Interview with the Philosopher
In part two of our interview, acclaimed philosophy professor and author Kate Manne tells us about her new work on the intersection of misogyny and fatphobia and how it’s used to keep women down.
BY JULIE LAWRENCE
In her debut book, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, Kate Manne argues that misogyny is the law enforcement branch of the patriarchy while sexism is the theoretical and ideological branch of the patriarchy. In simpler terms, sexists wear lab coats while misogynists carry pitch forks. In making this distinction, she argues that misogyny can survive (and even thrive) without sexism, and that people can uphold misogynists’ systems without holding a sexist view about women.
To better understand these concepts, check out the difference between sexism and misogyny.
In her second book, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, she builds on the concepts in Down Girl, zeroing in on male entitlement; a feature of misogyny that prioritizes what men purportedly deserve and dictates what women are obligated to give them.
In her new book, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia, Manne is shifting gears to explore the intersection of misogyny and fatphobia and how diet culture is a tool leveraged by the patriarchy to further control women. In this interview, Manne tells us about the new book, what it all means and why it’s so vital for women’s progress.
JULIE: Let’s talk about internalized misogyny – how do women participate in the patriarchy’s behaviour enforcement?
KATE: Sometimes it’s about white women’s complicity. For example, with Trump supporters. The men very much led the way; they were the first to be on board with Trump, but then white women perceived Trump as the person who is going to help their male loved ones get ahead in terms of their emotional and material priorities.
It’s partly just like being allied with the most privileged men, and sometimes it can be a matter of unwitting complicity and sometimes it is a matter of directly – like, that’s who has the power, and so that’s how you get proximity to power and a little bit of trickle down power. Being metaphorically or literally in bed with those powerful men.
I’m not saying that women are as misogynistic as men, it’s just to say that in a particular form of policing, both men and women participate pretty much equally in just these very general unwitting perceptions that ambitious and successful women are anti-social and not communal or kind or considerate.
JULIE: That’s a good segue into talking about your new work. What is your next undertaking?
KATE: I’ve been really interested in the ways that we police women’s bodies, particularly in a patriarchal and fat phobic society, where just a really pernicious and common way in which women are controlled and in which we control ourselves is going hungry by living by the dictates of diet culture.
JULIE: Will there be a new book on the topic?
KATE: Yes, this new book will be trying to dig into (no pun intended) those intersections between misogyny and fat phobia and asking, what would it be to have a world in which women weren’t expected to take up less space? Both metaphorically and literally.
The book is called Unshrinking: How to Face Fat Phobia, and it’s trying to reckon with the biases that we have against people who do live in larger bodies; the thinking that people are morally to blame for the size of their bodies, which I debunk. Thinking people are intellectually less than because of the size of their bodies. Again, just pure prejudice. Also, thinking about some of the sexual fat phobia that ranks, especially girls and women, in a kind of hierarchy that’s inversely proportional to body mass.
JULIE: I have a background in addiction and addiction services and it’s almost like, there’s a tendency to pass a moral judgment that someone can’t control themselves.
KATE: Absolutely
JULIE: And that makes them less than, or weak or whatever it is. Something about lack of control makes people feel like you can’t be trusted to perform at a high level.
KATE: Yeah, totally. And I mean, we know that the old chestnut that people’s body size is a predictor of their amount of willpower is just false.
Willpower is almost irrelevant to what weight people are. It explains between 1% and 4% of the variants in human body mass that we see across the population. A person’s weight has far more to do with things like genetics and their built environment. It’s also sensitive to medical factors, to disability, to things like stress and pregnancy and, of course, what kind of food and exercise you have access to.
JULIE: Do you think fat phobia is just a patriarchal ploy to control women?
KATE: It can be complicated by other factors like race, class, class markers, proportions, distribution of fat. But yeah, it’s really convenient for the patriarchy to have a way of making us work very, very hard to rank more highly, usually in the eyes of cis hed men. And that can be infinitely gradable and infinitely hierarchical because weight comes in infinitely many gradations. I mean, frankly, it’s a great way to keep women small, quiet, and preoccupied, and having less energy to pay attention.
Keeping a certain population, disproportionately girls and women, in a state of deprivation makes them feel less than in ways that uphold a kind of patriarchal hierarchy of bodies that then bolsters pernicious social hierarchies of other kinds, including misogynistic ones, racist ones, classist ones, and ones that are ableist in nature. I think we see a lot of pernicious social forces intersecting in this vicinity.
JULIE: Why is tackling this issue so important for women’s progress?
KATE: It’s a form of suffering that just strikes me as completely needless. If only we had a world where people had an attitude that human body mass is about as heritable as height. It’s just a shade less heritable than height. If we just had the attitude that people come in a range of shapes and sizes, and people’s bodies naturally look different from each other, just imagine how much more energy and vitality and time people would have, especially girls and women to stage a revolution. To protest, to resist, and to do great creative things rather than trying to whittle our bodies down to the minimum size and shape that is possible for us biologically, and sometimes not even then.
JULIE: Wow, that gave me full body chills! When can we get our hands on the new book?
KATE: January 2024. Thanks! DEFY
Julie Lawrence
Julie Lawrence is a journalist and communications specialist from the east coast of Canada. She is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of DEFY Magazine.