Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon

24 reviews

maddramaqueen's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

This book rocks.  Literally everyone should at least try to read it.  I recognize that it can be triggering, and it was for me, but especially for straight-size people who have not experienced anti-fat bias on a societal level this is absolutely necessary.  Even as a fat person myself I learned so much about the violence facing those fatter than me that I was entirely unaware of.

If you can't handle the topics covered, I fully understand.  I'm in eating disorder recovery myself and this topic was triggering for me.  But the final chapter is one of the greatest pieces of activist writing I've ever read and I think everyone should read that chapter *at least*.  

Thank you so much for writing this, Aubrey Gordon.  It will be an oft recommended book in my future.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Bullying, Medical trauma, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Sexism, Hate crime, Medical content, Misogyny, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Fatphobia, and Sexual harassment

Moderate: Ableism, Chronic illness, Drug use, Death, Child abuse, Dysphoria, Toxic relationship, Gaslighting, Classism, Eating disorder, Domestic abuse, Rape, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Colonisation, Transphobia, Toxic friendship, Drug abuse, Stalking, and Terminal illness

mads_jpg's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

I started the audiobook of this and immediately switched to reading a physical copy so I could annotate the hell out of it because it's written so well! 

I went into this book thinking I had a good grip on the general ideas behind body positivity/neutrality and harmful beauty standards but man, the situation is so much worse than I could have ever imagined. Gordon's research combined with her personal experiences are truly eye-opening. I even read the section about planes while on one, and it made me view the situation in an entirely new light. 

Another one to add to the list of "should be mandatory reading for all human beings".

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Classism, Death, Bullying, Medical trauma, Toxic friendship, Ableism, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Sexual harassment, Fatphobia, Medical content, and Eating disorder

Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, Violence, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, and Transphobia

tree_branch's review against another edition

challenging informative medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia, Body shaming, and Bullying

Minor: Sexual harassment, Emotional abuse, Dysphoria, Violence, Sexual violence, Rape, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, and Eating disorder

dragon_s_hoard's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Sexual harassment, Racism, Self harm, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Toxic friendship, Sexism, Sexual assault, Body shaming, Child abuse, Fatphobia, Sexual violence, Ableism, Emotional abuse, Medical trauma, Bullying, Eating disorder, Medical content, Misogyny, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Chronic illness, Lesbophobia, Dysphoria, Gaslighting, Panic attacks/disorders, Police brutality, Classism, Transphobia, and Biphobia

entiresunset's review

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

A must read for everyone. Cannot recommend this enough. I learned so much by reading this book and am now able to tackle my own internalised anti-fat bias and weight stigma and to start my own healing process.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia and Bullying

Moderate: Eating disorder, Sexual harassment, Medical trauma, and Transphobia

Minor: Sexual assault and Rape

stevia333k's review against another edition

informative inspiring tense

4.5

This is a good book when I'm trying to get a different angle on conversion torture because this book is geared for the intersection of fat activism & feminism. i recommend this book. basically, screw the myth of willpower. i would say the book is scary with its descriptions of street harassment & assault, but there's a sort of horror of oppression that's alluded to but not explicitly gotten to, even though there is a lot of connections talked about throughout the book. that being said i'm adding these next 2 paragraphs in order to help synthesize what i got from this book with other information i've seen, especially since i haven't read like academic journals about fat rights, fat liberation, fat studies, etc. while i have marked it with spoiler formatting, please note that i have added information that are from other sources.

That being said, I feel like the book has a lot of emphasis on hatred against fat people, when i noticed that a lot of the bullying i faced in school was connected to people trying to assimilate & suck up to the teachers. it's the trying to get closer to enclosured power as opposed to breaking that privatization & getting it distributed equitably.

like there's 2 things i think of at least: the military wanting a one-size-fits-all outfit to make gear standardized (they ended up having to make 3 sizes), and how fatness is used to play into desireability politics to cover up how white patriarchs raped black perceived-females. like, i sense those were meant to be simmering in the background, (we literally started out with how fatphobia is connected to militarism, and how fatphobia is compared to an "epidemic" like how bourgeois depictions of famine refugees as zombies & "great replacement" canard works with settler colonizers. but again, these are left lower-key.)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Hate crime, Sexual harassment, Transphobia, Forced institutionalization, Sexual assault, War, Ableism, Body shaming, Fatphobia, Grief, Stalking, Violence, Bullying, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Rape, Child abuse, Eating disorder, Gaslighting, Sexual violence, Medical content, Racism, and Sexism

moonyreadsbystarlight's review against another edition

informative

3.25

 It’s hard to know exactly how to rate this because there were some very strong parts, but some sections left something to be desired. I went into this knowing little about the book (other than it looked interesting and was available on Libby). I think this could definitely be a good starting place for people who haven’t heard of anything beyond body positivity. There is good research that went into this and I like that she included some actionable solutions (even if I may take issue with some, far too often books like this end with more vague ideas of change, so seeing specific legislation recommendations and the like was nice). However, I don’t think it really goes far enough in discussing the nature of fatphobia systemically. 

While she does talk about intersectionality in parts and discusses some issues that pertain to trans people and people of color (particularly in the later half of the book), I don’t think that a lot of the discussion really captures how these things are connected beyond people with multiple marginalized identities existing. I think it would have been productive to talk more about the historical links between these oppressions (anti-fatness stemming from anti-Blackness). I think that some of the discussion on the bias research near the beginning particularly left me with some questions. While I don’t doubt that some parts of the population have decreased overt biases towards queer people and people of color while not having those decreasing attitudes towards fat people, I think that there is a lot more going on societally that was ignored during this discussion (that could have been rectified had she focused more on systems, pulling from more research). While the author is queer, the way she talked about homophobia being more shocking now seemed rather naïve; while it is true in some settings, it is certainly not universal throughout even the whole of the US – especially when you consider the rampant transphobic legislation that has been on the rise (an uptick in 2016 – well before this was written – but also more into 2020 – near the end of the year this was published – and then after the publication of this book, which it could not have accounted for). Other issues were also relegated as passing comments, rather than being a central part of the text at all (like how immigrants are treated in regard to fatphobia). A particularly jarring near-exclusion like this was looking at disability. While she mentions ableism and talks about medical negligence, she doesn’t really contend with the integral connection between ableism and fatphobia (this was particularly made apparent in one of her last anecdotes where she is praised for being healthy. While I do think that this interaction added a lot to the book as a whole, I think not talking about ableism alongside it was a mistake). Nor do I think that capitalism was really contended with – it was mentioned in passing, but contributed little in her actual analysis of fatphobia. 

Related to this, I think, is her use of personal experience (particularly in the first half of the book). I love it when people talk about their personal relationship to the topic. I think that personal anecdotes can really add a lot and in many cases hers did. However, I think she may have relied too heavily on them in parts – while also not including anecdotes in most of these parts from other fat people (particularly, fat people of color, disabled fat people, or fat trans people). I think doing this (whether through interviews or existing posts or articles online) would have really added to this both in terms of being able to see the issues and could lend itself to more robust discussion of the nature of fatphobia as it interacts with other societal marginalizations.  

I think what made this read frustrating for me is that I saw pieces that were very good, some language that would suggest that the author has some understanding of the issues of oppression being more complex (even naming specific issues), but then a lot of the book was still a pretty white-washed understanding of fatphobia and ideas about oppression that are very liberal (what I mentioned before about focusing on the bias research, as well as discussion of anti-fatphobia workshops and videos – cultural competency training that does fairly little, especially long term and especially when what we are contending with is so much larger than how overtly biased people are). 

So overall, I think that this gives some good information and she talks a lot about her experience as a fat queer woman (which is very valuable). I do think this could be a very important read for some people. I was just hoping for something more robust. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia, Medical trauma, Homophobia, Transphobia, Racism, and Sexual harassment

annieu's review

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia and Eating disorder

Moderate: Medical trauma, Dysphoria, Eating disorder, Misogyny, Body shaming, Chronic illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexism, and Sexual harassment

Minor: Rape, Suicide, Violence, and Transphobia

notartgarfunkel's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia and Medical trauma

Moderate: Racism, Transphobia, Sexual harassment, Mental illness, Sexual assault, and Bullying

Minor: Domestic abuse and Suicide

random19379's review

challenging emotional informative inspiring sad medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fatphobia, Bullying, and Body shaming

Moderate: Medical trauma and Transphobia

Minor: Homophobia and Racism