From the creator of Your Fat Friend and co-host of the Maintenance Phase podcast, an explosive indictment of the systemic and cultural bias facing plus-size people.
Anti-fatness is everywhere. In What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Aubrey Gordon unearths the cultural attitudes and social systems that have led to people being denied basic needs because they are fat and calls for social justice movements to be inclusive of plus-sized people’s experiences. Unlike the recent wave of memoirs and quasi self-help books that encourage readers to love and accept themselves, Gordon pushes the discussion further towards authentic fat activism, which includes ending legal weight discrimination, giving equal access to health care for large people, increased access to public spaces, and ending anti-fat violence. As she argues, “I did not come to body positivity for self-esteem. I came to it for social justice.”
By sharing her experiences as …
From the creator of Your Fat Friend and co-host of the Maintenance Phase podcast, an explosive indictment of the systemic and cultural bias facing plus-size people.
Anti-fatness is everywhere. In What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Aubrey Gordon unearths the cultural attitudes and social systems that have led to people being denied basic needs because they are fat and calls for social justice movements to be inclusive of plus-sized people’s experiences. Unlike the recent wave of memoirs and quasi self-help books that encourage readers to love and accept themselves, Gordon pushes the discussion further towards authentic fat activism, which includes ending legal weight discrimination, giving equal access to health care for large people, increased access to public spaces, and ending anti-fat violence. As she argues, “I did not come to body positivity for self-esteem. I came to it for social justice.”
By sharing her experiences as well as those of others—from smaller fat to very fat people—she concludes that to be fat in our society is to be seen as an undeniable failure, unlovable, unforgivable, and morally condemnable. Fatness is an open invitation for others to express disgust, fear, and insidious concern. To be fat is to be denied humanity and empathy. Studies show that fat survivors of sexual assault are less likely to be believed and less likely than their thin counterparts to report various crimes; 27% of very fat women and 13% of very fat men attempt suicide; over 50% of doctors describe their fat patients as “awkward, unattractive, ugly and noncompliant”; and in 48 states, it’s legal—even routine—to deny employment because of an applicant’s size.
Advancing fat justice and changing prejudicial structures and attitudes will require work from all people. What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat is a crucial tool to create a tectonic shift in the way we see, talk about, and treat our bodies, fat and thin alike.
Review of "What We Don't Talk about When We Talk about Fat" on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Keine angenehme Lektüre, es hat mich wütend gemacht auf die Welt und auch auf mich, weil ich so vieles immer noch nicht verstanden hatte und weil ich Teil des Problems war und bin. Obwohl ich schon länger wusste, dass man offenbar "Angehörige der Gruppe X sind auch Menschen mit Gefühlen und es ist ein Arschlochmove, über sie zu denken, zu reden oder mit ihnen umzugehen, als wäre das nicht so" für jedes X separat lernen muss, es scheint da allgemein kaum Transferleistung zu geben. (Auch bei der Autorin übrigens nicht; die Auseinandersetzung mit Fetischismus in diesem Buch ist nicht besser als anderswo.) Ich weiß, niemand sehnt sich nach wütend-machender Lektüre, aber das Buch ist nicht lang und es ist ein bildender Ärger, der in keinem Verhältnis steht zu dem Ärger, den man bei anderen Menschen verursachen wird, wenn man es nicht liest und weiterhin keine Ahnung hat.
