General

The French are trying to introduce a new law to ban pro-anorexia websites, how long before people turn their attension the other way and try to ban fat acceptance and feeder sites?

Full credit to Facebook for not succuming to pressure so far. A spokesperson said the site supported the free flow of information.

"Many Facebook groups relate to controversial topics; this alone is not a reason to disable a group."

I don't support anorexia, I love BBW, but this is about freedom of speech and expression.

Yeah - this is a tricky one!

On the one hand anorexia is the only mental disorder that is fatal. Over a span of 10 years, about 10% of anorexics will die from the disorder. These are women mostly from 11 to 30 years old - dying in what should be the prime of their life. Assuming they survive - severe osteoporosis (loss of bone calcium due to lack of normal periods) is a likely consequence.

On the other hand, I may be shorting my life by 10 or more years by being 150 pounds over my "ideal weight". I'm taking blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol medication that I probably wouldn't need if I was svelte. I'd be willing to bet that I have more fun being fat though!

For people who are immobile - life expectancy could be a lot shorter, but I don't know the numbers for that one. Is becoming immobile on purpose a disorder in the same sense that anorexia is? Obviously I don't think I have a disorder, but neither do the anorexics! Denial is a wonderful thing!

So other than the free speech argument (which is valid!) and the "they'll be coming after US next" argument (also valid!) I guess you would have to figure in the "relative harm" to society. Does promoting anorexia through these websites cause more people to become anorexic? Does promoting Fat Acceptance through Fantasy Feeder cause more people to be fat? OR, do people just seek out what they are interested in?

I would have to say you would need to demonstrate a cause and effect relationship between the sites and increases in negative social outcomes. Unfortunately, most people (and governments) aren't that logical.

The French law is aimed to prevent people from encouraging anorexics to lose even more weight (effectively starting themselves to death), the equivalent for us would be someone encouraging a compulsive overeater to eat even more.

I wouldn't expect any of the good people on this site to do anything like that, and if we found it going on they'd soon get booted by the mods. However, I'm sre the British government will be watching with interest to see how the French law works out. Our recent anti-smoking laws followed on from similar laws first introduced in France. It would be a natural follow-on to consider extending it to cover extreme feederism at the same time.

This would lead to pressure to close sites like this down, or at the very least we'd all have to watch our backs to make sure that our feederism, 'encouraging others to gain weight', would not lead to prosecution.

My worry is that instead of the law being applied to protect vulnerable people with eating disorders, it would be used by narrow-minded biggots to discriminate and persecute people like us because we don't fit into the accepted norm.

I think we're all missing the point, even though I'm close to a free speech absolutist.

I think the French government is going after pro=Ana websites so that they can look like they're doing something about the horrendous damage ideologies about body size and beauty do to girls and young women. If they wanted to have real effect, they would be better off mandating all runway shows to have models up to and including 100kg/220 lbs/15st. Or shutting down all beauty mags. (And for what it's worth, I think the studies on those connections are fairly clear, though PsyMan may correct me.) But since fat models and a world without beauty mags are not possible, the French govt is doing this pointless thing instead.

In this case, I don't think it has implications for sites like ours, because we aren't seen to be the cause of overweight.