Legislators in Puerto Rico are debating a bill that would fine parents of obese children up to $800 if they don't lose weight.

I am so angry, y'all.  I can't even.

This is why I keep on writing about the abuse of fat children.  Because we live in a culture that has institutionalized the abuse of fat kids. 

We live in a culture that labels fat children as problems to be solved, not as children. Because if they grow up to be fat adults-- if they grow up to be like me-- that is a fate worse than death. 

First of all, the parents of fat children are already subject to abusive state interference.  Fat kids have been removed from their homes and subjected to court mandated and social worker enforced diet programs.

Fat kids are used as pawns in divorce cases- the non-custodial parent threatens the custodial parent with allegations of being abusive or neglectful (they offer the child's fatness as proof of bad parenting) to force a settlement that is less beneficial to the custodial parent. 

In one case, a mother was charged with felony child abuse after her super size fat daughter died.  Not a single person outside of her family cared about this child prior to her death.  Doctors did not run tests on her. Her physical needs to attend school were not accommodated.

Her family was poor and headed by a single mother, and not one single person was interested in helping them- not until after the child died. Then they were sure ready to help her mother into a jail cell.

Now, when we write it out in stark terms, this legislation in Puerto Rico seems very very bad. But please do not be fooled. This is going on every day all over the world.

Fat hate is playing out in the carceral system already. Puerto Rico is just a bit ahead of the game. 

Expect more of these proposed laws in the days to come.  I predict it as a miserable certainty. 

Here's what I want to know-- Where are you, the champions of freedom? Where are you, to protect the freedom of families to decide that they would rather not abuse their children?

Being poor makes you fat, and being fat keeps you poor. And $800 is a fucking fortune when you're poor.  Where are you, the anti-capitalist anarchist socialists?  No war but the class war, unless it's to defend fat people.

In a country where there is an extreme backlash against even the suggestion that there should be some kind of consequences for not vaccinating children against deadly diseases because of freedom of choice-- where are these supporters of choice and freedom? 

I guess I forgot about the part of "freedom" where it means- only for people we don't think look gross and weird.  

It's always pretty telling who gets to have freedom and who doesn't. 

**Read Tipping the Scales of Justice by Sondra Solovay for more information regarding the topic of criminalizing fat children and all topics involving fatness and the law.