*facepalm*

[sarah]

I'm here in Silver Spring, Maryland with reginagiraffe and synecdochic, having dinner at a Chipotle. Syne popped into the ladies, only to find the handicapped stall occupied by a very thin woman, crouching over the toilet, vomiting with the stall door open.

Syne asked if she was okay -- if she needed help of any sort. "I'm fine," the woman said.

Well, that's debatable. And you shouldn't be occupying that stall, among other things.

Comments

[sami]

To me, very thin + puking at restaurant suggests a likelihood of A Problem, since if someone has a tummy bug or the like, they're generally going to skip going to restaurants, as a rule.

Of course, as a rule, I tend to prefer to consider the possibilities that someone has a genuine problem - which, if they're at the point of the technicolour yawn in a public place, it's pretty much guaranteed they have *some* sort of problem, even if it's just gastro - and take that into account, before deciding to judge people on the basis of disabled stall usage.

[maevele]

Unless it caught them by surprise, or it's first trimester all day sickness, or they swallowed a bug, or have some other Problem that meant they didn't get to leisurely decide which stall to yak in.

I puked in a lot of restaurant bathrooms while pregnant, even back when I was very thin, and I tell you, I hit whatever stall I could get to.

Also, if it were bulimia, I doubt she'd have left the door wide open. Generally if I have a spare second before hurling, I'll try for privacy, so I would think if I were puking on purpose I'd take the time to shut the door.

[sami]

It depends... sometimes, bulimics will be a little bit deliberately obvious about it, in the desperate hope that someone will notice, and intervene.

Sometimes it's the only way to cry for help.

Regardless, though, it's pretty much guaranteed that if she's hugging the porcelain, *something* is wrong, because nobody yarfs their lunch for the sheer fun of it - and if they do, that's a problem in itself - and for the various reasons already mentioned, you take your least horrible option for stall.

[amadi]

But that doesn't mean that she wants or needs assistance from a stranger. Maybe she didn't have the opportunity to lock the door before losing her lunch, the lunch she thought she could stomach (she might've had something like just plain rice or chips) and just wanted to finish puking and go on home or back to her office without a lot of fuss. No one knows the circumstances which put that particular woman in that fast food restroom at that time.

It is especially troubling, body policing, sizist and ableist to even entertain the assumption that because someone is very thin and vomiting, that it's evidence of an eating disorder. Statistically speaking, more than 99% of people who vomit on any given day do not have bulimia.

[sami]

... Wow, derailing much?

No, she probably wouldn't want help from a stranger. Maybe she was there with a friend, maybe all sorts of things. My point is rather that I find it preferable to take into consideration all the possibilities of what could be the problem and consider the worst-case scenario before passing judgement on people. sarah is, in the post from which this thread derives, apparently assuming that the "very thin" woman puking in the bathroom has no right to be using the disabled stall.

Congratulations on finding a high horse to jump on, though, well done. In keeping in mind that other people may well have serious problems and therefore shouldn't be judged for not having a visible, approved disability, and pointing out what kind of problems they could very well be, I am clearly being viciously cruel to this woman I have never met or laid eyes upon.

[amadi]

Bringing up bulimia was ableist, and the first derailing. The word should never have been brought into the discussion.