Schoolyard names cruel, not hate crime

Discrimination based on looks is unfair, but hardly genocide

When I read how British MPs think that calling someone “fatty” or “obese” should be classified as a hate crime, my first thought was not that this is a ridiculous idea. That came second.

No, my first thought was: Are there actually adults who are calling each other names based on their physical characteristics? I thought we’d all outgrown that by the time we emerged from that horror show known as junior high.

Apparently not, though. The British government, perhaps tired of sitting around speculating on whether Kate is pregnant yet, struck an allparty parliamentary committee on body image to look into “appearance-based discrimination.”

In its report, entitled Reflections on Body Image, the committee called for “a review into the scale of the problem of appearance-based discrimination and how this would be best tackled,” including whether there should be an amendment to the Equalities Act, to prohibit discrimination against race, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc.

Rosi Prescott, chief executive of Central YMCA, which supported the parliamentary group, suggested that doctors shouldn’t even tell patients they’re obese.

“If they don’t feel overweight, and there are no health indications, what is the problem?” Prescott asked.

I don’t think doctors should be banned from using the words “obese” or “fat” or “beer belly” or “packing on the pounds” or whatever else they choose, in some weird effort to pretend the condition doesn’t exist. Why waste time on trivia? Let’s ban doctors instead from using words like “cancer,” “tumour,” “malignancy” and the like — and then maybe, those things won’t exist, either, and we’ll all live happily ever after.

Odd, though, that the committee would like to stop people from using words to do with being fat, but it has no qualms about people calling each other “skinny.” After all, skinny can be derogatory if someone prefers a body image that’s a little more zaftig.

But maybe zaftig will be offlimits, too.

Let’s see. We’re fighting a war on obesity, but Britain might soon make it against the law to name the enemy? And where will the line be drawn? Will people be able to use the expression “fat city” or talk about a cut of meat being too fatty?

If I’m living in Britain and I look in the mirror one day and say, “OMG! I’m getting fat!” will I then have to file a hate crime complaint against myself?

Yes, of course, this is all getting silly, but that’s the point. When you make everything a hate crime, then you’ve trivialized the real hate crimes and diminished their brutality by placing them on the same level as childish name-calling or, in the case of doctors, the use of medical terminology.

“Hate crime” is a very ugly term and it should be reserved for the ugliest of crimes. Section 318 of the Criminal Code of Canada sets out the definition succinctly: to “advocate or promote genocide” — of a group because of colour, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or race. Section 319 talks about inciting hatred in a public place.

A hate crime is what happened to University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, who was murdered in 1998 because of the way his killer felt about gays. A doctor telling a patient that he or she is obese and needs to lose weight is not committing a hate crime. The doctor is not advocating that all obese people should be killed; he’s telling his patient to slim down before a heart attack makes that patient a candidate for a quadruple bypass.

First of all, if adults are indeed calling each other names like they never evolved beyond the schoolyard, they need to stop it and grow up.

But more importantly, people should stop demanding extremist measures as a salve because they’re overly sensitive about the way ordinary language is used in civil society.