96. Fatphobia with Kate Manne
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- Опубликовано: 29 янв 2024
- “They find our bodies repulsive.” On episode 96 of Overthink, Ellie and David bring on Dr. Kate Manne, philosopher and author of Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia. She explains the moral failures and biomedical perils of our fatphobic culture and its misleading imperative to diet. This look at the politics of fat, fatness, and fatphobia in the philosophical canon and beyond to reveal rich links to questions of accessibility, justice, and intimacy. Should we trust the BMI (Body Mass Index) as a measure of health? Is the future in Ozempic? Why are we encouraged to see our body’s biological need for nutrition as “food noise”? And what might it take to hear the music of our human bodily diversity?
Overthink is a philosophy podcast hosted by your favorite new professors, Ellie Anderson (Pomona College) and David Peña-Guzmán (San Francisco State University). Check out our episodes for deep dives into concepts such as existential anxiety, empathy, and gaslighting.
Works Discussed
Paul Campos, The Obesity Myth
Ancel Keys, et al., “Indices of relative weight and obesity”
Adolphe Quetelet, On Man and the Development of His Faculties
Sabrina Strings, Fearing the Black Body
Audre Lorde, A Piece of Light
Thomas Nagel, “Free Will”
Kate Manne, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia
Overthink ep 27. From Body Positivity to Fat Feminism (feat. Amelia Hruby)
Follow Dr. Kate Manne on Substack!
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The politically correct dishonesty, melodrama that screams "privilege", and academic sophistry surrounding this topic is why many people don't respect fatphobia. These people are the same ones concerned for environmental pollution's ill effects on people; when it comes to healthy eating however its a different story.
All these fast food corporations, pharmaceutical corporations and uber-processed food manufacturers that are overloading people with more fat/sugar than any other point in history combined, and causing extreme amounts of health problems such as cardiac arrest and diabetes, as well as drug dependence, must love these kinds of talks.
I do agree that BMI is not very accurate, diet culture is not great, human bodies should not be shamed, and that its not overly the fault of fat people (who are disproportionately poor) for this.
However, to say that we should throw our hands in the air and stop dieting, and just 'eat what your body is telling you' (probably an aggressively marketed artificial hamburger) is outrageously irresponsible. People need to know good nutrition.
Public health systems around the world are under stress because of obesity and an ageing population - that is the simple reason why doctors don't want you to be fat.
"Fat people are 1.56x more likely to have unfound heart/lung conditions": it is literally harder to examine a fat person - to blame this on fatphobia is absurdly dishonest.
To claim an airline is oppressive for not having seating for people who are '"infinifat" (as the podcast calls it) must come from the mindset of a privileged adolescent.
Is it fatphobic to point out that obese people with health problems can make a positive change? Or is it always society's fault? If you're a minority, poor and fat, is it impossible to try to improve your health because you're oppressed and in this particular 'privilege category' (according to the gospel of privileged academics) and therefore cannot improve your situation at all? While I do agree that your social class / race does affect your outcomes, these very American progressives would have you believe that your wealth/race/education entirely defines who you are and what you're capable of.
Anyway, I'm probably gaslighting or traumatising a modern academic by simply debating them, so I'll stop. And before anyone accuses me, I am far from an alt-right troll or anything of the like.
For all their talks of being against it, progressives seem to fall into a position that makes them indistinguishable from essentialists
I don't know, the idea that fatphobia is something that originates from colonialism just seems like an incredibly Americanized and closed-off perspective. I mean when I talk to my friends from China, Singapore and just generally outside the US... if anything the world perception is that the US is unusually accepting of fatness in relation to the rest of the world. Maybe you can trace some specificity of it back but as a generality it seems like a stretch to me.
I think it's important to call out the perfectly real discrimination fat people face, and the way that the diet industry specifically capitalizes on shaming fat people for profit. But it seems really nihilistic in response to just tell everyone to listen to what their body seems to desire, when what our bodies are desiring has been very maliciously influenced by the far larger capitalist forces that are responsible for putting addictively sugary food and drinks for cheap on everyone's table. How could we really imagine that our bodies are intuively capable of caring for themselves in the face of these forces? We know, beyond food, that it's not the case - what happens if you listen to what your body wants when you are prescribed painkillers? And doesn't what your body want change depending on how you are doing mentally? It seems like a weird mind/body separation as well? Smokers were mentioned at the end of the video-but there have been successful anti-smoking initiatives that held smoking corporations accountable, helped create a culture that encouraged people to smoke less, and saved literally millions of lives.
Why is the binary being presented between accept everything and change everything? Shouldn't there also be some moral obligation to acknolwedge that incremental change to diet can make people live longer, healthier and better feeling lives? There is a way to do that without discriminating, without doctors not taking fat people seriously or giving them needed medical attention. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5589446/ www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00868-w
Finally, I think it is justifiable that the tone with which this issue is being discussed in general is putting a lot of people off. Another commenter wrote that dieting saved their life. In response, someone said that "anecdotal evidence is worthless". How do you think this made them feel about the value of their life?
This whole discussion, from implying the intention behind the diet industry is to shame fat people for profits, to listening to what "your body" tells you to do, just opens up a whole can of determinism itself. It leads to thinking that the only reason you are dieting is because someone or something else other than you made you do it. And despite this, they never seem to ask the question of why exactly your body is telling you to eat something.
Ah, this felt a bit like a 'hedonistic approach' interwoven with 'spirituality.' As you can see from the other comments, please be aware. Overall, I appreciate this channel and understand the issues related to fatphobia and the psychological challenges faced by individuals with obesity. However, it seems that you, and particularly your guest, didn't need to exaggerate to make it sound more internally profound.
I fully understand the philosophical approach to the conversation, but in the context of society and promoting health, we should consider a more data-driven perspective, being precautious about the illnesses and deaths that have resulted from justifying obesity. I hope to see more discussions on such topics, but with a more rigorous exploration, especially when it comes to biological issues, such as biological sex, diets, and more.
Mackey Atkinson, a professional therapist, covers your concern in a recent RUclips video about diet and stigma, the video is jam packed with solid, well sourced, science backed data, showing that being obese (a term that doesn't actually mean much scientifically speaking), does not necessarily, not even a majority of the time, result in health problems.
Mikey Atkins, correction
I was able to stop eating meat and lost 30llbs. I had a heart attack at 38, likely from my epicurean lifestyle. Health is important. Diet is important. There is a lot of disinfo and fear mongering around it as an industry. Damn, I don't agree with your guest at all. I just got to her segment, and just damn. Lol. No. It works, it saved my life. Are these studies paid for by the staton drugs? My cardiologists said it was impossible, but they were lying to sell pills. This really scares me and worries me that you might be causing a lot of harm. Diet matters, Exercise matters. It can actually cure your depression and mental health. You are placing the locus of control from your own decisions and placing them on these ideologies, but it unlike many other things truly is your choice. A hard one, quitting meat was hard, and people give me shit about it all the time. But it can be done. And its good. I got to 41:00 and have to stop, this is terrible. Your hunger should not always be fed, we live in a world where we have too much abundance. so much is terrible about what she is saying that any potential good she is trying to share by expressing the lack of medical care is really overshadowed by stupidity. Should you give into every impulse? This is lunacy. Please if you are facing these challenges go seek a nutritionist or a real scientist in the field and ignore Dave and Ellie and this terrible pundit. ( PS I replied many times and either youtube or the content author is removing my replies. But there is plenty of evidence out there and studies which disprove all of this. I didn't take a risk on my life without reading plenty of them, its a public forum and nothing is violent so i dont know why i am being censored. I am a vegetarian after-all)
Anecdotal evidence is worthless. Post a study that shows dieting, over a long term, successfully makes people lose weight and keeps them at that weight.
@@hamzasaid3368 Umm what about calorie restriction. . . This isn't new science and there are a ton of studies. I'm getting a huge ick that the channel liked your reply.
The big picture is basic physics, energy in energy out. . . What is healthy or needed in terms of fat storage and more is absolutely dependent on the individual and genetics.
I think Overthink needs to make a better script in regards to differentiating the science from the social justice. Especially when they make hand wavy allusions to statin drugs and more without much research or input from like an endocrinologist. I think this episode and Overthink's endorsement of your reply is too heavy on the virtue signaling and risks romanticizing the issue and trauma. There is real science here that was glossed over dramatically.
@@crackedcoco Wow. Calories in vs calories out? Why didn't I or the rest of medicine think of that? Submit your findings and win a Noble Prize. You've just solved the obesity epidemic.
Obviously, telling people to just eat less than you burn isn't working for the vast majority of people. And saying this isn't an excuse to just give up. It's like thinking you shouldn't start a business because the vast majority of businesses fail.
Also this is just a philosophy channel. Idk what you were expecting. If you disagree with what their guest was saying about the science, then post some evidence showing that they're wrong about dieting and it's long term success.
@@hamzasaid3368 The sarcasm is not needed friend.
I don't think it is obvious. Maybe the majority of people just don't know or lack the conviction or trust in the science. The episode glosses over the opinions of doctors to favor the virtue signal before what I might consider a more honest message.
I expect better candid conversation. In episode 83 David talks about his track and field experience so he knows about calories. And Ellie references a family member that understands fitness to some degree. The guest frankly didn't talk about the science. I think me, and other commenters, are saying that its a bit irresponsible to not have a script that better separates the science from the social issue.
I think Overthink could have handled this interview/feature better.
@@hamzasaid3368its anecdotal that if i eat something that later it will come out as feces, maybe i need a study to reinforce it. My ancestor Diogenes would be into it.
Perhaps an episode on the nature and role of shame in an individual vs as a feature of society would be illuminating
I know you guys are trying to be concise with the topics and keep this to an hour but I feel you skipped a huge amount of content. The script is super inclusive but i feel avoided lots of substance in favor of signaling that inclusion and keeping it under 1 hour.
I didn't notice the usual personal anecdotes or real life interactions that I feel you guys usually include. Kate Manne is a great guest to have but I feel like you could have challenged her a bit more.
IMO Across the episodes there is a ivory tower awkwardness that is endearing and authentic to me. I like it. I feel I would get more out of this should you revisit this topic and include more substance.
To anyone reading I think you should listen to episode 83 Exercise. Ellie and David kinda dunk on exercise and running specifically. I 'm getting a weird feel when contrasting the two scripts. I think if anyone listens to both episodes, about exercise and Fatphobia, its going to show the contrast in attitude I'm talking about. Maybe I'll write more in a reply when I listen to both these episodes again.
I revisited episode 83. Yeah Kate Manne sounds like she might find the choice of words in that script a bit problematic.
You guys are all academics. I think it was a missed opportunity not having Kate Manne banter a bit in the "ivory tower awkwardness." I'm sure the book is great and I'll be picking it up.
I think this episode lacked nuance between "fat" and "obese".
To the best of my understand "obese" is by definition a hindrance to health, at the very least due to severe mobility limitations.
I find sentences like the concluding ones about "being fat is not a cause of illness" to be used without enough context added to them.
In small doses almost nothing is too bad, by that logic being muscular is not a cause of illness nor being slim is a cause of illness. Being too obsessed with muscles will be bad, being too obsessed with being slim will be very bad, just like being too fat is (by definition) bad for your health.
The problem with the term obese is it relies on bmi, which is hugely lacking in scientific backing, despite being widely used by the medical community. A simple example of how the term obese does not equate to health, is that if you took a perfectly healthy professional body builder, you know those guys with massive muscles, who is healthy by every other measure, and then took his weight, likely that weight would put him in the obese catagory, especially since it takes less muscle to gain weight than it does fat. This kind of thing happens all the time, the doctors typically just ignore the bmi of a body builder. But isn't that kind of funny though, because they cover that in the video; that is how relying on a person's weight as a measurement of health results in people that have an obese bmi, and look fat (you see where the term fat is important, cause you can be obese but not be fat!) not getting a proper checkup when they go to the doctor.
I work in the mental health field, as a professional peer support specialist, I have worked with plenty of people who's doctors equate every health problem they have to their weight. And I've personally gone to the doctor with them, exposed the doctor to the faulty logic they were using demanded they do a thorough check up, which they then do, and have found non-weight related health problems. Problem they would have ignored had I not gone in there and basically chewed them out.
@@technoshaman101 WHO defines obesity as "abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health". Thus by definition bad for the health.
The problem is equating BMI threshold to fat indicators, everyone agrees this is too crude.
However that is a separate discussion from the fact that being too fat is just bad for your health; and that more people than ever are too fat.
BMI doesn't take into account body type. That's my problem with it. As a man that's 180cm tall, my "ideal" weight is meant to be 65-81kg. As someone with an ectomorphic body type, I'd expect that range to be lower.
There are enough other comments pointing out specific shortcomings of this episode, so I will be general. I also listened to the podcast many weeks ago on a platform that allowed no comments, so my memory of specifics isn't perfect.
Starting with the positive, I do appreciate and consider important calling out fat prejudice in our culture. That side of "fat phobia" (fat bigotry) is a moral and social justice issue. And beauty standards obsessed with youth and thinness pushed by consumer capitalism are indeed hurtful and homogenizing of desire.
But those ethical concerns are logically distinguished from issues of health and reasons for unhealthy diets. And this is what many listeners found shockingly badly interogated by self-identified philosophers. (Note: There is a connection with prejudices among health professionals misdiagnosing fat people, and this was covered in the episode, to its credit. But this is separate from the question of the relation between diet, activity and environment and health.)
One distinction that I don't recall being highlighted is between diet and dieting. Just because dieting, as a temporary and usually difficult modification of one's diet for weight loss, is usually a recipe for failure doesn't mean that long lasting changes in diet are impossible or worthless. But it shouldn't be left to individuals alone. We have an unhealthy food system that makes it hard to have a healthy diet, and that same food system is damaging the world's environment and food equity. Personally, I think that if we had a food system designed to produce a "diet for a small planet", we'd also have a healthier population. Which is different from saying that healthy=thin, or that we all MUST choose to be healthy by our choices. But our food and cultural system could make it EASY to eat more healthy foods (vs. highly processed salt-sugar-fat-laden foods that are the mainstay now).
A word of caution: The same companies that have created and profitted by marketing unhealthy foods are hiring body-positivty influencers to promote the very foods that increased childhood and adult obesity. Every good movement will be coopted by the forces of evil, so critical vigilance is always needed.
What about the morality of pharmaceutical and insurance companies that would rather keep people unhealthy and obese? Why is the author not challenging that or even mentioning it. I suppose that should be conveniently overlooked in the name of fat inclusivity.
I didn't know that Kate Manne was writing this book. My history with her work in the past, specifically Down Girl, has been one in which i thought her concepts and actions were too narrow and abstract. By abstract, I mean disconnected from the concrete situation she has written about.
I find this narrowness and abstractness here as well. I think this often happens when one ops for less concepts and more general concepts. To make fat a neutral term has its benefits, but it also works as a limiter that makes it more difficult to know what is being described. I don't like using myself as an example, but last April, I weighed 530 lbs. This morning, I weighed 447 lbs. The reason I state this is not to say I have been doing things right but rather to say that the knowledge on the social level is unknown. I dont follow BMI, I dont follow a Diet. I exercise 3-4 times a week, i found a calorie calculator, and I started monitoring that. There is some truth in what she has said here; however, the neutrality I thought showed a miscomprehension of fatness on a base level.
This is to say, there are some big disagreements i have with what has been said and ironically i think it partially comes from a palce of ignorance. Food noise? Hunger? I've been losing weight for a year and never heard those terms. Im not trying to become shredded, but i want to be able to walk without losing breathe, to travel outside of america, to visit my canadian sister, and more. Drugs? Yeah. I had a doctor suggest those to me, especially when i was 500 lbs, but i made the decision to say that, losing weight wouldnt lead to heath because what i want is not to be not fat, but a lifestyle change.
I think a slight disconnection is maybe needed to see a larger picture. A type of righteous disassociation that is fair yet informative. I also have read Downgirl, and I have listened to a few web lectures of Prof Kate Manne and I enjoyed listening to this podcast.
I have my theories on why the tone was the way it was. Professors like Kate Manne and the Overthink crew I expect to be hyper aware of tone and the feminist histories and arguments around tone. Consider certain Misogynous tones. Perhaps there is some analogy to be made between the "fat-phobic" tone of a comment like yours, and the and a "man-splaining" misogynous tone that a modern man might be sensitive to.
Its ingrained in our society and socially acceptable to maybe go above and beyond to explain away fatness. Surely if you can be overly general you can also overly descriptive- maybe overly scientific. Afterall isn't following a more female centric approach based around strong feelings and their triggers?
Fatphobia(Fatness) is deeply personal for many people. I wouldn't want my kids to deal with that anxiety. Social media trends and hashtags as described in the podcast are fast becoming the social currency of connection and its own coded language for gen z and alpha. I think its totally fair and I trust that an esteemed Professor would have done good research on the subject even if I'm not on TikTok. Beyond the modern language I'm sure there are sayings, tones, looks, advertisements that all do similar things to trigger people and their weight. There is probably even an intersection between the fatphobic triggers in language and misogyny.
Perhaps this was all a very clever trap to bait tones like yours out of the woodwork to highlight the issue. . . . . . . and make us overthink it. . . . . . .
I literally just created an account to be able to say that this episode was pure gold. I wish your podcast gets to be listened by a much wider audience. Greetings from San Cristobal, Mexico.
thank you for your support!
I think the more concerning aspect of overeating is the fact someone else could have had that food. You have already had enough to fuel your body to get through the day, yet you’ve overeaten and denied the chance to gift that food to the starving.
Sure... but then again people are more likely to overeat on highly processed and sugar dense foods and drinks like Cola and Chips and the like which can have because of the sugar addictive properties, other then healthy options...while supermarkets throw away even the healthy foods before expiration instead of donating them to charity
To the haters: yes, body weight can be a measure of health. But that differs for each individual. A critique of "fatness" is not a challenge to scientifically backed relation of weight to health. It is a critique of our cultural norm of judging others (ie prejudice) when the science itself proves we cannot generalize given the differences in genetics such that an individual's weight is not necessarily due to immoral behavior nor indicates underlying health defects. Sometimes it is, and may even be true for you. But for society to prescribe an ideal, which is not true for everyone, that motivates perfectly healthy, even "fat," people to engage in unhealthy behavior, that calls for philosophical challenge.
Respect your perspective here as the podcast is challenging the "common" perspective from cultural norms (n.b. "cultural norms" covers a wide umbrella of perceptual lenses here). I think the podcast is correct to constructively critique the common perspective as it defines it and identifies the problems it causes (while attempting to solve others), but I think you, in a brief paragraph, do a better job in covering the overlap and finding synthesis than it does within terms of health.
I agree the cultural norm is an heuristic i.e. we see large people and apply an ‘unhealthy’ commonality to them, but I don’t have an issue with doing that. On average, getting someone to lose weight will benefit them. I think the occasional person who is overweight but healthy hearing an incorrect message is overridden by the more likely chance the message will help. There are also moral arguments against over-consuming scarce food. You probably don’t need that second burger. It could go to someone else who is starving.
Being overweight in itself causes health problems, such as shortened breath, pain at joints (and increased risk of arthritis), and so on.
@@Leviathan399 As the OP wrote
"body weight can be a measure of health. But that differs for each individual"
"the science itself proves we cannot generalize given the differences"
"for society to prescribe an ideal, which is not true for everyone, that motivates perfectly healthy, even "fat," people to engage in unhealthy behavior, that calls for philosophical challenge"
My grandmother will die if she eats dairy. Should all doctors assume that dairy will kill everyone? No. Patients are individuals. Being fat can be bad for one person and not bad for another. Doctors need to do the diagnostic work and not assume that a person's health problems are always caused by being too heavy.
@@xenoblad the problems I listed (pain at the joints, shortened breath, and increased risk of arthritis due to more friction in the joints) effects everyone who's overweight. Those are health problems cased by weight itself, that's why I haven't listed problems related to salt and cholesterol, or the changes in НоrmоnаI behavior which changes "individually" (even though the majority of overweight people will experience similar problems).