i understand what’s tryna be said
but the wording comes across extremely dismissive and not a good look. also addiction/substance use disorder is a disability in itself and shouldn’t be on same level as literal sexual depravity/abuse of power/pædophilia/domestic violence.
Huey P Newton was a coke addict.
Franz Fanon beat his wife.
Lumumba was married to a child.
Bell Hooks slept with her students.
Nina Simone was abusive to her child.
Kwame Ture was a transphobe
Sorry baby but the revolution is filled with deeply flawed and imperfect people.
Two authors I will NEVER listen to any negative opinions on, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. Like I really do not care to hear what you have to say.
People need to admit that they don’t actually know anything about Maduro. They simply believe he’s the villain because their government told them so and they have an unquestioning belief in US exceptionalism.
I’m sorry about your discomfort. Waist pain on a bad bus is real.
But blaming fat people is misdiagnosing the problem — and misdirecting your anger.
The issue isn’t that some bodies are larger. The issue is that we’ve built a transport system that assumes a single, narrow version of the human body and then packs everyone into it because there is no alternative.
In societies with functional rail systems, wider seats, standing space, predictable schedules, and multiple carriages, people of different sizes coexist without this kind of daily humiliation and resentment. You’re not squeezed because someone is fat; you’re squeezed because the system is broken.
Unless the proposed solution is to remove fat people from public life, line them up and shoot into their fat bellies, (or force them to walk everywhere) I don’t see what targeting them achieves. That fat person beside you is also uncomfortable. Many of our parents and grandparents are fat. Many people gain weight with age, pregnancy, illness, or medication. Are they to be banned from public transport?
Also, let’s be honest: Nigerians are not built the same way. On average, Nigerians are bigger than many Europeans. Even within Nigeria, southern Nigerians tend to be heavier than Hausa or Fulani populations. Are we going to start designing public life around one body type and treating the rest as a nuisance?
What’s troubling is how quickly discomfort turns into cruelty. When we suffer, instead of asking why those in power have failed to provide humane public transport, we turn on the person closest to us, someone with no power to fix the situation.
The humane question isn’t “what do we do about fat people?”
It’s “why do we keep accepting systems that strip everyone of dignity and then encourage us to fight each other over scraps of space?”
If we care about fairness, the target should be poor infrastructure, bad planning, and lack of investment, not other human beings just trying to get to work like you are.
We can demand better transport without dehumanising people who are already sharing the same discomfort. And especially if you really are a lawyer, this is something you should think more deeply about.