Ordinary Unhappiness

34: Fatphobia and Moral Feelings feat. Kate Manne

Patrick & Abby Episode 34

Abby and Patrick welcome philosopher Kate Manne, author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (2017), Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (2020), and the forthcoming Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia (2024). They discuss our moral emotions – shame, contempt, disgust, abjection – and what they signal; the ideological ranking of bodies into specific hierarchies, the contingencies of when and how fatness has been valued, and the historical links between contemporary fatphobia and anti-Blackness; how discourse around fatness involves logics of scapegoating, victim-blaming, the mystifications of capitalism, anxieties about pleasure, and fantasies of self-mastery; fat activism and the insights of disability studies; and the necessity of undoing fatphobia as a crucial part of meaningful social change and solidarity.

Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia comes out January 9, 2024 and is available for pre-order here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/unshrinking-how-to-face-fatphobia-kate-manne/19993688

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/down-girl-the-logic-of-misogyny-kate-manne/18742539

Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women is here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/entitled-how-male-privilege-hurts-women-kate-manne/16881547

Kate’s Substack, “More to Hate,” is here: https://katemanne.substack.com/

Other texts cited include: 

Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror

Kate Harding, “How Do You Fuck a Fat Woman?” (available in Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Power and a World Without Rape, eds Friedman and Valenti)

Kate’s book tour dates include:

Book launch in Ithaca, NY at Buffalo Street Books on Jan 9th

Cambridge, MA at Harvard Bookstore on Jan 22th

Montclair, NJ at Montclair Public Library on Jan 24th

Brooklyn, NY at Community Books on Jan 26th

Washington, DC at Politics and Prose on Jan 27th

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