Neo notes a phenomenon that may be familiar to some of you:

We’ve previously mentioned bizarrely emphatic and incongruous outbursts, the relevance of which to ongoing, often mundane conversations was hard to fathom, and which seemed driven by a compulsion to signal some imagined piety or status.

A more subtle and common example occurred in January, when the family headed out to a Burns Night dinner at a restaurant adjacent to the university. Before the food appeared, we were treated to a brief poetry reading courtesy of a local academic. I was tempted to roll my eyes at the prospect, but he did get the crowd in good spirits. Until a poem about food and good company was somehow given, as he put it, “a political edge.” And so, we endured a contrived reference to Brexit – implicitly very bad – and a pointed nod across the ocean to a certain president, who we were encouraged to imagine naked.

At the time, I was struck by the presumption – the belief that everyone present would naturally agree – that opposition to Brexit and a disdain of Trump were things we, the customers, would without doubt have in common. That the poem’s sentiment of friendship and community was being soured by divisive smugness escaped our local academic, whose need to let us know how leftwing he is was apparently paramount.

The subtext was hard to miss: “This is a fashionable restaurant and its customers, being fashionable, will obviously hold left-of-centre views, especially regarding Brexit and Trump, both of which they should disdain and wish to be seen disdaining by their left-of-centre peers.” And when you’re out to enjoy a fancy meal with friends and family, this is an odd sentiment to encounter from someone you don’t know and whose ostensible job is to make you feel welcome.

It wouldn’t generally occur to me to shoehorn politics into an otherwise routine exchange, or into a gathering with strangers, or to presume the emphatic political agreement of random restaurant customers. It seems… rude. By which I mean parochial, selfish and an imposition – insofar as others may feel obliged to quietly endure irritating sermons, insults and condescension in order to avoid causing a scene and derailing the entire evening.

The analogy that comes to mind is of inviting the new neighbours round for coffee and then, just before you hand over the cups to these people you’ve only just met, issuing a lengthy, self-satisfied proclamation on the merits of mass immigration, high taxes and lenient sentencing. And then expecting nodding and applause, rather than polite bewilderment.

Update, via the comments. Two additional illustrations of the same phenomenon:

You should chew your food until it is small enough to swallow easily,

The Guardian, paper of the enlightened, tells its readers how to chew food.

Also, open thread.

Update:

In the comments, via Darleen, behold the bedlamite dance.

In the comments, Mr Muldoon steers us to this item of possible interest:

As the fat-positivity movement has gained momentum, so, too, have debates around how fat folks should lead healthy lives. [Sonalee] Rashatwar, though, considers how sizeism is affected by racism, misogyny, classism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism, and she counsels people against intentional weight loss.

Well, we mustn’t be practical. That wouldn’t be woke. And regaining viable proportions, such that one’s health is not at risk and one’s lifespan needlessly shortened, sounds way too much like work and responsibility. Instead, attention is displaced to a more theoretical, and conveniently improbable, project:

Rashatwar traces contemporary fatphobia to colonial brutality and how enslaved people were treated. Citing researcher-advocate Caleb Luna, Rashatwar said curing anti-fatness would mean dismantling society’s foundation: “I love to talk about undoing Western civilisation because it’s just so romantic to me.”

Hm. Lose weight, or topple Western civilisation? It’s the fat person’s eternal dilemma.

Ms Rashatwar is a “community organiser” and “Instagram therapist,” a self-styled healer and woman of insight, and is therefore not at all grandiose, self-excusing or pathologically unrealistic. And so, her therapeutic endeavours include posting “really, really political and radical content” about how terrible capitalism is, how terrible the police are, and how righteous it is to be obese and consequently to live with needless limitations and increasing discomfort.

Ms Rashatwar has chosen to blame her own health issues, including high blood pressure, on “weight stigma” and “white supremacy,” rather than on her size and prodigious eating habits. When not equating routine health advice with eugenics and “Nazi science,” Ms Rashatwar, a self-described “donut queen,” claims that “diet culture and fat phobia are forms of sexual violence.”

The being named Caleb Luna, mentioned above, has cropped up here before. Readers are welcome to ponder said being’s credibility as a “researcher-advocate,” an authority to cite.

Somewhat related.

In the comments, Mr Muldoon steers us to this girthy lady and her list of complaints:

Smaller plus-size people, please check your privilege. That includes a mid-fat like me who is FAR more privileged than folks larger than me. I’m honestly so sick of people including small fats and thinking that’s enough… and I’m sick of small fats not calling out the fact that they are the biggest people at the event/shoot/meeting or whatever it is. Fat people above a 20 exist, and we fucking matter. We deserve to be included and seen. Super fat people deserve to be included. Infini-fat people deserve to be included. Fat people of colour deserve to be included. Disabled fat people deserve to be included. We all matter too. Your body positivity isn’t shit if it doesn’t include us.

Setting aside the intersectional hierarchy of fatness – small-fat, mid-fat, super-fat and infini-fat – there is, I think, something odd about the chosen language. In woke usage, the word privilege implies arbitrariness, some random quirk of life, an attribute or circumstance unrelated to one’s own efforts or choices. As if becoming sufficiently vast to engage in fat activism, and bang on about privilege, were merely a matter of the planets aligning a certain way. As if anyone might become colossally fat spontaneously, overnight, with no warning, and through no action, or inaction, of their own. Which doesn’t sound terribly plausible. In fact, it sounds like an attempt to displace responsibility and thereby deceive.

Also, open thread. 

In niche eatery news:

A feminist-owned and operated cafe that made headlines around the world after introducing an 18% “man tax” on male customers will be closing its doors at the end of the month. Handsome Her, a vegan establishment located in Melbourne, Australia, will be going out of business on April 28, according to an announcement on its website.

It turns out that “brazen public discussions of structural inequality and oppression,” rules about women having “priority seating,” and serving turmeric lattes with macadamia milk, isn’t in fact the basis of a thriving business. Even in Brunswick, Melbourne. However, the empowered proprietors insist that the mockery aimed at their pricing policy merely “showed us how fragile masculinity is and solidified the necessity for us to confront and dismantle patriarchy.”

Via Orwell & Goode.