Fat Rights : Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood / Anna Kirkland.
2008
KF4757.5.O94 K57 2008
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Details
Title
Fat Rights : Dilemmas of Difference and Personhood / Anna Kirkland.
Author
Kirkland, Anna, author.
ISBN
9780814749074
Published
New York, NY : New York University Press, [2008]
Copyright
©2008
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource
Call Number
KF4757.5.O94 K57 2008
Dewey Decimal Classification
342.7308/7
Summary
Author Interview on The Brian Lehrer ShowAmerica is a weight-obsessed nation. Over 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.Fat Rights draws on little-known legal cases brought by fat citizens as well as significant lawsuits over other forms of bodily difference (such as transgenderism), asking why the boundaries of our antidiscrimination laws rest where they do. Fatness, argues Kirkland, is both similar to and provocatively different from other protected traits, raising long-standing dilemmas in antidiscrimination law into stark relief. Though options for defending difference may be scarce, Kirkland evaluates the available strategies and proposes new ways of navigating this new legal question.Fat Rights enters the fray of the obesity debate from a new perspective: our inherited civil rights tradition. The scope is broad, covering much more than just weight discrimination and drawing the reader into the larger context of antidiscrimination protections and how they can be justified for a new group.
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Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Jul 2022)
Available in Other Form
print 9780814748138
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Table of Contents
Frontmatter
Contents
Preface
Introduction: The Challenge of Difference
1 Imagining Legal Protections for Fatness
2 Shifting the Blame
3 Balancing Functional Individuals and Embedded Selves
4 Governing Risk: Medicalization and Normalization
5 Accommodating Fatness
Conclusion: What Is Worth Wanting in American Antidiscrimination Law?
Notes
Index
About the Author
Contents
Preface
Introduction: The Challenge of Difference
1 Imagining Legal Protections for Fatness
2 Shifting the Blame
3 Balancing Functional Individuals and Embedded Selves
4 Governing Risk: Medicalization and Normalization
5 Accommodating Fatness
Conclusion: What Is Worth Wanting in American Antidiscrimination Law?
Notes
Index
About the Author