Belly of the Beast: Da'Shaun Harrison

Living in this Queer Body

In this episode, we talked about the long term impacts of childhood illness and confrontation with the fragility of the body, anti-fatness as a barrier for receiving medical care, how liberal folk’s disdain for the south constitutes anti-blackness, their discovery of fat studies and the impact of survival sex work on their sense of self, the significance of mutual aid work in Da’Shaun’s life, the limitations of academia as an institution and of course, their new brilliant book, Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness.

Da’Shaun Harrison is a Black trans writer and community organizer in Atlanta, GA. Harrison currently serves as the Managing Editor of Wear Your Voice Magazine, and is the author of Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness. A public speaker who often leads workshops on Blackness, queerness, gender, fatness, disabilities—and their intersections—Harrison’s portfolio/works can be found at dashaunharrison.com.

Scholars and Activists mentioned in this episode: Sabrina Strings (author of Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia), Sherronda J. Brown, Hunter Shackelford, Caleb Luna (@chairbreaker) and Aubrey Gordon (yrfatfriend).

LITQB Podcast: This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. Livinginthisqueerbody.com @livinginthisqueerbody

Sound Editing: Barry Orvin www.talkbox.studio

Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris