Turning the Tables on Fatphobia (with Kate Manne)

2025-10-07

Fatphobia is everywhere. It affects how we judge ourselves and each other. In this episode, philosopher Kate Manne exposes the social, ethical, and health-based consequences of anti-fat bias. Drawing on personal experience and sharp cultural analysis, Manne challenges dieting myths, weight-loss fads, and societal pressure to be thin. She invites us to practice “body reflexivity,” the radical idea that our bodies exist for ourselves, not merely for others. She explains why physical movement, heal...

Fatphobia is everywhere. It affects how we judge ourselves and each other. In this episode, philosopher Kate Manne exposes the social, ethical, and health-based consequences of anti-fat bias.

Drawing on personal experience and sharp cultural analysis, Manne challenges dieting myths, weight-loss fads, and societal pressure to be thin. She invites us to practice “body reflexivity,” the radical idea that our bodies exist for ourselves, not merely for others. She explains why physical movement, health, and self-care matter more than size, and why dismantling fatphobia is a social justice issue.

This episode turns the tables on fatphobia in a world obsessed with thinness, offering a liberating perspective about bodies and wellness.

Full transcript available at relationscapes.org.

Show Notes

Weight for It podcast
Maintenance Phase podcast
Da'Shaun L. Harrison, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness
Sabrina Strings, "How the Use of BMI Fetishizes White Embodiment and Racializes Fat Phobia," AMA Journal of Ethics
Relationscapes, "Swipe Left on Romance," with Sabrina Strings

About the Guest

Kate Manne is author of Down Girl, Entitled, and Unshrinking. She's an associate professor of philosophy at Cornell University where she’s been teaching since 2013. Before that, she was a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Manne did her graduate work in philosophy at MIT. Her Substack is called More to Hate.

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