  I was interested in finding out what someone's reasons might be for posting an insulting comment to my new blog, and I'm grateful to my correspondent for not ducking my question.
His or her response began: "An insult just seemed fitting. I read your entry and reacted. The anonymity of the Internet removed the usual societal norm, which makes most people tolerate fat people. " One of my reasons for publishing this blog pseudonymously was to embrace the anonymity of the Internet.
People who know me well may be able to identify me – I have mentioned my first name, and Rainbow Fury is not a new pseudonym – but I have not publicised the existence of this blog very widely. I am writing here on a single issue, and don't intend Concentration to become a general blog about what's going on in my life. The only people I have expressly told about its existence so far are those whom I know to be supportive.
I expect to tell more people about it as time goes on, including those whom I have experienced as less supportive. I also know that other people may come across it by other means than my own word of mouth. I set it up that way on purpose. Happenstance is a wonderful thing. Having said all that, I find it hard to understand how an insult can seem like a fitting response.
I can certainly appreciate the existence of a reaction, and I'm pleased to have provoked a series of responses that I can engage with. I do understand someone's honest feelings of disgust (which is my interpretation of the source of the reaction), and I'm honestly pleased that it's out there, in the open, where I can see it and feel its impact. More than anything, I appreciate the fact that this person and I are now having an open dialogue.
Winding back to the original insult, though: I'm concerned about what it is that facilitates the expression of an ad-hominem comment like that from behind a cloak of anonymity. Is it only the existence of societal norms that allows fat people to be tolerated? If such norms were to be dissolved overnight, would the larger bodied amongst us be unanimously villified? My hunch is that the answer would be no. I think it is the very existence of societal norms that allows minorities to be oppressed. Norms which, in 1950s America, held that black people were inferior to whites; or, in 1930s Germany, that Jews were inferior to Aryans.
Even today we can see many forms of oppression that are sanctioned by societal norms. If a toddler should point at me and make a comment about the fat lady, I appreciate this innocent reaction far more than the knowing shushing of its mother. It is that very shushing which plants the seeds of perceived wrongness in the toddler's mind. The child learns two things: overtly, that it is wrong to comment about someone's fatness; and, covertly, that it is wrong to be fat. If there were any way in which societal norms could convey the former without the latter, I would be in favour of them.
As it is, I am not. So I publish anonymously on the Internet, and I welcome anonymous responses. I embrace the existence of a society in which all the usual norms are set aside. I believe this place can foster exploration and growth, precisely because of the lack of those controls. And I'm willing to test that belief. 
