal blood pressure and cholesterol and reasonable activity and eating habits, I may yet be fat (indeed, as it turns out, I am), but have in no way increased health care cost (it's true - I get allergy meds once a month and generally don't even see a doctor more than once a year). Having no other indication of likely illness, I'd still get reduced pay unless I could lose weight, likely at the expense of my otherwise good health. That? Is just bad, expensive, corporate policy. Like, are we sure The Onion didn't report that? policy.

September 2020

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