Challenging Antifat Bias and Fatphobia in the Philosophy Classroom

As philosophy professors, we may inadvertently contribute to antifat bias and fatphobia in our classrooms. “What about health?” is the most common question students raise in conversations about antifat bias and fatphobia. I discuss the relationship between weight and health, the “obesity epidemic” as moral panic, and ways that antifat bias and fatphobia occur in everyday life. I share my experiences, difficulties, and suggestions for teaching philosophy courses that guide students to begin thinking critically about antifat bias and fatphobia. Critical approaches to fatness raise philosophically rich moral, epistemic, and ontological questions and require careful reflection on our own positionality. Specific topics I address include developing a personal stake in dismantling antifat bias and fatphobia, inclusive design and denaturalizing the built world, antifat bias in medicine, intersectionality and epistemic oppression, eating disorders and fatphobia through a feminist philosophical lens, how microaggressions sustain fat oppression, and fat temporality and crisis phenomenology.