Against a Politics of Purity

Why I, too, sometimes shop from Amazon.

As always, please ‘like’ this post via the heart below and restack it on notes if you get something out of it. It’s the best way to help others find my work. Usually, the very best way to support my work is with a paid subscription. But this week, I’m offering you something special. Friends, as I’ve written about before, my book Unshrinking was a real battle to get out there, when it came out last year in hardcover. So now, with the paperback release today, I am asking for your help.

If you buy Unshrinking in paperback in the US by the end of the week, and send the receipt to kate.manne@gmail.com, I will gift you a free year of this newsletter (on top of your regular subscription, if you have it). Multiple copies get multiple years, naturally. That’s $80 worth of my weekly or biweekly writing, plus my last book, for just $20. Thank you for your help in spreading the good word about the intersection of misogyny and fatphobia! Every order helps.

Happy publication day to me! This past week, as I’ve written, I’ve been doing something different: offering readers comped subscriptions to this newsletter when you send me a receipt for a US paperback of Unshrinking, as part of a special campaign to promote the book. The experience has allowed me to connect with many readers, and offer subscriptions to many folks for whom it previously wasn’t in their budget (though I also offer comped subscriptions, no questions asked, to those who can’t afford it at other times). It’s been an interesting experience in another connection too: the number of readers who apologized, sometimes profusely, for ordering my book from Amazon.

I want to be clear here: Amazon is bad. Extremely bad. Even, I’d say, evil. Divesting from Amazon is an important contribution to an ongoing collective effort to, well, defund Jeff Bezos and disincentivize other indefensible billionaires exploiting workers, dismantling democracy, and ruining the environment. For those who have divested fully: what you are doing is admirable and cool and important. (A special thanks to my readers who ordered my book from their local bookstore!)

And yet. Some people have not managed to fully divest from Amazon yet and I would never judge you. I would hope not, because my own divestment is still a work in progress. But I would go further: the vast majority of the time, nobody should judge, or blame, or shame, or guilt us.

How can we hold these truths together? How can something be important, and worthwhile, but not blameworthy not to manage?