Fatness & Fat Liberation
This guide is a collection of resources related to the Fat Liberation movement. Like other marginalized groups, fat activists have reappropriated and reclaimed the word fat, a previously derogatory term used to pathologize people of larger sizes. As opposed to medical terms like obese or overweight (which are rooted in the flawed science of the BMI scale and racism), fat activists utilize the adjective fat as both a positive descriptor and identity category grounded in solidarity and community. The Fat Liberation movement is widespread and far-reaching. This guide offers an introduction in a variety of genres and mediums written by and about fatness and fat liberation. You will find introductory books about fat discrimination (and how it continues to worsen), fiction that celebrates fat bodies and lived experiences, and Substack blogs by fat activists and writers, among many other resources.
If you would like to begin to learn about Fat Liberation, explore some of the articles below:
- Unpacking What You Know About Fat People (Aubrey Gordon, excerpt from her book, You Just Need To Lose Weight” And 19 Other Myths About Fat People)
- ‘Fat’ Isn’t a Bad Word—It’s Just the Way I Describe My Body (Aubrey Gordon, SELF)
- The Racist Roots of Fighting Obesity (Sabrina Strings, Ph.D & Lindo Bacon, Scientific American)
- The ‘perfect body’ is a lie. I believed it for a long time and let it shrink my life (Lindy West, author of Shrill)
- 51 Ways to Make the World Less Hostile to Fat People (Dani Beckett, Vice)
- Fat acceptance as social justice (Deborah McPhail, Ph.D & Michael Orsini, Ph.D., Canadian Medical Association Journal)
Video: Activism: Profiles In Fatness. Desiree Burch and Dr. Sabrina Strings (author of Fearing The Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia). (2022).
Further Reading:
- Essential Reading: Fat Liberation, Body Positivity & Intuitive Eating (Sofie Hagen)
- A Fat Reading List (Aubrey Gordon, Your Fat Friend)
- Resources (Educate Yourself) (Fat Heffalump, Living With Fattitude)
- Fat Activism 101 Online Resources (Fat Heffalump, Living With Fattitude)
- Sizeism, Fatphobia & Fat Liberation (Molly Wolf, Widener University Library)
This tab contains selected articles and academic books in the field of Fat Studies. Articles are listed chronologically while books are listed by sub-discipline (Readers & Introductory texts, Intersectionality, and History).
Articles
Sourced from the following syllabi:
- WSDB 398R: Fat Studies and Feminism (Gregory Pablo Rodríguez-Arbolay Jr., Concordia University)
- SWP950: Fat Studies and Fat Activism (May Friedman, Ryerson School of Social Work)
- Fat Studies Syllabi (Friend of Marilyn)
- Disparate but Disabled: Fat Embodiment and Disability StudiesDisparate but Disabled: Fat Embodiment and Disability Studies. (2002). NWSA Journal, 14(3), 120–137.
- The Other Side of the Looking Glass: The Marginalization of Fatness and Blackness in the Construction of Gender IdentityShaw, A. (2005). The Other Side of the Looking Glass: The Marginalization of Fatness and Blackness in the Construction of Gender Identity. Social Semiotics, 15(2), 143–152. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1080/10350330500154725
- Bear Bodies, Bear Masculinity: Recuperation, Resistance, or Retreat?Hennen, P. (2005). Bear Bodies, Bear Masculinity: Recuperation, Resistance, or Retreat? Gender and Society, 19(1), 25–43.
- Teaching the politics of obesity: insights into neoliberal embodiment and contemporary biopoliticsGuthman, J. (2009). Teaching the politics of obesity: insights into neoliberal embodiment and contemporary biopolitics. Antipode, 41(5), 1110–1133.
- Weight Science: Evaluating the evidence for a paradigm shiftBacon, L., & Aphramor, L. (2011). Weight science: evaluating the evidence for a paradigm shift. Nutrition Journal, 10, 9. https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2891-10-9
- The Birth of the Obesity Clinic: Confessions of the Flesh, Biopedagogies and Physical CultureRail, G. (2012). The Birth of the Obesity Clinic: Confessions of the Flesh, Biopedagogies and Physical Culture. Sociology of Sport Journal, 29(2), 227–253.
- Disrupting normal: Toward the 'ordinary and familiar' in fat politicsMeleo-Erwin, Z. (2012). Disrupting normal: Toward the “ordinary and familiar” in fat politics. Feminism and Psychology, 22(3), 388–402. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353512445358
- Living fat in a thin-centric world: Effects of spatial discrimination on fat bodies and selvesOwen, L. (2012). Living fat in a thin-centric world: Effects of spatial discrimination on fat bodies and selves. Feminism and Psychology, 22(3), 290–306. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353512445360
- After the after: The Biggest Loser and post-makeover narrative trajectories in digital mediaHass, M. (2017). After the after: The Biggest Loser and post-makeover narrative trajectories in digital media. Fat Studies, 6(2), 135–151. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2017.1245084
- Unvictimizable: Toward a Fat Black Disability StudiesMollow, A. (2017). Unvictimizable: Toward a Fat Black Disability Studies. African American Review, 50(2), 105–121.
- Sizeism is a health hazardChrisler, J. C., & Barney, A. (2017). Sizeism is a health hazard. Fat Studies, 6(1), 38–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/21604851.2016.1213066
- Fabulous Masculinities: Refashioning the Fat and Disabled Male BodyBarry, B. (2019). Fabulous Masculinities: Refashioning the Fat and Disabled Male Body. Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, 23(2), 275–307. https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2019.1567064
- The color of fat: racializing obesity, recuperating whiteness, and reproducing injusticeRachel Sanders (2019) The color of fat: racializing obesity, recuperating whiteness, and reproducing injustice, Politics, Groups, and Identities, 7:2, 287-304, DOI: 10.1080/21565503.2017.1354039
Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society
Fat Studies is the first academic journal in the field of scholarship that critically examines theory, research, practices, and programs related to body weight and appearance. Content includes original research and overviews exploring the intersection of gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, age, ability, and socioeconomic status. Articles critically examine representations of fat in health and medical sciences, the Health at Every Size model, the pharmaceutical industry, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, legal issues, literature, pedagogy, art, theater, popular culture, media studies, and activism.
Books: Introductions & Readers
The Fat Studies Reader by ISBN: 9780814776308Publication Date: 2009-11-04A milestone anthology of fifty-three voices on the burgeoning scholarly movement—fat studies. We have all seen the segments on television news shows: A fat person walking on the sidewalk, her face out of frame so she can't be identified, as some disconcerting findings about the "obesity epidemic" stalking the nation are read by a disembodied voice. And we have seen the movies--their obvious lack of large leading actors silently speaking volumes. From the government, health industry, diet industry, news media, and popular culture we hear that we should all be focused on our weight. But is this national obsession with weight and thinness good for us? Or is it just another form of prejudice--one with especially dire consequences for many already disenfranchised groups? From the historical construction of fatness to public health policy, from job discrimination to social class disparities, from chick-lit to airline seats, this collection covers it all.
The Contemporary Reader of Gender and Fat Studies by ISBN: 9781000891850Publication Date: 2023-06-27The Contemporary Reader of Gender and Fat Studies is a key reference work in contemporary scholarship situated at the intersection between Gender and Fat Studies, charting the connections and tensions between these two fields. Comprising over 20 essays from a range of diverse and international contributors, the reader is structured around the following key themes: theorizing gender and fat; narrating gender and fat; historicizing gender and fat; institutions and public policy; health and medicine; popular culture and media; and resistance. It is an intersectional collection, highlighting the ways that "gender" and "fat" always exist in connection with multiple other structures, forms of oppression, and identities, including race, ethnicity, sexualities, age, nationalities, disabilities, religion, and class.
The Routledge International Handbook of Fat Studies by ISBN: 9780367502928Publication Date: 2021-04-19The Routledge International Handbook of Fat Studies brings together a diverse body of work from around the globe and across a wide range of Fat Studies topics and perspectives. The first major collection of its kind, it explores the epistemology, ontology, and methodology of fatness, with attention to issues such as gender and sexuality, disability and embodiment, health, race, media, discrimination, and pedagogy.
The Fat Pedagogy Reader: Challenging weight-based oppression through critical education by ISBN: 9781433125683Publication Date: 2016-03-30Over the past decade, concerns about a global obesity epidemic have flourished. Public health messages around physical activity, fitness, and nutrition permeate society despite significant evidence disputing the facts we have come to believe about obesity. We live in a culture that privileges thinness and enables weight-based oppression, often expressed as fat phobia and fat bullying. New interdisciplinary fields that problematize obesity have emerged, including critical obesity studies, critical weight studies, and fat studies. There also is a small but growing literature examining weight-based oppression in educational settings in what has come to be called «fat pedagogy». The very first book of its kind, The Fat Pedagogy Reader brings together an international, interdisciplinary roster of respected authors who share heartfelt stories of oppression, privilege, resistance, and action; fascinating descriptions of empirical research; confessional tales of pedagogical (mis)adventures; and diverse accounts of educational interventions that show promise.
Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture by ISBN: 9780814727683Publication Date: 2011-05-02To be fat hasn't always occasioned the level of hysteria that this condition receives today and indeed was once considered an admirable trait. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture explores this arc, from veneration to shame, examining the historic roots of our contemporary anxiety about fatness. Tracing the cultural denigration of fatness to the mid 19th century, Farrell draws on a wide array of sources, including political cartoons, popular literature, postcards, advertisements, and physicians' manuals, to explore the link between our historic denigration of fatness and our contemporary concern over obesity. Her work sheds particular light on feminisms' fraught relationship to fatness.
Fat Rights: Dilemmas of difference and personhood by ISBN: 9780814748138Publication Date: 2008-03-01Over the last decade, there's been an explosion of concern in the U.S. about people getting fatter. Plaintiffs are now filing lawsuits arguing that discrimination against fat people should be illegal. Fat Rights asks the first provocative questions that need to be raised about adding weight to lists of currently protected traits like race, gender, and disability. Is body fat an indicator of a character flaw or of incompetence on the job? Does it pose risks or costs to employers they should be allowed to evade? Or is it simply a stigmatized difference that does not bear on the ability to perform most jobs? Could we imagine fatness as part of workplace diversity? Considering fat discrimination prompts us to rethink these basic questions that lawyers, judges, and ordinary citizens ask before a new trait begins to look suitable for antidiscrimination coverage.
Books: Intersectionality
Thickening Fat: Fat Bodies, Intersectionality, and Social Justice by ISBN: 9781138580022Publication Date: 2019-09-16Thickening Fat: Fat Bodies, Intersectionality, and Social Justice seeks to explore the multiple, variable, and embodied experiences of fat oppression and fat activisms. Moving beyond an analysis of fat oppression as singular, this book will aim to unpack the volatility of fat--the mutability of fat embodiments as they correlate with other embodied subjectivities, and the threshold where fat begins to be reviled, celebrated, or amended. In addition, Thickening Fat explores the full range of intersectional and liminal analyses that push beyond the simple addition of two or more subjectivities, looking instead at the complex alchemy of layered and unstable markers of difference and privilege. Thickening Fat poses critical questions around how to render analysis of fatness intersectional and to thicken up intersectionality, where intersectionality is attenuated to the shifting and composite and material dimensions to identity, rather than reduced to an "add difference and stir" approach.
Belly of the Beast by ISBN: 9781623175979Publication Date: 2021-08-10To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people in the United States are subject to sociopolitically sanctioned discrimination, abuse, condescension, and trauma. Da'Shaun Harrison--a fat, Black, disabled, and nonbinary trans writer--offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness, foregrounding the state-sanctioned murders of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people in historical analysis. Taking on desirability politics, the limitations of gender, the connection between anti-fatness and carcerality, and the incongruity of "health" and "healthiness" for the Black fat, Harrison viscerally and vividly illustrates the myriad harms of anti-fat anti-Blackness.
Fearing the Black Body: The racial origins of fat phobia by ISBN: 9781479819805Publication Date: 2019-05-07There is an obesity epidemic in this country and poor black women are particularly stigmatized as "diseased" and a burden on the public health care system. This is only the most recent incarnation of the fear of fat black women, which Sabrina Strings shows took root more than two hundred years ago. Strings weaves together an eye-opening historical narrative ranging from the Renaissance to the current moment, analyzing important works of art, newspaper and magazine articles, and scientific literature and medical journals--where fat bodies were once praised--showing that fat phobia, as it relates to black women, did not originate with medical findings, but with the Enlightenment era belief that fatness was evidence of "savagery" and racial inferiority. An important and original work, Fearing the Black Body argues convincingly that fat phobia isn't about health at all, but rather a means of using the body to validate race, class, and gender prejudice.
The Embodiment of Disobedience: Fat Black Women's Unruly Political Bodies by ISBN: 9780739114872Publication Date: 2006-07-28Despite the West's privileging of slenderness as an aesthetic ideal, the African Diaspora has historically displayed a resistance to the Western European and North American indulgence in "fat anxiety." The Embodiment of Disobedience explores the ways in which the African Diaspora has rejected the West's efforts to impose imperatives of slenderness and mass market fat-anxiety. Author Andrea Shaw explores the origins and contradictions of this phenomenon, especially the cultural deviations in beauty criteria and the related social and cultural practices. Unique in its examination of how both fatness and blackness interact on literary cultural planes, this book also offers a diasporic scope that develops previously unexamined connections among female representations throughout the African Diaspora.
Queering Fat Embodiment by ISBN: 9781409465430Publication Date: 2014-05-09Shedding light on the ways in which fat embodiment is lived, experienced, regulated and (re)produced across a range of cultural sites and contexts, Queering Fat Embodiment destabilises established ideas about fat bodies, making explicit the intersectionality of fat identities. It represents a paradigm shift within fat studies, challenging the field of study which has primarily reproduced a white, ableist, heteronormative subjectivity in its analyses.
Fat Gay Men: Girth, mirth, and the politics of stigma by ISBN: 9780814708385Publication Date: 2014-07-25To be fat in a thin-obsessed gay culture can be difficult. Despite affectionate in-group monikers for big gay men-chubs, bears, cubs-the anti-fat stigma that persists in American culture at large still haunts these individuals who often exist at the margins of gay communities. In Fat Gay Men, Jason Whitesel delves into the world of Girth & Mirth, a nationally known social club dedicated to big gay men, illuminating the ways in which these men form identities and community in the face of adversity. This book documents performances at club events and examines how participants use allusion and campy-queer behavior to reconfigure and reclaim their sullied body images, focusing on the numerous tensions of marginalization and dignity that big gay men experience and how they negotiate these tensions via their membership to a size-positive group. Fat Gay Men provides a rare glimpse into an unexplored dimension of weight and body image in American culture.
Men and the War on Obesity by ISBN: 9780415407120Publication Date: 2008-05-14Is obesity really a public health problem and what does the construction of obesity as a health problem mean for men? According to official statistics, the majority of men in nations such as England and the USA are overweight or obese. Public health officials, researchers, governments and various agencies are alarmed and have issued dire warnings about a global 'obesity epidemic'. This perceived threat to public health seemingly legitimates declarations of war against what one US Surgeon General called 'the terror within'. Yet, little is known about weight-related issues among everyday men in this context of symbolic or communicated violence. Men and the War on Obesity is an original, timely and controversial study. Using observations from a mixed-sex slimming club, interviews with men whom medicine might label overweight or obese and other sources, this study urges a rethink of weight or fat as a public health issue and sometimes private trouble.
Books: History
Diet and the Disease of Civilization by ISBN: 9780813589657Publication Date: 2018-01-26Diet books contribute to a $60-billion industry as they speak to the 45 million Americans who diet every year. Yet these books don't just tell readers what to eat: they offer complete philosophies about who Americans are and how we should live. Diet and the Disease of Civilization interrupts the predictable debate about eating right to ask a hard question: what if it's not calories--but concepts--that should be counted? Adrienne Rose Bitar reveals how four popular diets retell the "Fall of Man" as the narrative backbone for our national consciousness. Intensifying the moral panic of the obesity epidemic, they depict civilization itself as a disease and offer diet as the one true cure. Bitar reads each diet--the Paleo Diet, the Garden of Eden Diet, the Pacific Island Diet, the detoxification or detox diet--as both myth and manual, a story with side effects shaping social movements, driving industry, and constructing fundamental ideas about sickness and health.
Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality by ISBN: 9780814795927Publication Date: 2010-11-23Navigates the divergent cultural meanings of health, and its entanglement with morality in current political discourse You see someone smoking a cigarette and say, "Smoking is bad for your health," when what you mean is, "You are a bad person because you smoke." You encounter someone whose body size you deem excessive, and say, "Obesity is bad for your health," when what you mean is, "You are lazy, unsightly, or weak of will." In these and countless other instances, the perception of your own health depends in part on your value judgments about others, and appealing to health allows for a set of moral assumptions to fly stealthily under the radar. Against Health argues that health is a concept, a norm, and a set of bodily practices whose ideological work is often rendered invisible by the assumption that it is a monolithic, universal good. To be clear, the book's stand against health is not a stand against the authenticity of people's attempts to ward off suffering. Against Health instead claims that individual strivings for health are, in some instances, rendered more difficult by the ways in which health is culturally configured and socially sustained.
Shameful Bodies: Religion and the culture of physical improvement by ISBN: 9781472594945Publication Date: 2017-01-12What happens when your body doesn't look how it's supposed to look, or feel how it's supposed to feel, or do what it's supposed to do? Who or what defines the ideals behind these expectations? How can we challenge them and live more peacefully in our bodies? Shameful Bodies: Religion and the Culture of Physical Improvement explores these questions by examining how traditional religious narratives and modern philosophical assumptions come together in the construction and pursuit of a better body in contemporary western societies. Drawing on examples from popular culture such as self-help books, magazines, and advertisements, Michelle Mary Lelwica shows how these narratives encourage us to go to war against our bodies. While Shameful Bodies critiques the religious and cultural norms and narratives that perpetuate external and internalized judgment and aggression toward "shameful" bodies, it also engages the resources of religions, especially feminist theologies and Buddhist thought/practice, to construct a more affirming approach to health and healing.
Fat Fashion: The thin ideal and the segregation of plus-size bodies by ISBN: 9781350126930Publication Date: 2021-09-09Average body mass in many Western cultures is getting larger and yet the fashion system seems mostly unchanged. Major fashion houses still limit their output to small sizes and the dominant ideal of the female body in fashion imagery is still thin - dangerously thin according to World Health Organization standards. Why is the industry forfeiting a considerable share of the market in the form of plus-size consumers, seemingly against its commercial interests? Why does the thin ideal reign supreme despite damning evidence of its harm to women? And is there a way out of this system of thin ideals and segregated fat bodies? In this original study, Paolo Volonté answers these questions and more, drawing on influential literature on the body, beauty standards and the roles of clothing in society. Volonté reveals why plus-size fashion is often characterised by 'low aesthetic commitment' and low quality marketing. He explores the nature of the segregation of fat bodies in fashion and considers what the future may hold for consumers, designers and marketers alike.
Fat Activism: A radical social movement by ISBN: 9781910849309Publication Date: 2021-07-28What is fat activism and why is it important? To answer this question, Charlotte Cooper presents an expansive grassroots study that traces the forty-year history of international fat activism and grounds its actions in their proper historical and geographical contexts. She details fat activist methods, analyzes existing literature in the field, challenges long-held assumptions that uphold systemic fatphobia, and makes clear how crucial feminism and queer theory are to the lifeblood of the movement. She also considers fat activism's proxy concerns, including body image, body positivity, the obesity epidemic, and fat stigma. Combining rigorous scholarship with personal, accessible writing, Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement is not only an invaluable contribution to the burgeoning field of fat studies, but also a vehicle for much-needed social change.
What We Don't Talk about When We Talk about Fat by ISBN: 9780807041307Publication Date: 2020-11-17Anti-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. 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.
"You Just Need to Lose Weight": And 19 other myths about fat people by ISBN: 9780807006474Publication Date: 2023-01-10The co-host of the Maintenance Phase podcast and creator of Your Fat Friend equips you with the facts to debunk common anti-fat myths and with tools to take action for fat justice. The pushback that shows up in conversations about fat justice takes exceedingly predicable form. Losing weight is easy-calories in, calories out. Fat people are unhealthy. We're in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Fat acceptance "glorifies obesity." The BMI is an objective measure of size and health. Yet, these myths are as readily debunked as they are pervasive. In "You Just Need to Lose Weight," Aubrey Gordon equips readers with the facts and figures to reframe myths about fatness in order to dismantle the anti-fat bias ingrained in how we think about and treat fat people.
Fat! So? by ISBN: 9780898159950Publication Date: 1998-12-01Fat? Chunky? Less than svelte? So what! In this hilarious and eye-opening book, fat and proud activist/zinester Marilyn Wann takes on Americas' biggest fear--worse than the fear of public speaking or nuclear weapons--our fear of fat.Statistics tell us that about a third of Americans are fat, and common sense adds that just about everyone, fat or thin, male or female, has worried about their appearance. FAT!SO? weighs in with a more attractive alternative- feeling good about yourself at any weight--and having the style and attitude to back it up. Internationally recognized as a fat-positive spokesperson, Wann has learned that you can be absolutely happy, healthy, and successful...and fat. With its hilarious and insightful blend of essays, quizzes, facts, and reporting, FAT!SO? proves that you can be out-and-out fabulous at any size.
Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia by ISBN: 9780593593837Publication Date: 2024-01-09For as long as she can remember, Kate Manne has wanted to be smaller. She can tell you what she weighed on any significant occasion: her wedding day, the day she became a professor, the day her daughter was born. She's been bullied and belittled for her size, leading to extreme dieting. As a feminist philosopher, she wanted to believe that she was exempt from the cultural gaslighting that compels so many of us to ignore our hunger. But she was not. Blending intimate stories with the trenchant analysis that has become her signature, Manne shows why fatphobia has become a vital social justice issue. When it comes to fatphobia, the solution is not to love our bodies more. Instead, we must dismantle the forces that control and constrain us, and remake the world to accommodate people of every size.
Body of Truth: How Science, History, and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight—And What We Can Do about It by ISBN: 9780738218823Publication Date: 2016-03-22Over the past twenty-five years, our quest for thinness has morphed into a relentless obsession with weight and body image. In our culture, "fat" has become a four-letter word. Or, as Lance Armstrong said to the wife of a former teammate, "I called you crazy. I called you a bitch. But I never called you fat." How did we get to this place where the worst insult you can hurl at someone is "fat"? Where women and girls (and increasingly men and boys) will diet, purge, overeat, undereat, and berate themselves and others, all in the name of being thin? As a science journalist, Harriet Brown has explored this collective longing and fixation from an objective perspective; as a mother, wife, and woman with "weight issues," she has struggled to understand it on a personal level. Now, in Body of Truth, Brown systematically unpacks what's been offered as "truth" about weight and health.Fat Girl Best Friend: 'Claiming Our Space': Plus Size Women in Film & Television by
ISBN: 9781913836214Publication Date: 2023-06-05While we live in an age of body positivity, we are not seeing that reflected in the media. In this book, Sarah Grant takes us on a voyage which encompasses Bridgerton, Bridget Jones Diary, Orange is the new black, Pride and Prejudice, Star wars, Stranger Things and The Vicar of Dibley, to name a few. It dives into the treatment of plus size women in film and television, and goes looking for the main character energy we know we deserve.
Fat Church: Claiming a Gospel of Fat Liberation by ISBN: 9780829800036Publication Date: 2022-04-15Whether your body is small or large, aged or young, disabled or abled, toned or soft, lithe or stiff-or somewhere in-between-anti-fatness affects us all. Fat Church critiques anti-fat prejudice and the Church's historic participation in it, calling for a reckoning with fatphobia for the sake of Gad's gospel of freedom.
Fat by ISBN: 9781501333286Publication Date: 2020-11-12Demonized in medicine and public policy, adored by chefs and nutritional faddists (and let's face it, most of us who eat), simultaneously desired and abhorred when it comes to sex, and continually courted by a multi-billion-dollar fitness and weight-loss industry, for so many people "fat" is ironically nothing more than an insult or a state of despair. In Hanne Blank's Fat we find fat as state, as possession, as metaphor, as symptom, as object of desire, intellectual and carnal. Here, "feeling fat" and literal fat merge, blurring the boundaries and infusing one another with richer, fattier meanings.
Fat Talk: Parenting in the age of diet culture by ISBN: 9781250892508Publication Date: 2024-12-10By the time they reach kindergarten, most kids believe that "fat" is bad. By middle school, more than a quarter of them have gone on a diet. What are parents supposed to do? Kids learn, as we've all learned, that thinness is a survival strategy in a world that equates body size and value. Parents worry if their kids care too much about being thin, but even more about the consequences if they aren't. And multibillion-dollar industries thrive on this fear of fatness. We've fought the "war on obesity" for over forty years and Americans aren't thinner or happier with their bodies. But it's not our kids--or their weight--who need fixing. In this illuminating narrative, journalist Virginia Sole-Smith exposes the daily onslaught of fatphobia and body shaming that kids face from school, sports, doctors, diet culture, and parents themselves--and offers strategies for how families can change the conversation around weight, health, and self-worth.
You Have the Right to Remain Fat by ISBN: 9781936932313Publication Date: 2018-08-14Growing up as a fat girl, Virgie Tovar believed that her body was something to be fixed. But after two decades of dieting and constant guilt, she was over it--and gave herself the freedom to trust her own body again. Ever since, she's been helping others to do the same. Tovar is hungry for a world where bodies are valued equally, food is free from moral judgment, and you can jiggle through life with respect. In concise and candid language, she delves into unlearning fatphobia, dismantling sexist notions of fashion, and how to reject diet culture's greatest lie: that fat people need to wait before beginning their best lives.
Fattily Ever After: A Black Fat Girl's Guide to Living Life Unapologetically by ISBN: 9781784883447Publication Date: 2020-09-01Twenty-nine year-old plus-size blogger Stephanie Yeboah has experienced racism and fat-phobia throughout her life. From being bullied at school to being objectified and humiliated in her dating life, Stephanie's response to discrimination has always been to change the narrative around body-image and what we see as beautiful. In her debut book, Fattily Ever After, Stephanie Yeboah speaks openly and courageously about her own experience on navigating life as a black, plus-sized woman - telling it how it really is - and how she has managed to find self-acceptance in a world where judgement and discrimination are rife. Peppered with insightful tips and honest advice and boldly illustrated throughout, this inspiring and powerful book is essential reading for a generation of black, plus-sized women, helping them to live their life openly, unapologetically and with confidence.
Lessons from the Fat-O-sphere: Quit dieting and declare a truce with your body by ISBN: 9780399534973Publication Date: 2009-05-05From the leading bloggers in the fat-acceptance movement comes an empowering guide to body image- no matter what the scales say. When it comes to body image, women can be their own worst enemies, aided and abetted by society and the media. But Harding and Kirby, the leading bloggers in the "fatosphere," the online community of the fat acceptance movement, have written a book to help readers achieve admiration for-or at least a truce with-their bodies. The authors believe in "health at every size"-the idea that weight does not necessarily determine well-being and that exercise and eating healthfully are beneficial, regardless of whether they cause weight loss. They point to errors in the media, misunderstood and ignored research, as well as stories from real women around the world to underscore their message.
Fat and Queer: An anthology of queer and trans bodies and lives by ISBN: 9781787755062Publication Date: 2021-05-21We're here. We're queer. We're fat. This one-of-a-kind collection of prose and poetry radically explores the intersection of fat and queer identities, showcasing new, emerging and established queer and trans writers from around the world. Celebrating fat and queer bodies and lives, this book challenges negative and damaging representations of queer and fat bodies and offers readers ways to reclaim their bodies, providing stories of support, inspiration and empowerment. In writing that is intimate, luminous and emotionally raw, this anthology is a testament to the diversity and power of fat queer voices and experiences, and they deserve to be heard.
Body Stories: in and Out and with and Through Fat by ISBN: 9781772582543Publication Date: 2020-12-25Body stories capture a nuanced, interconnected, interactive, and complex telling of our understanding, perception, and experience of and through our bodies. Plenty has been published on body image but image suggests a static fixed body, unmitigated through our social interactions and varying times and spaces. This book is not a "how-to" guide for fat confidence. It's not a compendium of fat suffering. It's simply a collection of narratives about what it's like to survive in a weight-hating world. It resists the ways that marginalized bodies are being written and researched and put into other people's ideas about our existence. The full range of possibilities that are collected here give a picture of what it means to live in a society with strong and powerful messages about size, about normalcy, about what a moral and healthy life and body look like.
Movement
Read the "Health at Every Size Principles" here.
Slow AF Run Club by ISBN: 9780593421727Publication Date: 2023-06-06Ten years ago, Martinus Evans got some stern advice from his doctor: 'Lose weight or die.' First defensive, but then defiant, Evans vowed that day to run a marathon, though his doctor thought he was crazy. Since then, Evans has run eight marathons and hundreds of other distances in his 300-something body, created his own devoted running community, and has been featured on the cover of Runner's World. This book is a blueprint for those who may not fit the image of a 'traditional' runner - that is, someone who is larger in size, less athletic, out of shape, or dealing with any kind of health issue that slows them down - to feel empowered to lace up their shoes and embrace the body they have right now. As Evans says, the incredible benefits of running - better sleep, strong muscles and bones, better cardiovascular and mental health, and a sense of community - can and should be available to all of us.
Every Body Yoga: Let go of fear, get on the mat, love your body by ISBN: 9780761193111Publication Date: 2017-04-04From the unforgettable teacher Jessamyn Stanley comes Every Body Yoga, a book that breaks all the stereotypes. It's a book of inspiration for beginners of all shapes and sizes: If Jessamyn could transcend these emotional and physical barriers, so can we. It's a book for readers already doing yoga, looking to refresh their practice or find new ways to stay motivated. It's a book that challenges the larger issues of body acceptance and the meaning of beauty. Jessamyn Stanley, a yogi who breaks all the stereotypes, has built a life as an internationally recognized yoga teacher and award-winning Instagram star by combining a deep understanding for yoga with a willingness to share her personal struggles in a way that touches everyone who comes to know her. Now she brings her body-positive, emotionally uplifting approach to yoga in a book that will help every reader discover the power of yoga and how to weave it seamlessly into his or her life.
Big Gal Yoga by ISBN: 9781580056595Publication Date: 2017-07-25Social media star Valerie Sagun is a powerful voice in the body positive movement. With more than 100,000 avid followers on Instagram and a constant stream of highly engaged traffic on her website, fans adore Valerie for her fearless acceptance of her beautiful body, her encouragement of self-love, and her phenomenal yoga skills. Valerie, her yoga practice, and her body positive campaign have celebrated for her exciting messages about self-acceptance-both on the mat and off. Now, in this complete guide, Valerie provides both inspiration and customized instructions for yogis of all sizes and shapes, along with passionate encouragement to help readers discover newfound confidence through the transformative power of yoga.
Fat Girls Hiking: An Inclusive Guide to Getting Outdoors at Any Size or Ability by ISBN: 9781643261195Publication Date: 2022-03-29From the founder of the Fat Girls Hiking community comes an inclusive, inspiring call to the outdoors for people of all body types, sizes, and backgrounds. In a book brimming with heartfelt stories, practical advice, personal profiles of Fat Girls Hiking community members, and helpful trail reviews, Summer Michaud-Skog creates space for marginalized bodies with an insistent conviction that outdoor recreation should welcome everyone. Whether you're an experienced or aspiring hiker, you'll be empowered to hit the trails and find yourself in nature. Trails not scales!
Heavy: An American Memoir by ISBN: 9781501125652Publication Date: 2018-10-16In this powerful and provocative memoir, genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse. Laymon invites us to consider the consequences of growing up in a nation wholly obsessed with progress yet wholly disinterested in the messy work of reckoning with where we've been. In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation, and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free. A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family that begins with a confusing childhood--and continues through twenty-five years of haunting implosions and long reverberations.
Thick: And other essays by ISBN: 9781620974360Publication Date: 2019-01-08In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom—award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed—is unapologetically "thick": deemed "thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less," McMillan Cottom refuses to shy away from blending the personal with the political, from bringing her full self and voice to the fore of her analytical work. This "transgressive, provocative, and brilliant" (Roxane Gay) collection cements McMillan Cottom's position as a public thinker capable of shedding new light on what the "personal essay" can do. She turns her chosen form into a showcase for her critical dexterity, investigating everything from Saturday Night Live, LinkedIn, and BBQ Becky to sexual violence, infant mortality, and Trump rallies. Collected in an indispensable volume that speaks to the everywoman and the erudite alike, these unforgettable essays never fail to be "painfully honest and gloriously affirming" and hold "a mirror to your soul and to that of America" (Dorothy Roberts).
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by ISBN: 9781101912195Publication Date: 2017-05-30Whether Samantha Irby is talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making "adult" budgets; explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette (she's "35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something"); detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father's ashes; sharing awkward sexual encounters; or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms (hang in there for the Costco loot!); she's as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.
Bad Fat Black Girl by ISBN: 9780063111745Publication Date: 2022-09-13Growing up on the south side of Chicago, Sesali Bowen learned early on how to hustle, stay on her toes, and champion other Black women and femmes as she navigated Blackness, queerness, fatness, friendship, poverty, sex work, and self-love. Her love of trap music led her to the top of hip-hop journalism, profiling game-changing artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo, and Janelle Monae. But despite all the beauty, complexity, and general badassery she saw, Bowen found none of that nuance represented in mainstream feminism. Thus, she coined Trap Feminism, a contemporary framework that interrogates where feminism meets today's hip-hop. Bad Fat Black Girl offers a new, inclusive feminism for the modern world. Weaving together searing personal essay and cultural commentary, Bowen interrogates sexism, fatphobia, and capitalism all within the context of race and hip-hop. In the process, she continues a Black feminist legacy of unmatched sheer determination and creative resilience.
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by ISBN: 9780062362599Publication Date: 2017-06-13From Roxane Gay, the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Feminist, a memoir in weight about eating healthier, finding a tolerable form of exercise, and exploring what it means to learn, in the middle of your life, how to take care of yourself and how to feed your hunger. Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as "wildly undisciplined," Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties--including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life--and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life. With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and authority that have made her one of the most admired voices of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to be overweight in a time when the bigger you are, the less you are seen.
The Body Is Not an Apology, Second Edition: The power of radical self-love by ISBN: 9781523091003Publication Date: 2021-02-09The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength. As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies. When we act from this truth on a global scale, we usher in the transformative opportunity of radical self-love, which is the opportunity for a more just, equitable, and compassionate world--for us all.
Shrill: Notes from a loud woman by ISBN: 9780316348409Publication Date: 2016-05-17Shrill is an uproarious memoir, a feminist rallying cry in a world that thinks gender politics are tedious and that women, especially feminists, can't be funny. Coming of age in a culture that demands women be as small, quiet, and compliant as possible -- like a porcelain dove that will also have sex with you -- writer and humorist Lindy West quickly discovered that she was anything but. With inimitable good humor, vulnerability, and boundless charm, Lindy boldly shares how to survive in a world where not all stories are created equal and not all bodies are treated with equal respect, and how to weather hatred, loneliness, harassment, and loss, and walk away laughing. Shrill provocatively dissects what it means to become self-aware the hard way, to go from wanting to be silent and invisible to earning a living defending the silenced in all caps.
Unashamed: Musings of a Fat, Black Muslim by ISBN: 9780807012628Publication Date: 2019-10-15Ever since she was little, Leah Vernon was told what to believe and how to act. There wasn't any room for imperfection. 'Good' Muslim girls listened more than they spoke. They didn't have a missing father or a mother with a mental disability. They didn't have fat bodies or grow up wishing they could be like the white characters they saw on TV. They didn't have husbands who abused and cheated on them. They certainly didn't have secret abortions. In Unashamed, Vernon takes to task the myth of the perfect Muslim woman with frank dispatches on her love-hate relationship with her hijab and her faith, race, weight, mental health, domestic violence, sexuality, the millennial world of dating, and the process of finding her voice.
My Life As a Goddess by ISBN: 9781501170232Publication Date: 2019-06-18From a young age, Guy Branum always felt as if he were on the outside looking in. From a stiflingly boring farm town, he couldn't relate to his neighbors. While other boys played outside, he stayed indoors reading Greek mythology. And being gay and overweight, he got used to diminishing himself. But little by little, he started learning from all the sad, strange, lonely outcasts in history who had come before him, and he started to feel hope. In this "singular, genuinely ballsy, and essential" (Billy Eichner) collection of personal essays, Guy talks about finding a sense of belonging at Berkeley--and stirring up controversy in a newspaper column that led to a run-in with the Secret Service. He recounts the pitfalls of being typecast as the "Sassy Gay Friend," and how, after taking a wrong turn in life (i.e. law school), he found stand‑up comedy and artistic freedom. He analyzes society's calculated deprivation of personhood from fat people, and how, though it's taken him a while to accept who he is, he has learned that with a little patience and a lot of humor, self-acceptance is possible.
Fat, Pretty, and Soon to Be Old: A Makeover for Self and Society by ISBN: 9781849353670Publication Date: 2019-09-03Fat, Pretty, and Soon to be Old is a moving, funny, and startlingly frank collection of personal essays about what it means to look a certain way. Or rather, certain ways. Navigating Kimberly Dark's experience of being fat since childhood as well as queer, white-privileged, a gender-confirming 'girl with a pretty face,' active then disabled, and inevitably aging each piece blends storytelling and social analysis to deftly coax readers into a deeper understanding of how appearance privilege (and stigma) function in everyday life and how the architecture of this social world constrains us. At the same time, she provides a blueprint for how each of us can build a more just social world, one interaction at a time.
Fat off, Fat On by ISBN: 9781952177743Publication Date: 2023-03-07In this disarming and candid memoir, cultural critic Clarkisha Kent unpacks the kind of compounded problems you face when you're a fat, Black, queer woman in a society obsessed with heteronormativity. There was no easy way for Kent to navigate personal discovery and self-love. As a dark-skinned, first-generation American facing a myriad of mental health issues and intergenerational trauma, at times Kent's body felt like a cosmic punishment. In the face of body dysmorphia, homophobia, anti-Blackness, and respectability politics, the pursuit of "high self-esteem" seemed oxymoronic. Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto s a humorous, at times tragic, memoir that follows Kent on her journey to realizing that her body is a gift to be grown into, that sometimes family doesn't always mean home, and how even ill-fated bisexual romances could free her from gender essentialism.
Landwhale: On turning insults into nicknames, why body image is hard, and how diets can kiss my ass by ISBN: 9781580056816Publication Date: 2018-05-08Jes Baker burst onto the body positivity scene when she created her own ads mocking Abercrombie & Fitch for discriminating against all body types -- a move that landed her on the Today Show and garnered a loyal following for her raw, honest, and attitude-filled blog missives. Building on the manifesta power of Things, this memoir goes deeply into Jes's inner life, from growing up a fat girl to dating while fat. With material that will have readers laughing and crying along with Jes's experience, this new book is a natural fit with her irreverent, open-book style. A deeply personal take, Landwhale is a glimpse at life as a fat woman today, but it's also a reflection of the unforgiving ways our culture still treats fatness, all with Jes's biting voice as the guide.
One to Watch by ISBN: 9780525510444Publication Date: 2020-07-07Bea Schumacher is a devastatingly stylish plus-size fashion blogger who has amazing friends, a devoted family, legions of Insta followers--and a massively broken heart. Like the rest of America, Bea indulges in her weekly obsession: the hit reality show Main Squeeze. The fantasy dates! The kiss-off rejections! The surprising amount of guys named Chad! But Bea is sick and tired of the lack of body diversity on the show. Since when is being a size zero a prerequisite for getting engaged on television? Just when Bea has sworn off dating altogether, she gets an intriguing call: Main Squeeze wants her to be its next star, surrounded by men vying for her affections. Bea agrees, on one condition--under no circumstances will she actually fall in love. In this joyful, wickedly observant debut, Bea has to decide whether it might just be worth trusting these men--and herself--for a chance to live happily ever after.
Her Body and Other Parties by ISBN: 9781555977887Publication Date: 2017-10-03In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.
The Fat Kid by ISBN: 9781948700085Publication Date: 2018-10-04Born unto a father steeped in violence, the fat kid grows up tortured for his ever-expanding girth. As a young man, the fat kid tends bar where his friends and coworkers muddle about the drinkers, including the fat kid's own daddy. They are all subject to the influence of a mysterious blond-haired and black-garbed stranger who comes and goes, known only as the Man. Unbeknownst to all save the fat kid's daddy--who migrated across the vast country with the Man, experiencing savage murder, near-starvation, and cannibalism--the fat kid and his friends' fates are sealed. In alternating narratives from the perspectives of the fat kid and his daddy, the story takes place in a vast country full of great plains and towering rocky mountains, dusty deserts and shimmering lakes, a landscape beautifully at odds with the horror in the lives of those who live upon it.
Dietland by ISBN: 9780544373433Publication Date: 2015-05-26The diet revolution is here. And it's armed. Plum Kettle does her best not to be noticed, because when you're fat, to be noticed is to be judged. With her job answering fan mail for a teen magazine, she is biding her time until her weight-loss surgery. But when a mysterious woman in colorful tights and combat boots begins following her, Plum falls down a rabbit hole into the world of Calliope House -- an underground community of women who reject society's rules -- and is forced to confront the real costs of becoming "beautiful." At the same time, a guerilla group begins terrorizing a world that mistreats women, and Plum becomes entangled in a sinister plot. The consequences are explosive.
The Breakaway by ISBN: 9781668033425Publication Date: 2023-08-29Thirty-three-year-old Abby Stern has made it to a happy place. True, she still has gig jobs instead of a career, and the apartment where she's lived since college still looks like she's just moved in. But she's got good friends, her bike, and her bicycling club in Philadelphia. She's at peace with her plus-size body--at least, most of the time--and she's on track to marry Mark Medoff, her childhood sweetheart, a man she met at the weight-loss camp that her perpetually dieting mother forced her to attend. Fifteen years after her final summer at Camp Golden Hills, when Abby reconnects with a half-his-size Mark, it feels like the happy ending she's always wanted. Yet Abby can't escape the feeling that something isn't right...or the memories of one thrilling night she spent with a man named Sebastian two years previously. Over two weeks and more than seven hundred miles, strangers become friends, hidden truths come to light, a teenage girl with a secret unites the riders in unexpected ways...and Abby is forced to reconsider everything she believes about herself, her mother, and the nature of love.
Martha Moody by ISBN: 9781618731807Publication Date: 2020-12-01 (originally published 1995)At once a love story and a lush comic masterpiece, Martha Moody is a speculative western which embraces the ordinary and gritty details -- as well as the magic -- of women's lives in the old west.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by ISBN: 9781250217288Publication Date: 2020-03-17Linus Baker is a by-the-book case worker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. He's tasked with determining whether six dangerous magical children are likely to bring about the end of the world. Arthur Parnassus is the master of the orphanage. He would do anything to keep the children safe, even if it means the world will burn. And his secrets will come to light. The House in the Cerulean Sea is an enchanting love story, masterfully told, about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place--and realizing that family is yours.
Milk Fed by ISBN: 9781982142490Publication Date: 2021-02-02A scathingly funny, wildly erotic, and fiercely imaginative story about food, sex, and god from the acclaimed author of The Pisces and So Sad Today. Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, by way of obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. Early in the detox, Rachel meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam--by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family--and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey. Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we as humans can compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Milk Fed is a tender and riotously funny meditation on love, certitude, and the question of what we are all being fed, from one of our major writers on the psyche--both sacred and profane.
Dumplin' by ISBN: 9780062327192Publication Date: 2017-03-14Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson (dubbed "Dumplin'" by her former beauty queen mom) has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked . . . until Will takes a job at Harpy's, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn't surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back. Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant--along with several other unlikely candidates--to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any girl does. Along the way, she'll shock the hell out of Clover City--and maybe herself most of all.
I'll Be the One by ISBN: 9780062936929Publication Date: 2020-06-16Skye Shin has heard it all. Fat girls shouldn't dance. Wear bright colors. Shouldn't call attention to themselves. But Skye dreams of joining the glittering world of K-Pop, and to do that, she's about to break all the rules that society, the media, and even her own mother, have set for girls like her. When Skye nails her audition, she's immediately swept into a whirlwind of countless practices, shocking performances, and the drama that comes with reality TV. What she doesn't count on are the highly fat-phobic beauty standards of the Korean pop entertainment industry, her sudden media fame and scrutiny, or the sparks that soon fly with her fellow competitor, Henry Cho. But Skye has her sights on becoming the world's first plus-sized K-pop star, and that means winning the competition--without losing herself.
Fat Angie by ISBN: 9780763661199Publication Date: 2013-03-12Her sister was captured in Iraq, she's the resident laughingstock at school, and her therapist tells her to count instead of eat. Can a daring new girl in her life really change anything? Angie is broken -- by her can't-be-bothered mother, by her high-school tormenters, and by being the only one who thinks her varsity-athlete-turned-war-hero sister is still alive. Hiding under a mountain of junk food hasn't kept the pain (or the shouts of "crazy mad cow!") away. Having failed to kill herself -- in front of a gym full of kids -- she's back at high school just trying to make it through each day. That is, until the arrival of KC Romance, the kind of girl who doesn't exist in Dryfalls, Ohio. A girl who is one hundred and ninety-nine percent wow! A girl who never sees her as Fat Angie, and who knows too well that the package doesn't always match what's inside. With an offbeat sensibility, mean girls to rival a horror classic, and characters both outrageous and touching, this darkly comic anti-romantic romance will appeal to anyone who likes entertaining and meaningful fiction.
Feeble Wanderings (Wet Moon #1) by ISBN: 9781932664072Publication Date: 2005-01-04An unusually usual day-to-day story in the Deep South, set in the gothic, swampy southern town of Wet Moon, a place fraught with lousy love lives, teen angst, and shadowy rednecks. As Cleo Lovedrop heads off for college at the local art school, she's haunted by her melancholic past: a lost love, a lost child. Friends and enemies live their lives around her, as trouble and dissent brews amongst them: an unseen social assailant spreads slander about Cleo, she is forced to deal with her two brusque roommates, and discovers unsolved mysteries about the girl who lived in her room previously. As the moon grows full and lunar rays shine down, lunacy and moon-calves run free. Goths, friendship, romance, sex, betrayal, gossip, cats, murder, guilt, a squirrel monkey, and all the terrible and wonderful things people do to each other.
Poetry
The Fat Sonnets by ISBN: 9781938247309Publication Date: 2018-06-01Samantha Zighelboim's debut collection conducts a radical re-examination of what we mean by body. In these poems, body is noun, verb and adverb; body is dearly beloved and fiercely rejected; it is by turns a singularly beautiful process and a frightening object. Zighelboim takes the sonnet form as a loose premise, a la Bernadette Mayer, but then explodes, expands, defies and otherwise grows out of supposed formal limits, making language into a living embodiment of the refusal of (institutional, patriarchal, cultural) control. The poet's refusal of the social invisibility of fat bodies is essential. "I am a perfect fucking blossom," Zighelboim writes, and also "I am entitled to the loneliness of my interminable appetite." Offering felt registers as subtle as "The oblique / correspondence between / a soft body / and a thin / layer of / pulp," this is the writing of a sharp and observant world-eater: a cosmophage in the truest sense.
Fat Art, Thin Art by ISBN: 0822315122Publication Date: 1994-08-12Embodying a decades-long adventure, the poems collected here offer the most accessible and definitive formulations to appear anywhere in Sedgwick's writing on some characteristic subjects and some new ones: passionate attachments within and across genders; queer childhoods of many kinds; the performativity of a long, unconventional marriage; depressiveness, hilarity, and bliss; grave illness; despised and magnetic bodies and bodily parts. In two long fictional poems, a rich narrative momentum engages readers in the mysterious places--including Victorian novels--where characters, sexualities, and fates are unmade and made. Sedgwick's poetry opens an unfamiliar, intimate, daring space that steadily refigures not only what a critic may be, but what a poem can do.
Nothing Is Okay by ISBN: 9781943735303Publication Date: 2018-03-20Nothing is Okay is the second full-length poetry collection by Rachel Wiley, whose work simultaneously deconstructs the lies that we were taught about our bodies and our beings, and builds new ways of viewing ourselves. As she delves into queerness, feminism, fatness, dating, and race, Wiley molds these topics into a punching critique of culture and a celebration of self. A fat positive activist, Wiley's work soars and challenges the bounds of bodies and hearts, and the ways we carry them.
Tesoro by ISBN: 9781945649233Publication Date: 2018-11-01Tesoro is a story of family, survival, and the formative power of the women in Salgado's life. It is a telling of the balance between love and perseverance. Tesoro is an unearthing of the sacred connections that make a person whole; the treasure we forever keep with us when we learn from those we love, when we mourn those we've lost, and what grows in between.
Mother Body by ISBN: 9781947817241Publication Date: 2021-03-15Mother Body is an intersectional exploration of the trauma and agency held within a body defined by its potential to mother. As Mother Body unfolds, it tasks its reader to understand the expected and unexpected manifestations of motherhood, through menstruation and womb work, but also generational, societal, and literary mothering. With a variety of forms and modes, these poems unpack the experiences of a fat, black woman's body while also manifesting joy, resistance, and celebration.
Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across by ISBN: 9781250195890Publication Date: 2018-10-23Beautiful and brutally honest, Mary Lambert's poetry is a beacon to anyone who's ever been knocked down--and picked themselves up again. In verse that deals with sexual assault, mental illness, and body acceptance, Ms. Lambert's Shame Is an Ocean I Swim Across emerges as an important new voice in poetry, providing strength and resilience even in the darkest of times.
Photography & Art
Further reading and lists:
- How a Stock Photography Project Is Confronting Fat Bias (Celeste Hamilton Dennis)
- Fatness & Feminism (Jenny Saville and Roxane Gay, Art in America)
- 10 Fat Visual Artists You Should Check Out (Weighty Things)
- A Big Fat Bevy of Art: Five illustrators who will bring more fat representation to your life (Pipe Wrench)
- This Instagram Account Proves That Fat People Have Always Been Here (Sadhbh O'Sullivan, Refinery29)
- Cheryl Frazier, Toward a Responsible Artistic Agency: Mindful Representation of Fat Communities in Popular Media, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2024;, kpad064, https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1093/jaac/kpad064
- Body Liberation PhotosLindley offers boudoir, portrait and small business photography sessions with Body Liberation Photos. She is also the creator of Body Liberation Stock, which provides body-positive stock photos for commercial use, and the Body Love Shop, a curated central resource for body-friendly artwork and products.
- AllGo: Plus Size Stock PhotosAllGo is an app where plus-size people rate the comfort and accessibility of public spaces so others can know what to expect. We recognized the need for more stock photos featuring plus-size people and decided to help fill this gap.
- Historical Fat People Instagram Account & ArchiveVintage photos featuring nice to not-so-nice fat people of yore. Occasional diet ephemera.
Morpho: Fat and Skin Folds by ISBN: 9781681985046Publication Date: 2019-05-27The must-have guide for all artists who draw the human figure! In Morpho: Fat and Skin Folds, artist and teacher Michel Lauricella presents a unique approach to learning to draw the human body. The typical approach to teaching anatomy and the sketching of the human form most often focuses on the skeleton and musculature. What often goes ignored is the skin itself--how it moves and the expressions it creates as the body moves and changes positions. This book presents a simplified and practical vision of the fat and skin folds of the human body to help you in your drawing studies, encouraging both accuracy and a rich, diverse representation of the human form.
- Artifats: Fat Art, Fat ArtistsDedicated to taking up space in the art world by exclusively featuring the work of
fat artists, prioritizing QTBIPoC, disabled, and superfat artists. - Obeillustration (Ash Obenstine)Ash is a designer and illustrator living in Pennsylvania! They currently sell Stickers, Magnets, Prints, Paintings, and Zines at South Street Art Mart, Archive Six and Etsy. They have a BFA in Illustration and have participated in many Philadelphia Art Markets, such as the Official LGBTQIA+ Pride Parade and Festival in Philadelphia for the past three years.
Podcasts
- Maintenance Phase
Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon debunk the junk science behind health fads, wellness scams and nonsensical nutrition advice. Maintenance Phase is a great place to start if you you are interested in learning about weight bias, the problems with BMI, and how American culture views fatness. If you like these episodes, check out Aubrey Gordon's books which are listed in the non-fiction tab.
Maintenance Phase: Selected Episodes
- Anti-Fat Bias To celebrate the release of her new book, Aubrey takes Mike on a tour through the statistics and debates surrounding weight bias. Anyone interested in body positivity, airline seats, 'skinny shaming' or the sugar content of melons is legally obligated to join us.
- The Body Mass Index The BMI is EVERYWHERE. But is it scientific or scientif-ish? While many Americans think of the body mass index as an objective measure of health, its history reveals a more complicated story.
- The Obesity Epidemic Over the last 30 years, fatness has been defined as a risk factor for disease, then a disease in itself, then a global epidemic. What caused this rapid shift?
- Is Being Fat Bad For You? For nearly four decades, Americans have heard a simple story about health, longevity and obesity. This week, we learn it's a little more complicated.
- Fat Camps How America's oldest fat camp — and the inspiration for Disney’s "Heavyweights" — became the symbol of a health intervention that enjoys worldwide popularity despite no evidence that it improves anyone's health.
And read this article about Maintenance Phase ("Breaking Down the ‘Wellness-Industrial Complex,’ an Episode at a Time") from the New York Times.
- Fat Joy
Each episode is a conversation between host Sophia Apostol and another fat person about how to flourish in our fatphobic world. We’re exploring the harms, biases, and oppressions we’ve experienced while living in a world that marginalizes plus-size & fat bodies and promotes the lies of Diet Culture. But most importantly, we’re sharing how we still dare to have the audacity and courage to reach towards joy and live our best lives while advocating for collective fat liberation & body positivity. - FatAF
Fat As Fuck is a podcast about fat and sex. Yes, fat people have sex. And we’re going to talk about fat sex, including fat pornography, fat sexual stigma, fat sexual mechanics (which makes me picture Glenn Marla in a mechanic’s overalls)…and much more! - Fat Girl Book Club
You know that bookclub you belong to? The one where the wine flows freely, the laughter is loud and the books are extremely interesting. That is this podcast, in your ears. My name is Jennifer Radke and I am your host and a body image coach. I get my guests to read a book in the Fat Acceptance/Body Positive/Health at Every Size space and I talk to them about it. - UnF*ck Your Brain: Feminist Self-Help for EveryoneUnF*ck Your Brain: Feminist Self-Help for Everyone breaks down the centuries of sexist socialization that causes us to struggle with self-doubt, burnout, and anxiety. Hosted by Master Feminist Coach Kara Loewentheil, J.D., founder of The School of New Feminist Thought and author of Take Back Your Brain (Penguin 2024), each episode teaches you how to turn down the noise of societal expectations, turn up the volume on what YOU really want in life, and change your thinking to make sure you go get it.
- Secret Dinosaur Cult
A live comedy podcast by comedians Sofie Hagen and Jodie Mitchell, in which they explore identity in order to try and find out who they are - through the medium of dinosaurs. Hilarious, highly addictive and heavily dinosaur-based. - She's All FatWe created She's All Fat because we wanted a podcast like it. We noticed an increase in fat visibility (shout out to fat babes on IG!) but a lack of spaces for fat folks — the intersections of fat women, fat trans and queer folks, and fat people of color — to tell their own stories in a conversational setting — a place to literally hear our voices.
- The Body Grievers Club Podcast
My goal with this podcast is to not only help change the cultural conversation from diets & rules to acceptance & freedom — but furthermore, help you feel less alone in your body image excavations. Join me as we explore the ins and outs of body image, self-esteem, diet culture, self-love and finding peace as you come home to your body. - Matter of Fat
Matter of Fat, co-hosted by Cat Polivoda and Saraya Boghani, highlights community voices with a focus on body size, body positivity, & fat liberation. We hear guests' stories as a matter of fat - honoring and learning about their intersecting identities while grounding the conversation in body positivity & body politics. We also create and share resources, chat social justice, popular culture, & Midwest life - all as a matter of fat. - Living in this Queer Body
Living in this Queer Body is a project about exploring barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. - Fierce Fatty Podcast
Join Vinny Welsby (they/them), TEDx speaker, best-selling author, and certified Fierce Fatty as they teach you how to love your fat body without going on yet another ever again.Break down limiting negative self-beliefs and root out the reasons why you think your plus-size body is not ok. Episodes topics include - fatphobia, diet culture, intuitive eating, how to be confident, dating while plus-size, health at every size, overcoming stigma and shame, and taking over the world one fatty at a time!
Podcast Episodes
- Cat Polivoda shares how body positivity, fat liberation and our negative diet culture impact your balance (being BALANCED podcast with Ciji Townsend)
- Fat Liberation (Disability Visibility Project Podcast)
- Fat Liberation, Food & Pole Dance (The Evidence Based Pole Podcast)
- your "body positivity" is lacking fat liberation (Emotionally Online Podcast)
Blogs
- NotBlueAtAll "On this blog you’ll find me talking about a range of topics both personal and not. I write a lot about fat acceptance, self-acceptance, self-care, my own abuse survival, fatshion, activism, events and so very much more. This blog is a process, a journey. It helps me sort out my thoughts and share my story. Through this blog, I have met good friends, made connections with fellow abuse survivors and so many badasses."
- Fluffy Kitten Party "I started this blog as a personal project in 2018, as I quit Weight Watchers for the very last time and embarked on a journey to root diet culture out of my life. Since then, I’ve developed a following of people looking to do the exact same thing."
- Two Whole Cakes Lesley Kinzel has been engaging with body politics and social justice activism both as an academic and as an everyday upstart for over a decade
- Your Fat Friend In 2016, Aubrey Gordon began writing anonymously about the social realities of life as a very fat person, publishing under the name Your Fat Friend.
- Extra Inches - Male Plus Size Blog All about plus size fashion for men – enriched with some tips about grooming, beard care and lifestyle topics.
- Chubstr A style destination for big and tall or plus size men. We’re pushing back against the myth that bigger guys don’t care about style by creating compelling content that runs the spectrum of fashion, lifestyle, politics, travel, food, and relationships.
- The Fat Zine Blog
To share as many points of view as possible, The Fat Zine has added a blog to the site. If you would like to submit, read more on how to here. In the meantime, please enjoy the art, words and expressions of the people below.
Substacks
- Butt News (Lindy West)
Butt News will deliver a brand new original piece of writing, by me, to your e-mail inbox 1-2 times per month, or more, depending on how stressed out I am! Butt News is THE BEST WAY to stay in touch with me, hear my crappy thoughts, ask me questions, find out what lipstick shade that is/where I got my glasses, get mad about my bad takes, and laugh at my jokes! - Antiracist Dietitian (Anjali Prasertong)
Antiracist Dietitian is a newsletter about the intersection of nutrition and racial equity, covering history, food systems, land, water, politics—basically everything that lies beyond the individual choices you make about the food you eat. I write about what I wish I had learned as a nutrition student, and am creating a space that centers honesty, vulnerability, and the lived experiences of people of color. - Burnt Toast (Virginia Sole-Smith)Burnt Toast is an anti-diet, fat positive community about body liberation. It’s also a newsletter and a podcast about how we navigate diet culture and fatphobia, especially through parenting. (But non-parents like it too!)
- The Audacity (Roxane Gay)
People curate what they put from their lives into the public sphere but a good writer makes what they curate one hell of a story. That’s what I hope to do with this newsletter—tell one hell of a story about the world we’re living in, the culture we consume, the things that bring me joy, the things that infuriate me, the things I think we should talk about. - Cup of Stars (Carmen Maria Machado)
The newsletter of author Carmen Maria Machado. - Virgie Tovar's Newsletter
Ending weight discrimination, eating donuts, wearing cute glasses - Can I Have Another Snack? (Laura Thomas)
A newsletter, podcast and community exploring appetite, identity, and bodies, especially through the lens of parenting. Here we unpack the things that make us feel disrupted and disconnected from our bodies. And the things that make it difficult to feed ourselves and our kids (in all senses of the word). It’s an exploration of what it means to parent while unpacking diet-culture and anti-fatness, while supporting one another to end the tyranny of intergenerational body shame and disordered eating. - bitches gotta eat! (Samantha Irby)i’m gonna share with you, my friends:
music? books?? movies??? milf-on-milf romance???? recaps of the best show on television, judge mathis!!!!! - Fat Hell (Amanda Richards)A newsletter about being fat and getting dressed
- More To Hate (Kate Manne)Fatphobia, misogyny, and more
Video: Film & TV: Profiles In Fatness. Desiree Burch (2022). In this episode, Desiree is joined by an expert, Aubrey Gordon, to reflect on the harmful stereotypes of fatness found in film and TV, while also celebrating the overlooked heroes from the big screen.
To read more about fat representation in the media, click the links below:
- Why Can’t Hollywood Get Fat Representation Right? (Kitty Lloyd, Refinery29)
- The Cruel Spectacle of ‘The Whale’ (Roxane Gay, NYTimes)
- From "Fat Monica" to Fat Amy: How Hollywood Highlighted My Internalized Fatphobia (Grayson Gilcrease, PopSugar)
- Beyond Lazy Tropes: The Quest for Authenticity in Fat Representation (Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media)
- If He Dies He Dies”: A Timeline of Fat Sexuality in Contemporary Television (Marie Southard Ospina, Polyester Zine)
Television
My Mad Fat DiaryPublication Date: 2013-2015Sharon Rooney stars in this teenage drama series as a fictional version of writer Rae Earl, whose personal diaries and book `My Fat Mad Teenage Diary' serve as the basis of the show. Available to stream on Hulu
Shrill by Publication Date: 2019-2021A struggling young journalist (played by Aidy Bryant) is determined to change her life without changing her body. While dealing with an unreliable boyfriends, sick parents and a perfectionist boss, she begins to understand that she's just as good as everyone else. Available on Hulu.
Rutherford FallsPublication Date: 2021-2022Two lifelong best friends, Nathan Rutherford and Reagan Wells, find themselves at a crossroads -- quite literally -- when their sleepy town gets an unexpected wake-up call. Available to stream on Peacock.
Work in Progress by Publication Date: 2019-Abby is a 45-year-old self-identified fat, queer dyke whose misfortune and despair unexpectedly lead her to a vibrantly transformative relationship. Chicago improv mainstay Abby McEnany co-created and stars in this uniquely human comedy series. Available on Fubo.Somebody Somewhere
Publication Date: 2022-Sam, a true Kansan on the surface, struggles to fit her hometown's mold; grappling with loss and acceptance, singing is her saving grace and leads her on a journey to discover herself and a community of outsiders who don't fit in and don't give up. Available on HBO.
Survival of the ThickestPublication Date: 2023Mavis Beaumont, a plus-sized Black woman, is newly single and finds herself having to rebuild her life as a struggling stylist. Available to stream on Netflix.
GLOWPublication Date: 2017-2019Alison Brie stars as Ruth Wilder, an out-of-work actress living in Los Angeles in the '80s. Wilder finds an unexpected chance at stardom: enter the glitter and spandex-laden world of women's wrestling, where she must work alongside 12 other Hollywood misfits. Marc Maron plays the role of Sam Sylvia, a washed-up director of "B" movies who tries to lead the group of women to fame.
Good GirlsPublication Date: 2018-2021Good Girls is an American crime comedy-drama television series that follows the lives of three suburban mothers who resort to robbing a supermarket and get involved with a crime boss and the FBI. Available on Netflix.
Films
The 40-Year-Old Version by
Publication Date: 2020-01-25A down-on-her-luck playwright thinks the only way she can salvage her voice as an artist is to become a rapper at 40. Available on Netflix.
Dumplin'Publication Date: 2018The plus-size, teenage daughter of a former beauty queen signs up for her mum's pageant as a protest that escalates when other contestants follow in her footsteps, revolutionising the pageant as well as their small Texas town. Available on Netflix.
Fat FrontPublication Date: 2019Four young women, two from Norway, one each from Denmark and Sweden, on being overweight and beautiful. How to be comfortable and proud of your body, even though it doesn't fit into the norms dictated by the media. Available to rent on Apple TV.
Thunder ForcePublication Date: 2021Two childhood best friends reunite as an unlikely crime-fighting superhero duo when one invents a formula that gives ordinary people superpowers. Available on Netflix.
Your Fat Friend by Popular anonymous blogger Aubrey Gordon spent five years writing about the realities of living as a self-described "very fat person", and now she is about to face the public for the first time. Available to rent on Vimeo.
- Fat Liberation Archive
Curated by Max Airborne who writes, "This archive does not claim to, nor could it, represent the entirety of fat activist or fat liberation movement history. It starts with what I had in my filing cabinet – evidence of some self-identified fat-liberation-oriented lives, thoughts, conversations, creativity, activism, community – mostly from radicals, queers and feminists. The rest of what is here so far has come from people in my network. I recognize this as both an asset (I have connections to folks of multiple generations doing fat liberation work) and a limitation (my network is, by definition, limited. It skews white and US-based)."
Read the Fat Liberation Manifesto here. By Judy Freespirit and Aldebaran, November, 1973. Published by the Fat Underground.
Writers & Journalists
A list of writers who focus on fat liberation along with a selection of their publications.
- Marie Southard Ospina is Colombian-American writer, editor, and digital content creator based in rural England. She can often be found writing about body image, parenthood, entertainment, and plus-size fashion.
- Da'Shaun L. Harrison is a trans theorist and Southern-born and bred abolitionist in Atlanta, GA. Through the lens of "Fat Black Studies," they lecture on blackness, fatness, gender, and their intersections.
Organizations
- Fat Rose
Fat Rose organizes fat radicals to embed fat politics on the left, contributing to building an intersectional fat liberation movement. We do this by developing and promoting radical and intersectional fat-centered political analysis, and offering incubation spaces for radical fat activists, thinkers, artists, and organizers to dream big about how to bring fat politics into social movements. - AllGoAllGo is a review site where plus-size people rate the comfort & accessibility of public places, like restaurants and theaters.
- NOLOSENOLOSE is a diverse, vibrant community of fat queer and trans folks and our allies, with a shared commitment to intersectional anti-oppression ideology and action, seeking to end the oppression of fat people! We started out as the National Organizations for Lesbians of SizE before expanding scope to a broader community of all genders, bound by a common queer fat-positive ideology.
- Fat Girls Hiking
Fat Girls Hiking is fat activism, body liberation & outdoor community. We want to take the shame and stigma out of the word FAT and empower it. Our motto, Trails Not Scales focuses on Self Care in the outdoors. We want to create a space where fat and marginalized folks can come together in community to create safer spaces in the outdoors. - National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA)
One-third of the world’s population is fat, yet fat people are discriminated against in all aspects of daily life. For over 50 years, NAAFA has worked to make the world a better place for fat people through education, advocacy, and support. We are a multigenerational, intersectional social justice organization creating opportunity for big bodied people and building community for fat people and our loved ones. - Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH)
ASDAH is a non-profit organization with an international membership started in 2003. Our members and leaders are committed to the Health At Every Size (HAES) principles. The Health At Every Size movement is a continuously evolving alternative to the weight-centered approach to treating clients and patients of all sizes. It is also a movement working to promote size acceptance, to end weight discrimination and stigma, and to lessen the cultural obsession with weight loss and thinness.
Spotlight on Sex Work
March is Women's History Month and conversations surrounding the history of women and trans+ femme rights wouldn't be complete without discussing the stigma and discrimination of the sex work industry (which men, nonbinary, and agender folks also participate in). Sex work has often been considered "the oldest profession" and has been an active profession (legal or not) for centuries. Despite its active part of our communities, sex work has continuously been seen through a negative lens claiming sex workers have no agency and only do the work because they've been manipulated or coerced against their will. While there are absolutely dangerous situations in sex work—and sex trafficking is a real issue—it's time to see sex work for what it really is: a job.
Sex work is also an active area of research and scholarly discourse, particularly within gender and sexuality studies. This guide helps illuminate and contextualize the many cultural, critical, and scholarly threads surrounding sex workers and their experiences, exploring different perspectives of sex work and how to change the narrative of sex work to be more explicitly feminist and equitable.
Video: A group of sex workers share the most challenging aspects of their jobs | The Archive. (2021)
Resources for Further Exploration:
- Sex Work is Real Work and it's Time to Treat it That Way (American Civil Liberties Union)
- What Everyone Gets Wrong About Sex Work (Vox)
- Sex Work is a Disability Issue. So Why Doesn't the Disability Community Recognize That? (Rooted In Rights)
- How to Be an Ally to Sex Workers (The Sex Workers Outreach Project)
- What It Would Mean to Decriminalize Sex Work (R Street Institute)
Next Steps
If you'd like to engage more deeply with Women's History Month, units across the Libraries have created a number of interrelated resources and features to provide more holistic coverage of this commemoration. You'll find those, below:
- Feminist Media Studies (Media Studies)
- The Sounds of Women's History Month (Media Studies)
- Transfeminine Worlds: Works by Trans Women (Gender Studies)
- Feminism & Feminist Philosophies (Philosophy)
- In Memoriam: bell hooks (Philosophy)
- Spotlight on Victorian Women Writers Project (English & American Literature)
- Women-led Architecture Firms (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- Art & Gender (Gender Studies + Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- Women of Ukraine (Area Studies)
- Women's History Month Streaming and DVD Resources (Media Services)
- Primary Sources on Women in University Collections (Archives & Special Collections)
- Youth Materials on Women's History and Women’s Lives (Education Library)
Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers' Poetry by ISBN: 9781551527819Publication Date: 2019-10-15In this trailblazing anthology, more than fifty self-identified sex workers from all walks of the industry (survival and trade, past and present) explore their lived experience through the expressive nuance and beauty of poetry. In a variety of forms ranging from lyrics to list poems to found poetry to hybrid works, these authors express themselves with the complexity, agency, and honesty that sex workers are rarely afforded.
Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights by ISBN: 9781786633606Publication Date: 2018-11-06Do you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justice? In Revolting Prostitutes, sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith bring a fresh perspective to questions that have long been contentious. Speaking from a growing global sex worker rights movement, and situating their argument firmly within wider questions of migration, work, feminism, and resistance to white supremacy, they make it clear that anyone committed to working towards justice and freedom should be in support of the sex worker rights movement.
Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work by ISBN: 9781781683231Publication Date: 2014-03-11Recent years have seen a panic over "online red-light districts," which supposedly seduce vulnerable young women into a life of degradation, and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's live tweeting of a Cambodian brothel raid. But rarely do these fearful, salacious dispatches come from sex workers themselves, and rarely do they deviate from the position that sex workers must be rescued from their condition and the industry simply abolished -- a position common among feminists and conservatives alike. In Playing the Whore, journalist Melissa Gira Grant turns these pieties on their head, arguing for an overhaul in the way we think about sex work. Based on ten years of writing and reporting on the sex trade, and grounded in her experience as an organizer, advocate, and former sex worker, Playing the Whore dismantles pervasive myths about sex work, criticizes both conditions within the sex industry, and its criminalization, and argues that separating sex work from the "legitimate" economy only harms those who perform sexual labor.
To Live Freely in This World: Sex Worker Activism in Africa by ISBN: 9781479817566Publication Date: 2016-01-08Sex worker activists throughout Africa are demanding an end to the criminalization of sex work and the recognition of their human rights to safe working conditions, health and justice services, and lives free from violence and discrimination. To Live Freely in This World is the first book to tell the story of the brave activists at the beating heart of the sex workers' rights movement in Africa--the newest and most vibrant face of the global sex workers' rights struggle. African sex worker activists are proving that communities facing human rights abuses are not bereft of agency. They're challenging politicians, religious fundamentalists, and anti-prostitution advocates; confronting the multiple stigmas that affect the diverse members of their communities; engaging in intersectional movement building with similarly marginalized groups; and participating in the larger global sex workers' rights struggle in order to determine their social and political fate.
Insatiable Porn - A Love Story by ISBN: 9780802122599Publication Date: 2014-05-06Asa Akira (28) has already had an extremely unusual life. Educated at the United Nations International School in Manhattan, she soon was earning a good living by stripping and working as a dominatrix at a sex dungeon. Akira has now built up a reputation for being of the most popular, hardworking, and extreme actors in the business, winning dozens of awards for her 330+ movies, including her #1 bestselling series "Asa Akira Is Insatiable". In Insatiable, Akira recounts her extraordinary life in chapters that are hilarious, shocking, and touching. In a wry, conversational tone, she talks about her experiences shoplifting and doing drugs while in school, her relationship with other porn stars (she is married to one) and with the industry at large, and her beliefs about women and sexuality. Insatiable is filled with Akira's unusual and often highly amusing anecdotes, including her visit to a New Hampshire sex shop run by a mother and son. In a world where porn is increasingly becoming part of the mainstream, Akira is one of very few articulate voices writing from the inside. She has something important, controversial, and astonishingly interesting to say about sex and its central role in our lives and culture.
Coming Out Like a Porn Star: Essays on Pornography, Protection, and Privacy by ISBN: 9780990557166Publication Date: 2015-10-20This one-of-a-kind book shares intimate personal stories of porn performers "coming out" to family, friends, partners, lovers, and community. Jiz Lee is a genderqueer performer who, fascinated by the radical potential of sex, love, and art, has worked in over two hundred projects within indie, queer, and mainstream adult genres, written on gender and porn in The Feminist Porn Book, and taught queer sex workshops.
Pretty Baby: A Memoir by ISBN: 9781982175825Publication Date: 2022-07-12A queer teen rebel escapes small-town Appalachia and becomes Los Angeles's Renowned Lesbian Dominatrix in this searing and darkly funny memoir that upends our ideas about desire, class, and power. The dominatrix is the id of American femininity. She says the words that we all wish we could say when we find ourselves frozen in the presence of men. No is principal among them. So writes Chris Belcher, who appeared destined for a life of conventional femininity after she took first place in an infant beauty contest--a minor glory that followed her around a working-class town of 1,600 people in rural West Virginia. But when she came out as queer, the conservative community that had once celebrated its prettiest baby turned on her. A decade later, living in Los Angeles and trying to stay afloat in the early years of a PhD program, Belcher plunges into the work of a pro domme. Branding herself as Los Angeles's Renowned Lesbian Dominatrix, she specializes in male clients who want a domme to make them feel worthless, shameful, and weak--all the abuse regularly heaped upon women for free. A queer woman whom men can trust with the unorthodox sides of their sexualities, Belcher is paid to be the keeper of the fantasies that they can't enact in their everyday relationships. But moonlighting as a sex worker also carries risks, like the not-so-submissive who tries to turn the tables and the jealous client out for revenge. As Belcher moves between the embodied world of the pro domme and the abstract realm of academia, she discovers how lessons from the classroom apply to the dungeon, and vice versa.
Working It: Sex Workers on the Work of Sex by ISBN: 1629639915Publication Date: 2023-04-04Fiercely intelligent, fantastically transgressive, Working It is an intimate portrait of the lives of sex workers. A polyphonic story of triumph, survival, and solidarity this collection showcases the vastly different experiences and interests of those who have traded sex; among them a brothel worker in Australia, First Nation survivors of the Canadian child welfare system, and an afro-latina single parent raising a radicalized child. Packed with first-person essays, interviews, poetry, drawings, mixed-media collage, and photographs, Working It honors the complexity of lived experience. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hardboiled, these dazzling pieces will go straight to the heart.
Sex Work: Rethinking the Job, Respecting the Workers by ISBN: 9780774826112Publication Date: 2013-09-18In the early twentieth century, abolitionists sought to stamp out sex work by penalizing all involved. In the generation that followed, neo-abolitionists looked at the sex industry from a feminist perspective, claiming that workers were victims caught in a patriarchal matrix. Yet both agreed that the industry was a destructive and corrupting force that should be eliminated. In this radical volume, five academics and activists convey their vision of prostitution as work, reclaiming the place of sex workers in the discussion of their lives and their work, and opposing discourses that position them as merely victims without agency.
Sex Work on Campus by ISBN: 9781000607024Publication Date: 2022-05-17Sex Work On Campus examines the experiences of college students engaged in sex work and sparks dialogue about the ways educators might develop a deeper appreciation for--and praxis of--equity and justice on campus. Analyzing a study conducted with seven college student sex workers, the book focuses on sex work histories, student motivations, and how power (or lack thereof) associated with social identity shape experiences of student sex work. It examines what these students learn because of sex work, and what college and university leaders can do to support them. These findings are combined in tandem with analysis of current research, popular culture, sex work rights movements, and exploration of legal contexts. This fresh and important writing is suitable for students and scholars in sexuality studies, gender studies, sociology, and education.
Debating Sex Work by ISBN: 9780190659899Publication Date: 2019-11-21Prostitution is often referred to as "oldest profession." Critics of this expression redescribe it as "the oldest oppression." Debates about how best to understand and regulate prostitution are bound up with difficult moral, legal, and political questions. Indeed, it can be approached from numerous angles - is buying and selling sex fundamentally wrong? How can it possibly be regulated? How can sex workers be protected, if they are allowed to work at all? In this concise, for-and-against volume, ethicists Lori Watson and Jessica Flanigan engage with each other on the nature and consequences of sex work, revealing new and profound ways in which to understand it.
Internet Sex Work: Beyond the Gaze by ISBN: 9783319656298Publication Date: 2017-10-02This book takes readers behind the screen to uncover how digital technologies have affected the UK sex industry. The authors use extensive new datasets to explore the working practices, safety and regulation of the sex industry, for female, male and trans sex workers primarily working in the UK. Insights are given as to how sex workers use the internet in their everyday working lives, appropriating social media, private online spaces and marketing strategies to manage their profiles, businesses and careers. Internet Sex Work also explores safety strategies in response to new forms of crimes experienced by sex workers, as well as policing responses. The book will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of social science disciplines, including gender studies, socio-legal studies, criminology and sociology.
The Other Sex Work: The Feminist Academic Pornography Discourse by ISBN: 9783828846548Publication Date: 2021-08-11This work is a case study analysis of the contemporary feminist academic pornography discourse. Based on two academic articles, two competing discourses are identified and examined using constructivist grounded theory and discourse analysis. This clash of discourses is traced back firstly to changing social norms on sexuality: Older generations, who still inhabit most positions of power within academia, are largely still representing restrictive attitudes on what constitutes "acceptable" sexualities. Secondly, research conventions within the humanities and social sciences have changed to defy easy explanations. Pornography researchers are therefore forced to choose between conforming to prevalent sexuality norms or research conventions.
Transgender Sex Work and Society by ISBN: 9781939594228Publication Date: 2018-02-27This is the only book that systematically examines transgender sex work in the United States and globally. Bringing together perspectives from a rich range of disciplines and experiences, it is an invaluable resource on issues related to commercial sex in the transgender community and in the lives of trans sex workers, including mental health, substance use, relationship dynamics, encounters with the criminal justice system, and opportunities and challenges in the realm of public health. The volume covers trans sex workers' interactions with health, social service, and mental-health agencies, featuring more than forty contributors from across the globe. Synthesizing introductions by the editor help organize and put into context a vast and scattered research and empirical literature. The book is essential for researchers, health practitioners, and policy analysts in the areas of sex-work research, HIV/AIDS, and LGBTQ/gender studies.
Sex Work, Health, and Human Rights: Global Inequities, Challenges, and Opportunities for Action by ISBN: 9783030641702Publication Date: 2021-04-29This open access book provides a comprehensive overview of the health inequities and human rights issues faced by sex workers globally across diverse contexts, and outlines evidence-based strategies and best practices. Sex workers face severe health and social inequities, largely as the result of structural factors including punitive and criminalized legal environments, stigma, and social and economic exclusion and marginalization. Although previous work has largely emphasized an elevated burden and gaps in HIV and sexually transmitted infection (STI) services in sex work, less attention has been paid to the broader health and human rights concerns faced by sex workers.
Sex Work, Immigration and Social Difference by ISBN: 9781138925397Publication Date: 2016-08-26Public discourses around migrant sex workers are often more confident about what migrant sex workers signify morally but are less clear about who the 'migrant' is. Based on interviews with immigrant, migrant and racialized sex workers in Vancouver, Canada and Melbourne, Australia, Sex Work, Immigration and Social Difference challenges the 'migrant sex worker' category by investigating the experiences of women who are often assumed to be 'migrant sex workers' in Australia and Canada. Many 'migrant sex workers' in Melbourne and Vancouver are in fact, naturalized citizens or permanent residents, whose involvement in the sex industry intersects with diverse ideas and experiences of citizenship in Australia and Canada. This book examines how immigrant, migrant and racialized sex workers in Vancouver and Melbourne wield or negotiate ideas of illegality and legality to obtain desired outcomes in their day-to-day work. Sex work continues to be the subject of fierce debate in the public sphere, at the policy level, and within research discourses. This study interrogates these perceptions of the 'migrant sex worker' by presenting the lived realities of women who embody or experience dimensions of this category. This book is interdisciplinary and will appeal to those engaged in criminology, sociology, law, and women's studies.
Sex Work and Hate Crime: Innovating Policy, Practice, and Theory by ISBN: 9783030869489Publication Date: 2021-11-10This book brings together literature, empirical research findings from two projects, and policy analysis to examine how some forces in England have adopted the approach of treating crimes against sex workers as hate crimes. This book identifies some of the benefits of the hate crime approach to crimes against sex workers, both operationally and for some of the victims of crime. The authors argue that the hate crime approach should not be seen as an alternative to decriminalisation of sex work but can provide a pathway to achieving more sensitive but robust policing of crimes against sex workers and support in accessing justice through the criminal justice system. They also examine the broader context of hate crime policy and scholarship as they debate the relevance, problems and merits of the sex work hate crime model.
Historical Sex Work: New Contributions From History and Archaeology by ISBN: 9780813066592Publication Date: 2020-10-13This volume explores the sex trade in America from 1850 to 1920 through the perspectives of archaeologists and historians, expanding the geographic and thematic scope of research on the subject. Historical Sex Work builds on the work of previous studies in helping create an inclusive and nuanced view of social relations in United States history. Many of these essays focus on lesser-known cities and tell the stories of people often excluded from history, including African American madams Ida Dorsey and Melvina Massey and the children of prostitutes. Contributors discuss how sex workers navigated spatial and legal landscapes, examining evidence such as the location of Hookers Division in Washington, D.C., and court records of prostitution-related crimes in Fargo, North Dakota. Broadening the discussion to include the roles of men in sex work, contributors write about the proprietor Tom Savage, the ways prostitution connected with ideas of masculinity, and alternative reasons men may have visited brothels, such as for treatment of venereal disease and impotence.
Scholarly Articles:
- Hansen, M. A., & Johansson, I. (2023). Asking About “Prostitution”, “Sex Work” and “Transactional Sex”: Question Wording and Attitudes Toward Trading Sexual Services. Journal of Sex Research, 60(1), 153–164.
- Karlsson, H. (2022). Sex Work Policy Worldwide: A Scoping Review. Sexuality & Culture, 26(6), 2288–2310.
- Laughney, C. I. (2022). Advancing Sex-Positive Social Work Research and Practice. Social Work, 67(4), 391–393.
- Toubiana, M., & Ruebottom, T. (2022). Stigma Hierarchies: The Internal Dynamics of Stigmatization in the Sex Work Occupation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 67(2), 515–552.
Journals to Explore:
Databases:
- Sex & Sexuality
Explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors throughout the twentieth century. Produced in collaboration with the Kinsey Institute Library and Special Collections, the resource includes the work of leading American sexologists, sex researchers, and organizations.
- Archives of Sexuality and Gender
Provides access to materials exploring important aspects of LGBTQ life. Includes periodicals, newsletters, manuscripts, government records, organizational papers, correspondence, an international selection of posters, and other primary source materials.
While there are never enough groups working to support sex workers and end the stigma around this profession, there are a number of activist, advocacy, and research organizations dedicated to sex work and sex workers. We've included a selection of the most well-known below:
Further Reading:
- We Need More Nuanced Portrayals of Sex Workers by Adele Parks - Crime Reads
- Sex workers are the heroes in "The White Lotus" Season 2 by Tina Horn - Mashable Southeast Asia
- Why Do Sex Workers Always Get Left Out of the Self Care Conversation? by Lillian Stone - Allure
- Primary Source Set: Sex Work - GLBT Historical Society
- Publications from the Global Network of Sex Work Projects
Movies
Zola by
Publication Date: 2020Zola, a Detroit waitress, is seduced into a weekend of stripping in Florida for some quick cash -- but the trip becomes a sleepless 48-hour odyssey involving a nefarious friend, her pimp and her idiot boyfriend.Tangerine by
Publication Date: 2015After hearing that her boyfriend/pimp cheated on her while she was in jail, a transgender sex worker and her best friend set out to find him and teach him and his new lover a lesson.
Spotlight on Disability Studies
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Throughout history, communities of disabled, neurodiverse, crip, and sick people have been overlooked and oversimplified in academic conversations. Disability activism and political movements carved out a space for addressing ableism in research and academia; as a result, disability studies has emerged. Disability studies is an interdisciplinary field that explores disabled identities in the humanities and social sciences. For this spotlight on disability studies, we include neurodiverse, crip, and sick identities in our definition of disability.
To read more about disability language and the use of "crip," enjoy this article by Dean Strauss: "Queer Crips: Reclaiming Language," and Brittany Wong's Huffington Post article "It's Perfectly OK to call a Disabled Person 'Disabled,' And Here's Why."
We also recommend the following resources that helped with this feature:
- Disability Studies: Foundations & Key Concepts By JSTOR Daily
- Disability Studies By The University of Chicago Press
Resources for Further Exploration
A selection of articles, online compilations, and other resources relevant to disability studies
- "10 Principles of Disability Justice" (Sins Invalid)
- "Critical Disability Theory" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- "Disability: Definitions and Models" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- "Disability Pride: A Q&A with Dr. Susan Ghiaciuc, Disability Studies Co-Coordinator" (James Madison University)
- "Critical Readings in Interdisciplinary Disability Studies" (Springer Link)
- "Disability: Part of the Equity Equation" (Office of Disability Employment Office)
- "College Students with Disabilities Deserve Accessible Campuses" (The Washington Post)
- "Disability Studies Resource List" (American Council of Learned Societies)
- "Academia's Ableist Culture Laid Bare" (Springer Nature)
Next Steps
The following features also cover topics of disability studies:
- Disability and Art (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- Disability Awareness & Pride Months (Media Studies)
- National Disability Awareness Month Streaming and DVD Resources (Media Services)
- Recommended Disabled Reads from the Children's Collection (Education Library)
- Disability Awareness Resources (Indiana Institute on Disability and Community Library)
Image Description: A group of activists, including Judy Heumann (center, with yellow stockings) protest for the enforcement of Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, in April of 1977. Later that month, the protesters would occupy a federal building in San Francisco in protest in a sit-in that lasted more than 25 days. Photo by Wally McNamee / CORBIS / via Getty Images.
Black Disability Politics by ISBN: 9781478025009Publication Date: 2022-10-31In Black Disability Politics Sami Schalk explores how issues of disability have been and continue to be central to Black activism from the 1970s to the present. Schalk shows how Black people have long engaged with disability as a political issue deeply tied to race and racism. She points out that this work has not been recognized as part of the legacy of disability justice and liberation because Black disability politics differ in language and approach from the mainstream white-dominant disability rights movement. Drawing on the archives of the Black Panther Party and the National Black Women's Health Project alongside interviews with contemporary Black disabled cultural workers, Schalk identifies common qualities of Black disability politics, including the need to ground public health initiatives in the experience and expertise of marginalized disabled people so that they can work in antiracist, feminist, and anti-ableist ways. Prioritizing an understanding of disability within the context of white supremacy, Schalk demonstrates that the work of Black disability politics not only exists but is essential to the future of Black liberation movements.
Crip Times: Disability, Globalization, and Resistance by ISBN: 9781479874156Publication Date: 2018-01-16Broadly attentive to the political and economic shifts of the last several decades, Robert McRuer asks how disability activists, artists and social movements generate change and resist the dominant forms of globalization in an age of austerity, or “crip times.” Throughout Crip Times, McRuer considers how transnational queer disability theory and culture—activism, blogs, art, photography, literature, and performance—provide important and generative sites for both contesting austerity politics and imagining alternatives. The book engages various cultural flashpoints, including the spectacle surrounding the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games; the murder trial of South African Paralympian Oscar Pistorius; the photography of Brazilian artist Livia Radwanski which documents the gentrification of Colonia Roma in Mexico City; the defiance of Chilean students demanding a free and accessible education for all; the sculpture and performance of UK artist Liz Crow; and the problematic rhetoric of “aspiration” dependent upon both able-bodied and disabled figurations that emerged in Thatcher’s England. Crip Times asserts that disabled people themselves are demanding that disability be central to our understanding of political economy and uneven development and suggests that, in some locations, their demand for disability justice is starting to register. Ultimately, McRuer argues that a politics of austerity will always generate the compulsion to fortify borders and to separate a narrowly defined “us” in need of protection from “them.”
Queer Silence: On Disability and Rhetorical Absence by ISBN: 9781517914097Publication Date: 2022-10-25In queer culture, silence has been equated with voicelessness, complicity, and even death. Queer Silence insists, however, that silence can be a generative and empowering mode of survival. Triangulating insights from queer studies, disability studies, and rhetorical studies, J. Logan Smilges explores what silence can mean for people whose bodyminds signify more powerfully than their words. Queer Silence begins by historicizing silence's negative reputation, beginning with the ways homophile activists rejected medical models pathologizing homosexuality as a disability, resulting in the silencing of disability itself. This silencing was redoubled by HIV/AIDS activism's demand for "out, loud, and proud" rhetorical activities that saw silence as capitulation. Reading a range of cultural artifacts whose relative silence has failed to attract queer attachment, from anonymous profiles on Grindr to ex-gays to belated gender transitions to disability performance art, Smilges argues for silence's critical role in serving the needs of queers who are never named as such. Queer Silence urges queer activists and queer studies scholars to reconcile with their own ableism by acknowledging the liberatory potential of silence, a mode of engagement that disattached queers use every day for resistance, sociality, and survival.
Introducing Disability Studies by ISBN: 9781588268662Publication Date: 2013-01-04Ronald Berger provides students with a comprehensive, accessible introduction to the key themes and controversies in disability studies. This innovative textbook: provides historical context, from ancient times to the present; traces disability's impact throughout the life course; gives prominence to the voices of people with disabilities; explores popular culture's role in distorting ideas about disability; addresses emerging ethical issues, such as the implications of genetic selection. Illustrating the profound consequences of differing conceptions of physical, sensory, and cognitive impairments, Berger provides a solid foundation for making sense of disability as a social phenomenon.
May Tomorrow Be Awake: On Poetry, Autism, and Our Neurodiverse Future by ISBN: 9780063020153Publication Date: 2022-08-09Adults often find it difficult to communicate with autistic students and try to "fix" them. But what if we found a way to help these kids use their natural gifts to convey their thoughts and feelings? What if the traditional structure of language prevents them from communicating the full depth of their experiences? What if the most effective and most immediate way for people on the spectrum to express themselves is through verse, which mirrors their sensory-rich experiences and patterned thoughts? May Tomorrow Be Awake explores these questions and opens our eyes to a world of possibility. It is the inspiring story of one educator's journey to understand and communicate with his students -- and the profound lessons he learned. Chris Martin, an award-winning poet and celebrated educator, works with non-verbal children and adults on the spectrum, teaching them to write poetry. The results have been nothing short of staggering for both these students and their teacher. Through his student's breathtaking poems, Martin discovered what it means to be fully human. Martin introduces the techniques he uses in the classroom and celebrates an inspiring group of young autistic thinkers -- Mark, Christophe, Zach, and Wallace -- and their electric verse, which is as artistically dazzling as it is stereotype-shattering. In telling each of their stories, Martin illuminates the diverse range of autism and illustrates how each so-called "deficit" can be transformed into an asset when writing poems. Meeting these remarkable students offers new insight into disability advocacy and reaffirms the depth of our shared humanity.
Ableism in Academia: Theorising Experiences of Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses in Higher Education by ISBN: 9781787354982Publication Date: 2020-10-13Rather than embracing difference, academic ecosystems seek to normalize and homogenize ways of working and of being a researcher. As a consequence, ableism is an endemic experience in academia, though to date no attempt has been made to theorize those experiences. Ableism in Academia provides an interdisciplinary outlook on ableism that is currently missing. Through reporting of research data and exploring personal experiences, the contributors explore the concept of what it means to be and to work outside the so-called norm. The volume brings together a range of perspectives, including feminism, post-structuralism, Derridean and Foucauldian theory, crip theory, and disability theory, and draws on a number of related disciplines. Contributors use various schools of theory to raise awareness and increase understanding of the marginalized. These theories are placed in the context of neoliberal academia, and used to interrogate aspects of identity and how disability is performed, and to argue that ableism is not just a disability issue. This timely collection will be of interest to researchers in disability studies, higher education studies, and sociology, as well as to those working across the social sciences.
Blackness and Disability: critical examinations and cultural interventions by ISBN: 9781611860108Publication Date: 2012-02-01Disability Studies diverge from the medical model of disability (which argues that disabled subjects can and should be "fixed") to view disability as socially constructed, much in the same way other identities are. The work of reading Black and disabled bodies is not only recovery work, but work that requires a willingness to deconstruct the systems that would keep those bodies in separate spheres. This pivotal volume uncovers the misrepresentations of Black disabled bodies and demonstrates how those bodies transform systems and culture. Drawing on key themes in Disability Studies and African American Studies, these collected essays complement one another in interesting and dynamic ways, to forge connections across genres and chronotopes, an invitation to keep Blackness and disability in conversation. With an analysis of disability as a result of war, studies of cognitive impairment and slavery in fiction, representations of slavery and violence in photography, deconstructions of illness (cancer and AIDS) narratives, comparative analyses of Black and Latina/o and Black and African subjects, analysis of treatments of disability in hip-hop, and commentary on disability, Blackness, and war, this volume shows that the historical lines of demarcation in this field are permeable and should be challenged.
Feminist, Queer, Crip by ISBN: 9780253009340Publication Date: 2013-05-16In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip alliances. This bold book goes against the grain of normalization and promotes a political framework for a more just world.
Feminist Disability Studies by ISBN: 9780253223401Publication Date: 2011-10-24Disability, like questions of race, gender, and class, is one of the most provocative topics among theorists and philosophers today. This volume, situated at the intersection of feminist theory and disability studies, addresses questions about the nature of embodiment, the meaning of disability, the impact of public policy on those who have been labeled disabled, and how we define the norms of mental and physical ability. The essays here bridge the gap between theory and activism by illuminating structures of power and showing how historical and cultural perceptions of the human body have been informed by and contributed to the oppression of women and disabled people.
The Rejected Body: feminist philosophical reflections on disability by ISBN: 0415910463Publication Date: 1996-07-02The Rejected Body argues that feminist theorizing has been skewed toward non-disabled experience, and that the knowledge of people with disabilities must be integrated into feminist ethics, discussions of bodily life, and criticism of the cognitive and social authority of medicine. Among the topics it addresses are who should be identified as disabled; whether disability is biomedical, social or both; what causes disability and what could 'cure' it; and whether scientific efforts to eliminate disabling physical conditions are morally justified. Wendell provides a remarkable look at how cultural attitudes towards the body contribute to the stigma of disability and to widespread unwillingness to accept and provide for the body's inevitable weakness.
Extraordinary Bodies: figuring physical disability in American culture and literature by ISBN: 9780231183178Publication Date: 2017-03-07Extraordinary Bodies is a cornerstone text of disability studies, establishing the field upon its publication in 1997. Framing disability as a minority discourse rather than a medical one, the book added depth to oppressive narratives and revealed novel, liberatory ones. Through her incisive readings of such texts as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the Iron Mills, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson exposed the social forces driving representations of disability. She encouraged new ways of looking at texts and their depiction of the body and stretched the limits of what counted as a text, considering freak shows and other pop culture artifacts as reflections of community rites and fears. Garland-Thomson also elevated the status of African-American novels by Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde. Extraordinary Bodies laid the groundwork for an appreciation of disability culture and an inclusive new approach to the study of social marginalization.
Beginning with Disability: A Primer by ISBN: 9781138211377Publication Date: 2017-09-28While there are many introductions to disability and disability studies, most presume an advanced academic knowledge of a range of subjects. Beginning with Disability is the first introductory primer for disability studies aimed at first year students in two- and four-year colleges. This volume of essays across disciplines--including education, sociology, communications, psychology, social sciences, and humanities--features accessible, readable, and relatively short chapters that do not require specialized knowledge. Lennard Davis, along with a team of consulting editors, has compiled a number of blogs, vlogs, and other videos to make the materials more relatable and vivid to students.
The Disability Studies Reader by ISBN: 9781138930223Publication Date: 2016-11-01The fifth edition of The Disability Studies Reader addresses the post-identity theoretical landscape by emphasizing questions of interdependency and independence, the human-animal relationship, and issues around the construction or materiality of gender, the body, and sexuality. Selections explore the underlying biases of medical and scientific experiments and explode the binary of the sound and the diseased mind. The collection addresses physical disabilities, but as always investigates issues around pain, mental disability, and invisible disabilities as well.
The Oxford Handbook of Disability History by ISBN: 9780190234959Publication Date: 2018-07-18Disability history exists outside of the institutions, healers, and treatments it often brings to mind. It is a history where the disabled live not just as patients or cure-seekers, but rather as people living differently in the world - and it is also a history that helps define the fundamental concepts of identity, community, citizenship, and normality. The Oxford Handbook of Disability History is the first volume of its kind to represent this history and its global scale, from ancient Greece to British West Africa. The twenty-seven articles, written by thirty experts from across the field, capture the diversity and liveliness of this emerging scholarship. Whether discussing disability in modern Chinese cinema or on the American antebellum stage, this collection provides new and valuable insights into the rich and varied lives of the disabled across time and place.
A Disability History of the United States by ISBN: 9780807022047Publication Date: 2013-10-01Disability is not only the story of someone we love or the story of whom we may become; rather it is undoubtedly the story of our nation. Covering the entirety of US history from pre-1492 to the present, A Disability History of the United States is the first book to place the experiences of disabled people at the center of the American narrative. In many ways, it's a familiar telling. In other ways, it is a radical repositioning of US history. By doing so, the book casts new light on familiar stories, such as slavery and immigration, while breaking ground about the ties between nativism and oralism in the late nineteenth century and the role of ableism in the development of democracy. A Disability History of the United States pulls from primary-source documents and social histories to retell US history through the eyes, words, and impressions of the people who lived it. As historian and disability scholar Nielsen argues, to understand disability history isn't to narrowly focus on a series of individual triumphs but rather to examine mass movements and pivotal daily events through the lens of varied experiences. Throughout the book, Nielsen deftly illustrates how concepts of disability have deeply shaped the American experience--from deciding who was allowed to immigrate to establishing labor laws and justifying slavery and gender discrimination. Included are absorbing--at times horrific--narratives of blinded slaves being thrown overboard and women being involuntarily sterilized, as well as triumphant accounts of disabled miners organizing strikes and disability rights activists picketing Washington.
Disability Histories by ISBN: 9780252080319Publication Date: 2014-12-16The field of disability history continues to evolve rapidly. In this collection, Susan Burch and Michael Rembis present essays that integrate critical analysis of gender, race, historical context, and other factors to enrich and challenge the traditional modes of interpretation still dominating the field. Contributors delve into four critical areas of study within disability history: family, community, and daily life; cultural histories; the relationship between disabled people and the medical field; and issues of citizenship, belonging, and normalcy. As the first collection of its kind in over a decade, Disability Histories not only brings readers up to date on scholarship within the field but fosters the process of moving it beyond the U.S. and Western Europe by offering work on Africa, South America, and Asia. The result is a broad range of readings that open new vistas for investigation and study while encouraging scholars at all levels to redraw the boundaries that delineate who and what is considered of historical value. Informed and accessible, Disability Histories is essential for classrooms engaged in all facets of disability studies within and across disciplines.
Journals
- Disability and Society
- Annual Disability Statistics Compendium
- Review of Disability Studies
- Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities
- Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies
- Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education
- Research in Developmental Disabilities
- Sexuality and Disability
Journal Articles
- Brown, N., & Ramlackhan, K. (2022). Exploring experiences of ableism in academia: a constructivist inquiry. Higher Education (00181560), 83(6), 1225–1239.
- Brueggemann, B. J., Garland-Thomson, R., & Kleege, G. (2005). What Her Body Taught (Or, Teaching about and with a Disability): A Conversation. Feminist Studies, 31(1), 13–33.
- Davis, L. J. (2022). Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards: Disability Studies Then, Now, and When. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 16(3), 253–264.
- Davis, L. J. (1999). Crips Strike Back: The Rise of Disability Studies. American Literary History, 11(3), 500–512.
- Ginsburg, F., & Rapp, R. (2013). Disability Worlds. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42, 53–68.
- Goodley, D., Lawthom, R., Liddiard, K., & Runswick-Cole, K. (2021). Key Concerns for Critical Disability Studies. International Journal of Disability and Social Justice, 1(1), 27–49.
- McRuer, R. (2005). Crip Eye for the Normate Guy: Queer Theory and the Disciplining of Disability Studies. PMLA, 120(2), 586–592.
- Brown, N. & Leigh, J. (2018) Ableism in Academia: Where are the Disabled and Ill Academics? Disability & Society, 33(6), 985-989.
Databases
Study Resources
Studying with Dyslexia by ISBN: 9780230390560Publication Date: 2012-08-01As a dyslexic student you have a unique learning style. Understanding this can help you take control and study in a way that is most effective for you. Full of practical advice and visual examples, this friendly book will guide you through the dyslexic learning style. It gives you all the essential knowledge and ideas needed to manage your dyslexia positively. Handy for students at any level, this easy-to-read guide: suggests core strategies for doing things differently to work with your dyslexia, instead of against it; covers individual study skills, including organisation, reading, writing and taking exams; provides information on the support that should be available to you as a student.
Navigating College: A Handbook on Self Advocacy by ISBN: 9781938800009Publication Date: 2013-07-01Leaving high school and going to college is complicated for everyone. But if you're a student on the autism spectrum who is about to enter higher education for the first time, it might be a little bit more complicated for you. Maybe you're worried about getting accommodations, getting places on time, or dealing with sensory issues in a new environment. Maybe you could use some advice on how to stay healthy at school, handle dating and relationships, or talk to your friends and classmates about your disability. Maybe you want to talk to someone who's already dealt with these issues. That's where we come in. Navigating College is an introduction to the college experience from those of us who've been there. The writers and contributors are Autistic adults, and we're giving you the advice that we wish someone could have given us when we headed off to college. We wish we could sit down and have a chat with each of you, to share our experiences and answer your questions. But since we can't teleport, and some of us have trouble meeting new people, this book is the next best thing. So as you go back to school, check out a copy of Navigating College for yourself or your loved one. We have done this all before -- let us help you out.
Spotlight on Consensual Non-monogamy
Consensual Non-monogamy
Consensual non-monogamy is an umbrella term used to describe any agreed-upon romantic/sexual relationship that falls outside of the exclusive, dyadic (two-person) structure of monogamy, including polyamory and open relationships. Though non-monogamous relationships have gained greater contemporary visibility, it has existed in many and various forms across history. This guide provides an introduction to both scholarly and popular resources for those wishing to learn more about consensual non-monogamy.
Getting Started
- 5 Radical Ways People Do Non-Monogamy That You Need to Know About (Everyday Feminism)
- The Extraordinary Political Power Of Moving ‘Beyond Monogamy’ (The Establishment)
- Ethical Non-Monogamy: The Rise of Multi-Partner Relationships (BBC)
- What Ethical Non-Monogamy Really Means & Why People Practice It (Mind Body Green)
Image: Three young Black people embracing at the beach.
Polysecure: attachment, trauma and consensual nonmonogamy by ISBN: 9781944934989Publication Date: 2020-10-23Attachment theory has entered the mainstream, but most discussions focus on how we can cultivate secure monogamous relationships. What if, like many people, you're striving for secure, happy attachments with more than one partner? Polyamorous psychotherapist Jessica Fern breaks new ground by extending attachment theory into the realm of consensual nonmonogamy. Using her nested model of attachment and trauma, she expands our understanding of how emotional experiences can influence our relationships. Then, she sets out six specific strategies to help you move toward secure attachments in your multiple relationships. Polysecure is both a trailblazing theoretical treatise and a practical guide.
More Than Two: a practical guide to ethical polyamory by ISBN: 9780991399703Publication Date: 2014-09-01Can you love more than one person? Have multiple romantic partners, without jealousy or cheating? Absolutely! Polyamorous people have been paving the way, through trial and painful error. Now there's the new book More Than Two: A practical guide to ethical polyamory to help you find your own way.
The Ethical Slut: a practical guide to polyamory, open relationships & other adventures by ISBN: 9781587613371Publication Date: 2009-03-10The essential guide for singles and couples who want to explore polyamory in ways that are ethically and emotionally sustainable. For anyone who has ever dreamed of love, sex, and companionship beyond the limits of traditional monogamy, this groundbreaking guide navigates the infinite possibilities that open relationships can offer. Experienced ethical sluts Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy dispel myths and cover all the skills necessary to maintain a successful and responsible polyamorous lifestyle--from self-reflection and honest communication to practicing safe sex and raising a family. Individuals and their partners will learn how to discuss and honor boundaries, resolve conflicts, and to define relationships on their own terms.
Opening Up: a guide to creating and sustaining open relationships by ISBN: 9781573442954Publication Date: 2008-05-01Relationship expert and bestselling author Tristan Taormino offers a bold new strategy for creating loving, lasting relationships. Drawing on in-depth interviews with over a hundred women and men, Opening Up explores the real-life benefits and challenges of all styles of open relationships -- from partnered non-monogamy to solo polyamory. With her refreshingly down-to-earth style and sharp wit, Taormino offers solutions for making an open relationship work, including tips on dealing with jealousy, negotiating boundaries, finding community, parenting and time management. Opening Up will change the way you think about intimacy.
Designer Relationships: a guide to happy monogamy, positive polyamory, and optimistic open relationships by ISBN: 9781627781497Publication Date: 2015-09-08Contemporary relationships are in a state of rapid evolution. These changes can and should empower people with the opportunity to develop partnerships based on their own sexualities, understandings, and agreements. This makes it possible to create what Kenneth Haslam, founder of the Kinsey Institute's Polyamory Archive, has called "designer relationships." Designer relationships may encompass: people who bond emotionally but not sexually; people who agree to be non-exclusive; single people who have occasional lovers or friends with benefits; multiple partner configurations where long-term bonds exist among all or some; partnerships in which people are kinky and that make room to explore kink.
Understanding Non-Monogamies by ISBN: 9780415800556Publication Date: 2009-12-08Most social scientific work on intimate relationships has assumed a monogamous structure, or has considered anything other than monogamy only in the context of 'infidelity'. Yet, in recent years there has been a growing interest among researchers and the public in exploring various patterns of intimacy that involve open non-monogamy. This volume gathers contributions from academics, activists, and practitioners throughout the world to explore non-monogamous relationships. Featuring both empirical and theoretical pieces, contributors examine the history and cultural basis of various forms of non-monogamy, experiences of non-monogamous living, psychological understandings of relationship patterns, language and emotion, the discursive construction of mono-normativity as well as issues of race, class, disability, sexuality and gender.
Polyamory, monogamy, and American dreams : the stories we tell about poly lives and the cultural production of inequality by ISBN: 9781138895034Publication Date: 2019-11-13This book introduces "the poly gaze" as a cultural tool to examine how representations of polyamory and poly lives reflect or challenge cultural hegemonies of race, class, gender, and nation. What role does monogamy play in American Identity, the American dream, and U.S. exceptionalism? How do the stories we tell about intimate relationships do cultural and ideological work to maintain and legitimize social inequalities along the lines of race, ethnicity, nation, religion, class, gender and sexuality? How might the introduction of polyamory or consensually non-monogamous relationships in the stories we tell about intimacy confound, disrupt or shift the meaning of what constitutes a good, American life?
Fraught Intimacies: non/monogamy in the public sphere by ISBN: 9780774828963Publication Date: 2015-05-30Adultery scandals involving politicians. Dating websites for married women and men. News reports on raids of polygamous communities. It seems that non-monogamy is everywhere: in popular culture, in the news, and before the courts. In Fraught Intimacies, Nathan Rambukkana delves into how polygamy, adultery, and polyamory are represented in the public sphere. His intricate analysis reveals how some forms of non-monogamy are tacitly accepted, even glamourized, while others are vilified and reviled. By questioning what this says about intimacy, power, and privilege, this book offers an innovative framework for understanding the status of non-monogamy in Western society.
Undoing Monogamy by ISBN: 9780822374213Publication Date: 2016-04-28In Undoing Monogamy, Angela Willey offers a radically interdisciplinary exploration of the concept of monogamy in U.S. science and culture, propelled by queer feminist desires for new modes of conceptualization and new forms of belonging. She approaches the politics and materiality of monogamy as intertwined with one another such that disciplinary ways of knowing themselves become an object of critical inquiry. Refusing to answer the naturalization of monogamy with a naturalization of nonmonogamy, Willey demands a critical reorientation toward the monogamy question in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.
The Spectre of Promiscuity: gay male and bisexual non-monogamies and polyamories by ISBN: 9780754649069Publication Date: 2007-11-28Wide-ranging research suggests that partners in gay male and bisexual relationships do not necessarily expect monogamy, or see it as an important issue. Although the frequency of gay male and bisexual non-monogamous partnerships tends to be widely acknowledged in social science literature, these relationships have rarely been explored in more detail. By providing rich empirical data, thoughtful analysis and theoretical debate, this book makes a significant contribution to the sociological literature on sexual and intimate relationships. More specifically it explores the diversity of gay male and bisexual relationship practices in the context of heteronormative citizenship and intra-social movement conflict, and highlights the complexity of power relations that circumscribe queer people's relationships and sexual lives.
Beyond Monogamy: polyamory and the future of polyqueer sexualities by ISBN: 9781479801596Publication Date: 2016-08-16A man and woman are in an open relationship. They have agreed that having sexual partners outside of their relationship is permissible. One night, when her partner is in another city, the woman has sex with the man's best friend. What does this mean for their relationship? More importantly, why is there such a strong cultural taboo against this kind of triangulation and what does it reveal about the social organization of gender and sexuality? In Beyond Monogamy, Mimi Schippers asks these and other questions to explore compulsory monogamy as a central feature of sexual normalcy. Schippers argues that compulsory monogamy promotes the monogamous couple as the only legitimate, natural, or desirable relationship form in ways that support and legitimize gender, race, and sexual inequalities. Through an investigation of sexual interactions and relationship forms that include more than two people, from polyamory, to threesomes, to the complexity of the 'down-low,' Schippers explores the queer, feminist, and anti-racist potential of non-dyadic sex and relationships. A serious look at the intersections of society and sexuality, Beyond Monogamy takes the reader on a compelling and accessible journey through compulsory monogamy, polyamory, and polyqueer sex and relationships.
The Handbook of Consensual Non-Monogamy: affirming mental health practice by ISBN: 9781538157121Publication Date: 2022-07-15This handbook provides perspectives across mental health disciplines on clinical work with consensual non-monogamous (CNM) people/relationships from a lens of power, privilege, and oppression. The authors provide a broad-based resource for clinicians, trainees, educators and supervisors in CNM-affirming care, addressing societal and internalized mononormativity and intersections with other forms of oppression (including ableism, racism, cisnormativity, classism). Educators using this volume will find foundational, current data on the experiences of CNM individuals and their relationships, as well as recent theory and empirical research relevant to CNM clients, including the importance of cultural humility within clinical practice. Key topics include developmental approaches to CNM, communities, families and relationships, queerness, emotional experiences, strengths/resilience, as well as ethical issues, training and organizational considerations in work with these clients, emphasizing practical recommendations, insights, and tools to promote CNM-affirming practice across settings.
- Song, S. (2012). Polyamory and Queer Anarchism: Infinite Possibilities for Resistance. Queering Anarchism: Essays on Gender, Power, and Desire. AK Press.
Selection of online archives and other resources, which can be used to find further information on this topic
- Kenneth R. Haslam Collection on Polyamory at the Kinsey Institute LibraryThe Kenneth R. Haslam, MD. collection consists of conference materials, internet resources, media coverage, and research articles, as well as Dr Haslam’s personal correspondence and papers originally delivered at poly-oriented meetings, sex research and sex therapy conferences.
- Archives of Sexuality and Gender
Provides access to materials exploring important aspects of LGBTQ life. Includes periodicals, newsletters, manuscripts, government records, organizational papers, correspondence, an international selection of posters, and other primary source materials.
- Sex & Sexuality
Explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors throughout the twentieth century. Produced in collaboration with the Kinsey Institute Library and Special Collections, the resource includes the work of leading American sexologists, sex researchers, and organizations.
- RAD List of Relationship Anarchy Articles, Links, ResourcesA list of articles, books, and other resources grew out of work that was started in Metro Detroit Polyamory's Relationship Anarchy discussion group in 2016. The list is focused on Relationship Anarchy, but includes articles on other non-monogamous relationship styles.
- Consensual Non-monogamy Zotero LibraryA collaborative Zotero library that brings together citations for a number of resources relating to consensual non-monogamy. Includes books, articles, blog posts, and more.
Blogs
- The Critical Polyamorist - Kim TallBear's blog about polyamory, other forms of open non-monogamy, and their intersections with Indigeneity, race, and cultural politics in the US and Canada.
- Conscious Polyamory: Loving More Than One - A blog about polyamory emphasizing loving relationships, personal growth, and conscious evolution.
Podcasts
Queer Sex Ed Queer Sex Ed is an imperative statement. When we call to "Queer" Sex Ed, it is a call-to-arms for sexual health educators, schools, parents, and people in all types of relationships to intentionally "queer" the institutions of sexual communication, sexual health, interpersonal relationships, and relationship structure. Each month, Sara and Jay explore topics in sex health, relationships, queer identities, BDSM, kink, sex work, and more.
Multiamory Podcast Multiamory offers support and advice for modern relationships. Whether you are monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you and we're here for you.
Polyamory Weekly Poly Weekly is a podcast devoted to tales from the front of responsible non-monogamy from an inclusive, kink-friendly point of view. Every week, Minx, her cohosts and her guests discuss issues relating to communication, gender, race, sex, kink, manners, dating, family and time management, with perspectives from all around the globe.
All My Relations - Ep #5 Decolonizing Sex All My Relations is a podcast hosted by Matika Wilbur (Swinomish and Tulalip) and Adrienne Keene (Cherokee Nation) to explore our relationships— relationships to land, to our creatural relatives, and to one another. Join AMR for a second discussion with Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Dr. Kim Tallbear on All My Relations. We'll explore Kim's “life project” of critical polyamory, her journey through feminism, her processes of writing in, with, and for community, and Kim treats us with some of her poetry, the “Critical polyamorist 100s”.
It's Called Polyamory: Coming Out about your Nonmonogomous Relationships by ISBN: 9781944934422Publication Date: 2017-10-06Even in progressive families and communities, people who practice nonmonogamy are susceptible to misinformation and accusations of moral and emotional failings. Facing this requires its own coming out and education process. In this guide, Tamara Pincus and Rebecca Hiles provide a roadmap for explaining the expansive intricacies of the consensual nonmonogamy spectrum. By fusing personal experience and community research, they break down the various incarnations of polyamorous relationship structures, polyamory's intersections with race and gender, and the seemingly esoteric jargon of the lifestyle.
Love's Not Color Blind: Race and Representation in Polyamorous and Other Alternative Communities by ISBN: 9781944934477Publication Date: 2018-03-30The issues that make monogamous dating daunting for people of color—shaming and exclusion by white partners, being fetishized, having realities of everyday racism ignored—occur in polyamorous relationships too, and trying "not to see race" only makes it worse. To make polyamorous communities inclusive, we must all acknowledge our part in perpetuating racism and listen to people of color. Love's Not Color Blind puts forward the framework—through research, anecdotal testimony, and analogy—for understanding, identifying, and confronting racism within polyamorous communities.
Love in Abundance: a counselor's guide to open relationships by ISBN: 9780937609477Publication Date: 2011-06-01Beyond the basics of polyamory lies a complex web of negotiations, agreements, pitfalls and rewards. Kathy Labriola, a relationships counselor who has worked for many years with singles, couples and groups in polyamorous and open relationships, sets forth some of the realities of alternative lifestyles: dealing with some of the common relationship-disrupters, managing jealousy, choosing compatible partners, combining BDSM with polyamory, distinguishing between sex addiction and polyamory, and much more.
Metaphysics of Gender
While in common parlance the word gender often serves as a kid-friendly synonym for sex, in feminist and academic discussions, the two are often seen as conceptually distinct. A rough and hasty description of the sex-gender distinction might say that sex is a biological given, gender is a social construction, and never the twain shall meet. However, even if we grant the sex-gender distinction (and a number of feminists do reject it for a variety of reasons), it remains far from obvious what, precisely, gender is, what it means for gender to be socially constructed, or what we should make of gender anyway.
Fortunately, feminists and philosophers have recently taken interest in the metaphysics of gender. This LibGuide serves as a selective bibliography on some of the scholarly work being done in this fascinating and important field of inquiry. A companion subject post on this topic is forthcoming.
Getting Started
For introductory material on the philosophy of gender and feminist philosophy, check out these articles from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which also provides extensive bibliographies of their own that are worth exploring:
- Mari Mikkola, "Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender"
- Talia Bettcher, "Feminist Perspectives on Trans Issues"
Additionally, the following bibliography identifies sources (within and without philosophy) on matters pertaining to trans genders, the lived experiences of transfolk, and intersectionality, and should prove a valuable resource for those interested in the metaphysics of gender:
- "An Inclusive Bibliography on Race, Gender, and Related Topics" (Google Doc set up by Meena Krishnamurthy)
Next Steps
If you'd like to explore this topic further, our library subject research portals are also a good place to get started; among other things, they provide tailored, subject-based lists of research resources:
Sources on the nature of social construction, considered as such or with particular respect to gender:
- Diaz‐Leon, E. (2015). "What is Social Construction?" European Journal of Philosophy 23(4), 1137-52.
- Hacking, I. (1999). The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Haslanger, S. (1995). "Ontology and Social Construction." Philosophical Topics 23(2), 95-125.
- Mallon, R. (2019). "Naturalistic Approaches to Social Construction." In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Zalta, E.N. (Ed.)
- Sveinsdóttir, Á.K. (2013) "The Social Construction of Human Kinds." Hypatia 28(4), 716-32.
- Sveinsdóttir, Á. (2015). "Social Construction." Philosophy Compass 10(12), 884-92.
Sources on the genealogy of gender:
- Butler, J. (1999). Gender Trouble (2nd ed.) London, UK: Routledge.
- Germon, J. (2009). Gender: A Genealogy of an Idea. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Repo, J. (2016). The Biopolitics of Gender. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Sources on the metaphysics of gender:
- Alcoff, L. (2006). Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
- Bach, T. (2012). "Gender Is a Natural Kind with a Historical Essence." Ethics 122(2), 231-72.
- Butler, J. (1999). Gender Trouble (2nd ed.) London, UK: Routledge.
- Diaz-Leon, E. (2016). "'Woman' as a Politically Significant Term: A Solution to the Puzzle." Hypatia 31(2), 245-58.
- Haslanger, S. (2000). "Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?" Noûs 34(1), 31-55.
- Haslanger, S. (2012). Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
- Jenkins, K. (2016). "Amelioration and Inclusion: Gender Identity and the Concept of Woman." Ethics 126(2), 394-421.
- Overall, C. (2009). "Sex/Gender Transitions and Life-Changing Aspirations." In You've Changed: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity, Shrage, L. (Ed.), 11-27. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Power, N., Halwani, R., and Soble, A. (Eds.) (2012). Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings (6th ed.). New York, NY: Rowan & Littlefield.
- See, for example:
- Ch. 14: Talia Bettcher, “Trans Women and the Meaning of 'Women'", 233-50.
- Ch. 15: Christine Overall, “Trans Persons, Cisgender Persons, and Gender Identities”, 251-67.
- See, for example:
- Sveinsdóttir, Á. K. (2013). "The Social Construction of Human Kinds." Hypatia 28(4), 716-32.
- Witt, C. (2011). The Metaphysics of Gender. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
- Witt, C. (Ed.) (2010). Feminist Metaphysics. New York, NY: Springer.
- See, for example:
- Ch. 3: Natalie Stoljar, “Different Women. Gender and the Realism-Nominalism Debate”, 27-46.
- Ch. 5: Mari Mikkola, “Ontological Commitments, Sex and Gender”, 67-83.
- See, for example:
Sources on feminist metaphysics and the metaphysics of gender vis-à-vis "mainstream" metaphysics:
- Barnes, E. (2014). "Going Beyond the Fundamental: Feminism in Contemporary Metaphysics." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 3(114), 335–51.
- Mikkola, M. (2016). "Feminist Metaphysics and Philosophical Methodology." Philosophy Compass 11(11), 661-70.
- Mikkola, M. (2016). "On the apparent antagonism between feminist and mainstream metaphysics." Philosophical Studies, 1-14.
- Schaffer, J. (2016) "Social Construction as Grounding; or, Fundamentality for Feminists, a Reply to Barnes and Mikkola." Philosophical Studies, 1-17.
- Sider, T. (2016). "Substantivity in Feminist Metaphysics." Philosophical Studies, 1-12.