Introducing fatness and law – Discrimination, disability, intersectionality

Abstract

In view of increasing attention for the topic of fatness, discrimination, and law, there is a rising international demand for the inclusion of the protection category “weight” in anti-discrimination laws. However, what is often overlooked is the complexity of the juridical debate. The definition of “discrimination”, for example, varies in laws internationally, and the effectiveness of anti-discrimination clauses depends strongly on whether they are contained in e.g. criminal law, civil law or constitutional law. The paper tries to shed light on some of the ambiguities in the debate, in particular whether fatness should be a subset of the discrimination category “disability”, taking the social model of disability as a basis. The article argues that the social model of disability and its focus on a socio-dynamic definition of disability is very often misunderstood as not requiring an “impairment” to be applicable in the first place. In the light of the fact that fat activists have fought the medicalization of fat bodies for 40 years now, it is argued that it would ultimately be inconsistent for fat activists and fat studies scholars to push the concept of fatness as a disability in its own right. – Another light is shed on how intersectionality can be represented legally. The article ends with a suggestion of what an anti-discrimination law protecting fat people should ideally look like, and exemplifies which areas of “fatness and law” might, among others, be worth working on.

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