Body Phobia: The Western Roots of Our Fear of Difference

by Dianna E. Anderson, Dex E. Anderson

Your body is who you are. We will only build a just society by rejecting fear of our bodies. American 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 Americans 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 American 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 American body and the American 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Health

158 pages, Hardcover

Published October 1, 2024

About the author

Dianna E. Anderson is a nonbinary, queer writer out of Minneapolis, MN. They are the author of two books: DAMAGED GOODS and PROBLEMATIC, and working on the third, which will be out Fall 2022 from Broadleaf Books. They hold a Master of the Arts in English from Baylor University in Waco, TX, and a Master of Studies in Women’s Studies from the University of Oxford in Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK.

Reviews

[Liralen · Rating 3 out of 5]

American culture hates the fact that we have bodies (loc. 4), writes Anderson, and so the book goes: Body Phobia is an exploration of some of the ways in which American culture seeks to control bodies and to regulate them, often in the context of white evangelical Christianity.

Short but wide-ranging, Body Phobia covers topics such as race, disability, gender, and sexuality. Some of the material feels pretty academic, but in an accessible way; there's also a lot of memoir and of Anderson piecing together the topics that are most relevant to their own life and figuring out how they intersect and where they come from.

There's so much material here—any of the chapters could become a book of its own, I think. I found it to be a bit slow going at times because of this; there's so much going on that I couldn't quite get my footing. But some fascinating tidbits:

And it took a long time before doctors actually understood things that we now know to be true, like the fact that babies can feel pain (up until the 1980s, it was common to operate on infants without anesthesia because of a mistaken belief that babies didn't actually process pain). (loc. 718*) Maybe worth noting here that many doctors still—implicitly or explicitly—believe that minorities, particularly Black people, feel less pain than White people and undermedicate accordingly.

He [Anderson's brother, who has Down syndrome] was their kid, and they were going to raise him. It took my extended family a little bit to get used to the idea—my dad told me once that my grandpa had asked him when he was going to grow out of his condition. (loc. 789)

In a discussion of religion and homosexuality, Anderson notes that some Jewish scholars take a different view of the story of Sodom than (conservative) Christians do; I won't quote because I'd be quoting a quote and that gets messy, but the short of it is that in at least one interpretation the sin is about forcing people to conform. I may have to seek out the text Anderson quotes and read more, because it's not something I'd heard before, and I'm very intrigued.

Readers should go in knowing that there's a fair amount about White evangelical Christianity in here; fortunately that's one of my pet reading topics (from a very secular view, but what can you do—we all have our weird things), but it's not something I expected from the description. An interesting read for a somewhat academically inclined crowd.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

[Lila Lumbrazo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book helped me open my eyes and mind to some things I had no clue about. It focuses on why we fear our own bodies, and why society makes us fear our bodies based on phobias that are really just people being prejudice.
I enjoyed reading real life experiences. It helped you understand the points the author was trying to get across. It made me feel sad, but I also felt relatable.
There were also parts of this book I didn’t agree with at all and did not enjoy reading it. I consider myself a very open minded person, but there were just some points I couldn’t get behind. That brought the rating down for me. This is my honest review.

[Anna Makowska · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a short, around 150 pages, compilation of author's experiences with prejudice and discrimination and a collection of various horrific events across American history documenting racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, discrimination of poor people, ableism, fatphobia, religious discrimination and medical malpractice. It's a lot of misery and not much conclusion except Christianity (esp. Evangelical American version of it) and Capitalism are to blame.

Oh, there's one conclusion that "your body belongs to you", but that's very much a slogan. When some 20 years ago I was going through a period of suicidal ideation it was suddenly everyone's business to tell me I'm definitely not allowed to do whatever I want with my body, but I exist to serve the society rather than for any other reason. We can see other shades of this attitude with restrictions towards abortion, sterilization or transgender treatments, or in the historical situation presented in the book where over 100 workers died in a factory fire because their time and existence was treated as a property. If you think that was a historical event long ago, I shall remind you in 21st century, in 2013 a garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed and killed over ONE THOUSAND people.

If you are in a position to say "my body belongs to me" you have an immense privilege of freedom not everyone on the planet has. No matter how marginalized otherwise you are, it's something that factory worker, that child soldier, that forced bride around the Earth cannot say.

We might have achieved great technological leaps, but in social structure for thousands of years we didn't move away from a system of owners and owned, just the labels are changing and the means of keeping people docile and obedient too.

Unfortunately, this title was a miss for me - if I wanted to remind myself of all possible ways in which marginalized people are mistreated, it's enough to open the news. I expected some deeper analysis and scientific approach. I was raised an atheist socialist in a very much conservative Christian country, and I should be in agreement with the author, but I mostly feel triggered and upset and not really enlightened or educated. It's as if the book couldn't decide should it be a memoir, a political manifesto, a history lesson or self-help about acceptance. And in 150 pages it can't be everything, so it ends up not fulfilling expectations at any of the above.

Thank you Netgalley and Broadleaf Books for the ARC.

[kylie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a deeply anxious person who is well aware of my mind-body tether, I found this book fascinating and potentially a great read for those that haven't given it as much thought (lookin at you, white guys and others of vast privilege).

Some areas could have gone deeper, been more robust, but much of this book was very personal and based on lived experience which comes with limitations.

I particularly found myself spiraling at the quandary of disability and the afterlife. To say that a person will be "reborn" in perfect form takes away from their bodymind identity, clearly devaluing them in their authentic self. However, what if that person wants that disability gone? Surely they shouldn't be saddled with a very human condition in an idealized afterlife. No one is pleased when their body seemingly betrays them due to age or injury. But then again, what if that thing - whatever it is - is a defining feature that makes them who they are? To "fix " that not only changes their identity in a very integral way, but also implies that they were "broken." (Not to mention, we're told that we're all created intentionally the way we are.) What if they never saw themselves that way? All of us are imperfect in some way, so if we're "reborn in perfect bodies" wouldn't that make us all essentially the same? (The point was ableism, but theology is also fascinating.)

ANYWAY, I received my copy from Netgalley.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! I used to follow Anderson on Twitter (or they were in the same side of Twitter as me), so I was eager to get an ARC when I saw it on Netgalley. Anderson writes from the experience of being fat, trans, and white in Evangelicalism. The right reader for this book would be other people from the same evangelical or protestant American world.

I have always felt disconnected to my body, and this book explains how that may stem from my white evangelical upbringing.

Anderson argues that American WASP culture separated our body from soul (at least philosophically) and then made us afraid of the body. They outline the different aspects: religion, humanness, fatness, disability, race, LGBT, economics, and death.

This book helped me understand my lived experiences in a new way, and I think that it will be a new reference for me. Definitely worth ordering.

Thank you to Netgalley and Broadleaf for this ARC.

[Eli · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would like to thank the Publisher for approving me for this ARC, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Body Phobia is a book that sheds light on how Western culture hates the fact that people have bodies. It starts with a focus on the religous roots of the hatred, from a mostly evangelical cultural view, and moves out to the wider views of culture. It is more than just transphobia, it’s living with a body in an ableist society that doesn’t fit what culture deems “normal” or appropriate.

I was not expecting this to be as memoir as it was, and because of that, my enjoyment of the book was less. I did except personal antidotes here and there throughout the text, but for me this book was mis-marketed. I was expecting a more science-based argument and a lot less religious discussion. One of the positives I will say is that Anderson writes with a levelness that leaves out the bitterness a lot of ex-religious types write with. They are compelling in their arguments.

I would recommend this one to anyone who wants an overview of the issues surrounding fatphobia, transphobia, and discrimination of disabled bodies.

Content Warnings:
Major - Fatphobia, Transphobia
Moderate -Religious bigotry

[Brice Montgomery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and Broadleaf Books for the ARC!

It’s hard to be a body, but why does matter matter?

Dianna E. Andersons’s Body Phobia is a thoughtful and full-bodied primer on the American fear of embodiment, offering a unique look at the ways it is rooted in a legacy of Protestantism.

This is a deeply personal book, and Anderson excels at infusing a moving transparency into their conversation with scholarship. They introduce so many wonderful scholars like Anthea Butler and Sami Schalk, but they mediate every heady concept through the lens of their personal experience. We always see how these issues impact real lives. Dualism means nothing until readers understand how it caused the author’s panic attacks. This approach makes it a perfect book for people who might bristle at the density of queer theory or disability studies.

Without a a doubt, the aforementioned religious focus is the book’s defining quality. I suspect some readers will be a bit befuddled by how often Anderson addresses religion, whereas others will wonder why the book doesn’t center exclusively around it. The references to people like John Piper always feel like an unexpected interruption, but I think that’s appropriate. It highlights the subtle pervasiveness of religious thought in American culture.

When Anderson identifies parallels between criminalization of disability and the way it’s associated with original sin, it feels novel. When they draw attention to the devastating impact of framing weight as a marker of holiness, it’s resonant. When they point out how evangelicals view children as “tools in the broader culture war,” it’s an urgent call to awareness.

These points feel like interruptions precisely because they are such “minor,” seemingly innocuous beliefs; that is why the consequences are so dire.

Anderson’s arguments are compelling, but what’s even more remarkable is the grace and compassion with which they articulate them. They write with wisdom and seem to consciously avoid bitterness, which allows them to make substantial, pointed critiques in a way that could be received by even the most conservative readers.

While most of the book is excellent, the chapters that intersect most directly with Anderson’s own life are easily the strongest. For example, their explorations of transphobia and fatphobia fare better than the chapters on bodyminds under capitalism or racialization. These topics are still addressed thoughtfully and thoroughly, but they struggle ever so slightly with a wandering scope.

Regardless, Body Phobia is an exceptional book for readers who are just beginning to consider what it means to be a bodymind in space, and I’m grateful to Dianna Anderson for their work here.

[Richard Derus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating: 5*? can't fault the book for my rage

The Publisher Says: Your body is who you are.

We will only build a just society by rejecting fear of our bodies. American 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 Americans 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 American 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 American body and the American 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.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I can not keep reading.

This short book is deeply tendentious and absolutely infuriating. I am confronted with thoughtless homophobia/heterosexism, invisible to the perps; with explicit transphobia everywher I look in our culture; with idiots bloviating about disability in ways that boggle*my*mind* and are impervious to anything like education.

How much more awful for Author Dex Anderson to confont these things, and then courageously set out to analyze and explain them clearly and persuasively...to people who won't listen. I suppose that includes me, since I'm absolutely unable to endure the stress of feeling so infuriated at the way things are one more page without having another stroke.

Broadleaf Books says, "$24.99 please," for the hardcover, which seems inexpensive to me. You should, though, get the information in here.

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this powerful and complex new release, Dex Anderson discusses the western social fear of the body from its religious origins to its cultural and philosophical connotations in the twenty-first century in this detailed yet accessible discussion of the fears of difference and fears relating to the body and what it represents. In this self-aware discussion and analysis, Anderson explores different ways to think about the body and its cultural, political, and social implications in the modern and heavily politicized context. This is a powerful and incredibly relevant text given current trends, and the combination of statistics and case studies with anecdotes gives readers a complex and multifaceted understanding of the historical basis of the fear of the body and its manifestations and evolution over time. The combination of organization and the thematic focus really immerses readers in Anderson’s argument, and the different examples which demonstrate the fear of the body and its evolution really add to the overall argument and strength of this book. Well-written, powerful, and incredibly complex, Anderson’s new release is an excellent read for those interested in such topics, and its combination of information and argument strategies really get the point across in this amazing new book.

Thanks to NetGalley and 1517 Media | Broadleaf Books for the advance copy.

[Ashley · Rating 2 out of 5]

From the title and description, I was not at all prepared for the amount of discussion revolving around religion. Dianna Anderson's look into fear of our own bodies was eye-opening and did need some mention of religion, don't get me wrong. It was the constant loop back to it that turned me off - I got the point the first 10 times the dichotomies stemming from religion were mentioned.

Had I gone into this book anticipating religion play a central role... Well, I just wouldn't have read the book, actually.

HOWEVER if you're at all interested in the ways religion has made us all afraid of our own skin, this would be a great book for you.

(When reading my review, it may be helpful to consider I grew up fairly religious (plain 'ol nondenom Christian), but am now... Idk. Not atheist. But also don't count on The Big Man Upstairs to hear and answer prayers. Or decide if I'm "worthy" of anything.)

{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Dianna Anderson and publisher for the eARC!}

[Jarred · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anderson sets out a well-argued case for how the white Protestant concept of body-mind dualism has become such a deeply ingrained part of American culture and influences the ways we deal with many issues, including racial justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, disability rights, and even our relationship to death. They draw on a combination of personal experience, the experiences of friends and loved ones, and scholarship to demonstrate the myriad of problems this dualism has led to. Along the way, they also offer glimpses into ways to perceive ourselves -- such as the concept of the integrated bodymind -- and how that might impact or change the narrative for many of these issues.

This book is both a healing balm for those of us who have been harmed by such a body-mind dualism and/or those who promote it and a helpful guide for those who are interested in the various justice issues Anderson mentions and how societal and personal views about human bodies impacts those issues.

[Hannah Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book and a quick read. Anderson's writing style makes the concepts they are discussing easy to understand. I appreciated all of the recent examples they used throughout the book and the examples they used from their own life. I got 40% of the way through the book and started recommending it to friends in the Women's and Gender Studies fields as I think this would be a great book to read and discuss in such a class. It distantly reminds me of The Body Project by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, but with a bigger focus on the intersectionality of the causes of western culture's thoughts about all bodies, not just women's bodies. There are many concepts in Body Phobia that I struggle to digest due to having grown up in western culture. I will be chewing on the concepts for a while.

Thank you to Broadleaf Books and LibraryThing for the gifted copy!

[Jeremy Reppy · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Body Phobia” is an interesting look at how western (and largely Protestant Christian) culture has influenced how people perceive their bodies and more generally how society views human bodies, and how a fear of bodies who are different due to race/skin color, size, disability, sexual preference, and/or gender identity has impacted how society views and treats people who are “different.”

The most important lesson, which the author acknowledges took them a long time to understand, and which is still an ongoing process for them, is that your body is you, it is going to change, and that only you know what it is like to live as you. Therefore, you are the authority on you, and you should be making the decisions that are best for yourself, as you are the one living with the consequences.

[Transjester · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good primer on how American evangelic Christianity mandates a distance between people and their bodies and this idea has bleed into mainstream American society. I enjoyed the Anderson's annecdotes relating their lived experience to this idea. Anderson grew up in the culture and studied these ideas on collegiate level. Anderson is also trans and otherwise queer, the type of person explicitly rejected by the evangelical consensus. This made them the perfect person to explain their thesis to us. Though i wasn't raised evangelical, I related to this book a lot as someone who grew up in the south.

[Amy Alyse · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does a great job of exposing the bones of Western culture’s ableist-racist-sexist-classist and Protestant centered view of the human body. Well balanced between anecdote and research, I promise there is a wealth of new perspectives to consider regarding what is ultimately described as the bodymind. The writing style of this author is also very engaging. Well worth the read if you are a human possessing a body.

[Ellen Scheid · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We are our bodies, whatever that might mean, confined to time and space and subject to the laws of physics."
This was a thought-provoking book that will stay with me for a lifetime. With all of the chronic illness I have battled during the last four years, I find that I am, at times, afraid of my own body.

[Irene MacLennan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Stars

Honestly disappointed in this one. Body Phobia had promise, but it's inability to adequately explore the topics it touches upon hurt the book. A lot.

An example would be the case of Carrie Buck. Body Phobia talks about how she was sterilized against her will because she and her birth mother were legally declared "feeble-minded." However, Anderson left out that Buck's foster parents had her institutionalized to protect their nephew, who raped and impregnated her. Thus, Buck's body was seen as a nuisance and threat to the one who assaulted her,

[Dessi · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐3.75

Thanks to NetGalley and Broadleaf Books for providing this title in exchange for an honest review!

“Body Phobia: The Western roots of our fear of difference” (2024) by Dianna E. Anderson is an exploration of the divide of body and mind that permeates culture and politics, particularly in USAmerican society, and seeks to categorize certain bodies as good or bad and impart moral judgement on the minds accordingly.

The book’s chapters are thus divided to focus on fatphobia, disability, race, queerness, the impacts of religion and capitalism on the notions of the body, our relationship to aging and dying bodies, and the body-mind integration. It’s woven throughout with the author’s life experiences as a non-binary person in a large body who was raised in evangelical Christianity and struggled with severe anxiety in their relationship with their own body.

While I’m not USAmerican, I think many of us in the Western world have a complicated relationship with bodies and the Otherness inscribed in those bodies, so I was very interested in this.

It was definitely a valuable book and it made me feel seen in some ways, even if my experiences have little in common with the author’s. However, it seemed more like a long essay blended with memoir than the socio-historical account I was expecting. In addition, religion was front and center here. That makes sense to a certain extent, because the roots of our complicated relationship with the body definitely lie with Christianity, and of course Protestantism in particular has a huge influence in USAmerican society even today, but the analysis felt narrowed down to religion, which the author admits is their area of expertise and interest, as at some points it veered out beyond Christianity.

So I would recommend it, but mostly if you have a particular interest in theology or don’t mind reading about it.

[Kylene Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as a giveaway from LibraryThing. I thought it was a very interesting book. Each chapter, they talk about different body issues- How the ultra-conservative religious view the body, gender, fat, disabled, race, LGBTQ, economic, and dying body. The author talks about how society views these different bodies especially through the lens that they grew up- conservative and religious. The author talks about the anxiety that they used to have in life until they came to terms with their body. I am glad that I won and read this book.