THE NEXT TIME YOU'RE WEDGED IN THE MIDDLE SEAT BETWEEN TWO WIDEBODIES, CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE.

The essay appeared in Inside Higher Ed on March 1, not April 1, suggesting it's intended In All Earnestness.  Is ‘Fatphobia’ the Last Acceptable Prejudice in the Academy?

Ridiculing a scholar because of their gender or race is unthinkable nowadays, but does that same protection against discrimination apply to academics who are overweight?

Definitely not, according to Cornell University philosopher Kate Manne, who claims that “intellectual biases against fat people” in academia are “rampant,” with “fatphobia” so endemic that many scholars feel emboldened to belittle, berate and bully—often openly—peers deemed obese.

In Unshrinking: How to Fight Fatphobia, the Australian scholar discusses her own difficulties being “quite fat” in the academy but also recounts grim tales from friends and colleagues who have been targeted on account of their body size.

She strikes me as the sort of academic who would write a lament in The Nation or Inside Higher Ed about having to ask the rental car company for a seat-belt extender or not being able to claim two seats for the price of one on her next trip to the antipodes.

Reduced to its essentials, all the identity politics posturing is solipsism.

Manne noted that other tropes on choice—such as whether someone selects a piece of fruit or a slice of cake—presume a certain derisive weakness of will on the part of overweight people.

“I won’t say fatphobia is the last acceptable prejudice in the academy … but there is a particular complacency that allows people to demean others in this way,” she added.

Manne has faced harsh criticism online and from reviewers for daring to draw attention to antifatness and for her call to “remake the world to accommodate people of every size.”

“I knew it would be a divisive book,” she reflected. “People really hate fat people, so defending them and their right to compassionate and adequate health care was always going to be seen as radical.”

Something tells me that even the most "compassionate and adequate health care" isn't going to do much good when her heart gives out or her joints go the way of buggy springs with a lot of miles on rough roads on them.  "Remake the world?"  That has long been the lament of the spoiled child, hasn't it?  Lady, the world doesn't revolve around you.  That Times of London reviewer got off what in other settings might qualify as a Friday short take with "This book is a super-processed sausage of identity politics and fat activism."