How is philosophy hostile to fat people?

The question is occasioned by the recent publication of  Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia by Kate Manne (Cornell).

An article about the book at Inside Higher Ed last month discusses fatphobia in academia and in philosophy in particular:

Manne recounts how one friend was repeatedly told in graduate school that her body shape would make her unemployable because “only thin women are seen as intelligent,” while others were informed that they should “lose weight and look smarter.”…

Another friend in philosophy overheard a colleague state, “If she can’t discipline what she eats, how can she discipline what she thinks?”…

Such brazenly discriminatory attitudes are so imbued in academia—and philosophy, in particular—that some of the discipline’s most famous teaching examples rely on blatantly fatphobic tropes… 

“We use the figure of the fat man in the trolley problem unselfconsciously,” she said, citing the conundrum of whether it is ethically sound to push a large man to his death if it stops a trolley from wiping out five smaller people. “It’s seen as appropriate and unproblematic, even amusing, to push this man in front of a trolley.”

Those who aren’t subject to fatphobia may have difficulty recognizing instances of it, or understanding its effects. So I thought I would open up a space for people to discuss examples of it, impacts of it, remedies, and so on.

Comments are moderated.

The post Fatphobia in Philosophy first appeared on Daily Nous.