Belly of the Beast
Da’Shaun Harrison explores the connections between anti-fatness and anti-Blackness.
Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people in the United States are subject to sociopolitically sanctioned discrimination, abuse, condescension, and trauma.
Fat Black people are under constant surveillance from bystanders, family members who make flip comments about waistlines and full plates, and ambivalent doctors who often blame ailments on weight. In Belly of the Beast, Harrison explores liberation from the vantage point of a Black, queer, disabled, and trans abolitionist, and asks us to imagine the world anew: What happens when we win?
Da’Shaun Harrison offers an incisive look at state-sanctioned murders of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people in historical analysis. Policing, disenfranchisement, and the invisibilitization of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people are pervasive, insidious ways that anti-fat anti-Blackness shows up in everyday life.
Fat people can be legally fired in 49 states for being fat; they’re more likely to be houseless. Fat people die at higher rates from misdiagnosis or nontreatment; fat women are more likely to be sexually assaulted. And at the intersections of fatness, Blackness, disability, and gender, these abuses are exacerbated.
Taking on desirability politics, the limitations of gender, the connection between anti-fatness and imprisonment, and the incongruity of “health” and “healthiness” for the Black fat, Harrison viscerally and vividly illustrates the myriad harms of anti-fat anti-Blackness. They offer strategies for dismantling denial, unlearning the cultural programming that tells us “fat is bad” and destroys the world as we know it. Black fat can inhabit a place not built on subjugation.
In an interview with Scalawag Magazine, Harrison says, “I just try to be truthful about what I feel about my body, and always return back to honoring it for what it’s doing… because it’s still my body and therefore still deserves honor. The rest of the world tells us that these bodies are killing us, that we’re dying, that we’re dead, and still our bodies show up for us every single day. I think that is so beautiful.”
Da’Shaun Harrison is a Black, fat, queer and trans theorist and abolitionist in Atlanta, GA. Their book, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness, won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction. Harrison is the co-host of the podcast “Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back.” Read more of Harrison’s writing at dashaunharrison.com.
