Your body is who you are. We will only build a just society by rejecting fear of our bodies. Western culture hates the fact that we have bodies--from evangelical culture, which insists "you are a soul and have a body," to wellness culture that turns your control over your body into a moral test, to transphobic activism that insists any step taken to change one's body is an immoral act, to the treatment of disabled bodies in a profoundly ableist culture. Fear has led cisgender, white, and able-bodied people to deprioritize the physical experience and prioritize the mind alone, contributing to our alienation from one another, the marginalization of certain kinds of bodies, and harm to us all. Body Phobia is an examination of the western societal fear of the body, how it permeates all parts of culture, who gets to be perceived as more than their body, and who does not. By becoming self-aware of how our bodies interact with the world and what it means to have a body, we can begin to overcome the harm done in divorcing the western body and the western mind for centuries. Through cutting analysis and candid storytelling, Dianna E. Anderson exposes our fear-based politics and shows us a way to approach bodies that is neither positive nor negative but neutral. Our bodies are. And that's enough.
Dianna E. Anderson is a non-binary writer with a master's degree in English from Baylor University and a master of studies in women's studies from the University of Oxford in the UK. They are the author of In Transit: Being Non-Binary in a World of Dichotomies, Problematic: How Toxic Call-Out Culture Is Destroying Feminism, and Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity. Their work focuses on the intersections of gender, history, religion, and theory, and they have been published in Rolling Stone, Cosmo, Bitch Magazine, Dame, and many others. They live in Minneapolis with their two cats, Minerva and Tonks.
Introduction Chapter One: The Religious Body Chapter Two: The Human Body Chapter Three: The Fat Body Chapter Four: The Disabled Body Chapter Five: The Racialized Body Chapter Six: The LGBT Body Chapter Seven: The Economic Body Chapter Eight: The Dying Body Chapter Nine: The Integrated Bodymind Acknowledgments Notes
"Anyone with a body will know how troublesome they can be, but Body Phobia explains it's not just you--it's all of us. Dianna Anderson's keen insights into the ways we fear our own embodiment, and how ambient cultural anxiety around our bodies is vented particularly on fat, queer, and racialized bodies, is an essential tool to understanding and connecting with our embodied selves." --Evan Urquhart, founder of Assigned Media "This book has the power to heal. As a therapist, I believe one of the precursors to healing is putting unspoken truth into language. Body Phobia does that for our bodies, for our selves. In it, Anderson has masterfully constructed a book that simultaneously challenges and liberates, all the while keeping readers enraptured by their storytelling. I wish I could put this book in front of everybody I know, saying, 'Read this, and don't stop until you are free.'" --Matthias Roberts, psychotherapist and author of Holy Runaways and Beyond Shame "This book is very timely. I've recently come across terms like anti-trans and homo-negativity as alternatives for transphobia and homophobia, and those can be useful. But this book tackles deeper, harder, bigger questions: What if the hate and discrimination we face actually are manifestations of fear, and if so, why? Using phobia, not just out of habit but because it is the most accurate term, poses a serious challenge to cishet-normativity and white, Western beauty standards." --Freddy McConnell, Guardian journalist profiled in the documentary Seahorse "Combining searing memoir with deep analysis of theology, philosophy, literature, and more, Anderson locates the root of so many problems in our fear of bodies--our own and those of others. Then they show us a way out of this trap that goes far beyond mere acceptance, to integration, to becoming something whole." --David M. Perry, author of The Bright Ages
