When philosophy professor and author Kate Mann sat down to write her third book, Does not shrink; She knew she was going to have a new experience. The Cornell University scholar and leading feminist has written two books on misogyny and male privilege, and this time she’s focused on a more personal issue: body size. I decided to work on it.
“I often had to stray from personal experience and dig deep into my history in a way that felt very raw,” she said. women’s agenda.
But writing it was also freeing. “That exercise felt like I was trying to raise my head out of embarrassment, meet the reader’s gaze, and ask, ‘You too?’ Regarding our bodies, especially how we have been marginalized and punished because of our body size. ”
Manet is widely credited with inventing this term. disgust, during the 2018 Brett Kavanaugh hearings. She was also threatened with legal action by Jordan Peterson, who was unhappy with her for calling his work misogynistic.
In January, Manet’s Eliminate shrinking: How to face fatphobia was released to worldwide acclaim. This book thoroughly examines the prevalence and perniciousness of size discrimination and argues against the structural oppression of fat people. We had the pleasure of interviewing Manet in between his busy touring schedule in the United States.
Jesse TU: You’ve written two books that are firmly grounded in feminist ideas. What made you want to write this book about fatphobia and turn inward about a personal topic?
Kate Mann: Because my first two books were Down Girl: The logic of misogyny and Title: How male privilege hurts women, Since the topic was about misogyny, I started getting asked a lot of questions about it. “Why are you interested in this topic?” After all, it’s a pretty demanding topic.
And I realized that I couldn’t really tell my story about misogyny without telling a story about fatphobia and its intersections. As one of three girls in a previously all-boys school in the year of integration, I encountered a lot of misogyny during my last two years of high school.
And the form it typically took was weaponized fatphobia against me, a chubby teenager at the time. I’ve been called a “fat bitch,” told to lose weight multiple times, and voted “person most likely to have to pay for sex” at a high school valedictorian. I have come to believe that what I faced highlights what many fat girls and women face in our society. It is the feeling that we are aesthetically, sexually, intellectually, or morally inferior because of our large bodies.
JT: I read this wonderful book. review In your book, you wrote that you decided in your life that you needed to “sort out your mind and your body for the sake of your daughter.” Has your feminism changed since becoming a parent of a girl?
KM: Of course. Thanks to the work of Kate Harding, Marianne Kirby, Leslie Kinsel, and many other wonderful authors, I inhaled her active life in the early 2000s. I was immediately convinced of the politics of the movement and, after being severely bullied in high school because of my weight, I saw great liberating potential in its message.
I wanted to be in solidarity with other fat people. But it wasn’t until I had a girl that I felt it was more than just a political belief, it was a personal obligation. I couldn’t bear the thought of her absorbing my own negative views about my fat body and looking at her mother. You’re constantly trying to shrink yourself down with various useless diets (spoiler alert, this doesn’t work).
I wanted to finally address the personal parts of my own body politics and resist the patriarchal norms and expectations enforced by the misogyny that I found most difficult to resist. So it’s a pseudo-obligation to stay thin, or at least stay thin, and never donate. I engage in projects that attempt to reduce my body size in order to become “good fat” and to avoid becoming a “bad woman” in light of the norms and expectations of a bankrupt patriarchy.
JT: How has your career as a philosopher and feminist influenced your views on fatphobia? Do you mention this in your book?
KM: Yes, I think there are a lot of tools in the feminist and moral philosophy toolkit that can be very helpful in dealing with the baggage of fatphobia fairly quickly. For example, the moral principle that “can means can”, that is, if you cannot do something, you are not obligated to do it, and the empirical premise that it is impossible for the majority of people to lose weight. Considering that fat people, this negates the idea that we are obligated to do so.
Similarly, feminist work around gaslighting has been a huge challenge to diet culture, even though many of us know, through incredibly solid scientific evidence and personal experience, that diets don’t work. influenced my belief that there is something that gaslights us and keeps us forever on the diet treadmill. Mostly to help people lose weight in the long run. But guilt and shame cause us to keep trying anyway, often leaving us feeling “crazy” for letting go of a project that is about to become smaller.
Fatphobia also involves harmful beliefs that fat people are less capable, less competent, and have less intellectual authority. This is because even though philosophy has the potential to help liberate fat, it has historically rarely played such a role, instead focusing on thin, white, non-disabled, cis It means we are kept at the door from this profession where people are in the majority. Hetman.
I explore this in a chapter on the intellectual aspects of fatphobia, using philosophical prejudice as a microcosm of what fat people face in so-called ‘thinking professions’ and wider society. For example, teachers believe that gaining weight will reduce a student’s academic performance, even if test scores remain the same. It’s pure bigotry and it’s really insidious.
JT: So your recent the cut By the way, you claim that we cannot understand or address misogyny unless we confront fatphobia. Could you please explain the reason?
KM: I think misogyny is an issue for girls and women who face the policing and enforcement of patriarchal norms and expectations. The most influential of these is that we are small, thin, athletic, lithe, feminine, and have thin skin. Be light, smooth, and supple. In other words, misogynistic expectations that our bodies conform not only to racist, ageist, transphobic, and ableist expectations, but also to fatphobic expectations. Exists. We are punished for disobeying and rewarded for moving closer to those (unattainable for most of us) norms.
I don’t think there’s a way to truly tackle misogyny without combating fatphobia. As a result, downgrading the fat body is a very powerful way of controlling people, especially girls and women. And we see it in horrifying misogynistic practices like “hoarding” and “pig roasting.” There, fraternity brothers compete in college to see who can bed the heaviest or fattest woman. Certainly men also face fatphobia. However, similar acts targeting men do not exist. I also think that fatphobia that non-binary people face is an important topic. I’m not in an ideal position to address this issue, but I hope other authors continue to address this issue.
JT: In a 2022 article, you said that writing about fatphobia is “very difficult, but very freeing” and also “invites speculation and scrutiny.” How do we navigate the seesaw between the joy of freedom and the discomfort of conflict?
KM: For every reader who criticizes you, try to remember that there are many more who find comfort, solidarity, and even liberation in reading vulnerable writing. I wish I could anyway!
JT: How do you deal emotionally and psychologically with people criticizing your work?
KM: I think there is little substitute for just feeling it. I often get hurt and upset by personal attacks and mean comments, and that’s okay. These are valid emotions, and at this point I have the luxury of being given enough security and privilege in life to work through them and ultimately move on. Sometimes, when the hurt lingers or becomes a kind of anxiety spiral, talking to a therapist about it can also be really helpful.
JT: In your book, you talk about the idea of ”bodily reflexivity,” or the idea that “our bodies are not meant to serve, please, or appease others.” I recommend this idea. I love this idea. How can we put this into practice as a group?
KM: Thank you! Body positivity, which states that we should view our bodies in a positive way, and body neutrality, which states that we should view our bodies as neutral, still implicitly assign certain numerical properties to our physical forms. That’s the idea. They are also a bit oppressive and require us to have a monolithic attitude towards our bodies, otherwise we are set to fail. So I think we need to throw out the scales completely, rather than positive, neutral, or negative.
There shall be no implicit or explicit evaluation of any kind. We need to transcend things like rankings. So my own mantra became, “My body is for me and your body is for you.” I call this bodily reflexivity, and the idea is that our bodies do not exist to be compared, modified, or consumed. Only your own perspective about your body matters. This ties in with the radical politics of autonomy over our bodies, which I value.
Kate Mann will appear at the 2024 Sydney Writers Festival, including the closing address.She will also appear at the Wheeler Center in MelbourneIn the same month.