Content warning Content Warning: Eating Disorders; Fatphobia
Like many current, and past community organizers, I struggle with the strategy behind myth busting. Debunking myths starts with repeating those myths. Doing so can seem like uncritically accepting an opponent's premise. Depending on the myth in question, it can also mean quietly assenting to debating the humanity of the community being discussed. And political researchers have long known that facts don't change our positions on social issues--human stories do. Most of us don't make up our minds on key social issues because we've reviewed all available research, looked at crosstabs, written executive summaries for ourselves. We make decisions about when and whether to support social issues based on their human impact, as it's presented to us. Those of us who aren't directly, personally impacted by those social issues are much less fact-driven than we like to think. Why, then, give these myths more airtime?
— You Just Need to Lose Weight by Aubrey Gordon (1%)
