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Read the Introduction
Author Interview on "The Brian Lehrer Show"
aDiscrimination against the obese is today pervasive and
oppressive. The problem will only grow worse as the epidemic of
obesity spreads. Kirkland has written the definitive study of
obesity within American law. It is required reading for anyone
concerned with this issue. This is an admirable and profound
book.a
--Robert Post, Yale Law School
aProvides a much-needed conceptual map for making sense of how
we in the U.S. talk about difference, discrimination, and rights
generally. The result is an imaginative, insightful, savvy, and
unusually accessible inquiry that should be required reading for
anyone interested in the politics of civil rights. Highly
recommended!a
--Michael McCann, University of Washington
America is a weight-obsessed nation. Over the last decade,
thereas 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 forantidiscrimination
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 longstanding 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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