Dear Prudence: My Fiance' Is a Pig

[cereta]

Dear Prudence,
The man I’m about to marry is smart, successful, and affectionate. He has also always been fit and active. However, he has one serious habit that I cannot stand. Almost every day for the past year or so he has frequented an online forum dedicated to hating fat people. This forum features candid photos of the obese with cruel commentary, and members of this forum often gang up to bully overweight people on social media. It’s really a cesspool. My fiancé never actually comments on these postings or posts his own content, so he is not “actively” bullying anyone. I still believe visiting this site is repugnant and I don’t understand his attraction to it. I have asked him to stop reading these forums, but after abstaining for a couple of days he’s right back on them. He seems to think it’s harmless fluff and that the pictures are funny. How big a deal is his habit and am I right to object to it?

—Paranoid About Every Donut I Eat

Dear Paranoid,
Your fiancé sounds like a pig. You’re right that the site is repugnant, and the behavior of the people who frequent it is horrifying. But there is a difference between watching and doing, and the question of your fiancé’s obsession with this forum would be of a different order if he were actively shaming and bullying individuals. You are rightly disturbed, but I also think that instead of trying to ban his looking—which hasn’t worked—you should try to understand his attraction to this forum. Maybe there’s just an ugly, juvenile side to your fiancé, and here’s where he indulges it. Perhaps there’s a sexual component to his need to look. Before the Internet, people had to really work to explore the more furtive aspect of their psyche; now in a few key strokes you can enter a world that consists of people who share your fixation. When you initiate this conversation with him do so truly in a spirit of trying to understand. Tell him that this forum deeply bothers you and explain why his constant lurking on it disturbs you. Then say you want to know why this site is so important to him—while conceding that he is an adult who is free to decide his own browsing habits. After a candid discussion, you should have a better idea of how big a deal his hobby is for both of you.

—Prudie

Comments

[cereta]

You know, I have watched and even participated on web sites that I am not, in retrospect, all that proud of. But I'm hard pressed to think of a reason for the fiance' to be on this site that isn't pretty bad. If it's a fetish, there are much, much better sites. I also don't believe that you can engage in behavior like that online, even if you're only passively endorsing it, and not have it be a part of your off-line life. What if the LW gains weight? Has a child and doesn't take the weight off fast enough? What if they have a heavyset child? Hell, it doesn't have to strike that close: could you introduce your new co-worker/potential friend who's overweight to your fiance'/husband knowing what he might be thinking about her? Or that he might very well see it as his chance to post something on this board?

And how are you going to deal with it if he DOES become an active participant? Remember, theses people aren't just pointing and laughing: they're actively bullying people whose only crime is being fat. And fiance' thinks that's just "harmless fluff?" Think about that really, REALLY hard. Even if he never participates, he sees no harm in harassing people who dare to be fat in public. That's the kind of man you're marrying. Think HARD.

[vass]

How does she know for sure that he's not an active participant already?

And it's already affecting his offline life: she is Paranoid About Every Donut She Eats. His bigotry is already influencing her food choices.

[cereta]

You're right. I missed that. This is waaaay more of a red flag than Prudie's accounting for.

[recessional]

I think Prudie's advice is correct; I just have a very pessimistic idea of what she'll discover about him.

[cereta]

Yeah. I mean, talk about it, yes, give him a chance either to explain or see the error of his ways, but I'm not optimistic that she'll get anything but, "It's funny!" And that's when she's going to have to ask herself some really hard questions.

[amadi]

This is a flat DTMFA for me. The fiance is a willful bystander to people who are engaging in cruel and life-threatening behavior. Bullying kills people. He thinks it's funny. Whatever is loose in his moral wiring isn't going to be easily fixed and he's not a person who anyone should be planning a lifetime commitment to. Run, run fast, don't look back, and don't try to analyze his disgusting, dehumanizing little hobby, it's not worth it. He's already made his choice.