Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist
Like the Bon Jovi of critical feminist theory, Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist delves deep into the debates about those who give feminism a bad name. Labelling herself a “bad feminist,” prone to breaking into dance at the first sounds of what she recognizes as misogynistic rap music, Ms. Gay calls for her fellow feminists to hop off of their pedestals and embrace the flaw and plurality of their movement.
Ms. Gay is an expert in opinions; she makes a habit of flying in the face of the status quo. She writes, “The notion that I should be fine with the status quo even if I am not wholly affected by the status quo is repulsive,” and she lives by this statement. Ms. Gay addresses the ways in which she unwillingly beats against the current — as a woman, as a black woman, as an overweight black woman — and she lauds the ways in which she does so willingly, undauntedly. Ms. Gay takes on entertainment and politics in a single breath; she bounces between race and rape and sexuality and reality, spinning a web of connection as quickly as the spider luring in their prey.
It’s often difficult to agree with Ms. Gay. Her opinions are frank, brash, and, at times, hard to swallow. She criticizes only to turn around and, in effect, become what she criticizes. She is oxymoronic in the presentation of herself and her values. She is self-indulgent in the representation she wants to see of women and feminism in popular culture. She doesn’t identify with white 20-something women in New York, and so the merit of their evolving representations is lost on her. She says, “I’m more interested in a show called Grown Women, about a group of friends who finally have great jobs and pay all their bills in a timely manner, but don’t have any savings and still deal with sloppy love lives and hangovers on Monday morning.” It’s as if she has never seen Sex and the City.
What makes Ms. Gay’s work so enthralling is that she readily accepts these flaws. She lauds her oxymoronic status and she is open to her self-indulgence. More than anything, Ms. Gay invites her reader’s disagreement; she welcomes a debate, a discussion, an argument spawned from her words. She invites us to debate with her the merits of diverse female representation, she asks for us to bring examples and opinion in protest.
Ms. Gay doesn’t pretend to be the feminist on the pedestal, the leader or hero of any movement. She is, in her own words, “unlikable,” like her favourite characters in fiction who “won’t or can’t pretend to be someone they are not.” In existing beyond the realm of likability, Ms. Gay has figured out her own version of “bad feminism”: feminism that doesn’t pretend to be universal, to be able to speak for each woman; feminism that wants, as so many other feminisms want, the equality of the sexes.
In her straightforward, opinionated way, Ms. Gay opens the door to discussion and asks her readers to figure out their own “bad feminism.” She invites us to step into a world of flaw, imperfection, and unlikability to experience the merit and value of disagreement within unity.