Feminist Book Club: Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist

Selection #1: Bad Feminist, by Roxane Gay
When novelist and scholar Roxane Gay released Bad Feminist in 2014, no one knew quite what to expect. Her previously published works, Ayiti and An Untamed State, were well received, and her work is a regular feature on internet culture hubs like McSweeney’s and Tin House. The title of this new book, though, seemed to herald something different. Something brazen and unapologetic, yet reverent and hyper-conscious of its cultural responsibility. That’s exactly what this book is: a contradiction in terms that is serious as a heart attack, yet hilarious as all get out. Without pomp or bravado, Gay manages to lay out what could, without exaggeration, be the most important feminist manifesto of the decade. She does this, in part, by immediately setting the reader at ease—as if to say, don’t worry, I’m a bad feminist, too.
Gay’s point is that it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to be a “perfect feminist” (whatever that means) in our current social climate. Although the push for equality continues to gain momentum, we remain immersed in a culture that tells us we have more value if we’re white, hetero, and male, preferably with a body mass index under 25. On the first page of Bad Feminist, Gay talks about how she sometimes catches herself singing along to songs with lyrics that degrade women. This is a microcosm of the effects of a toxic culture—the ubiquitous toxin gets into your bloodstream and before you know it, you’re showing symptoms. So, with all this doom and gloom, what’s the cure? Well, of course, there’s no simple solution, and Gay does not purport to provide one. What she does seem to prescribe is more critical thinking, less acceptance of our pre-defined social value, and more looking inward to ask ourselves how we participate in harmful cultural systems.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the book is stellar in its treatment of toxic masculinity. Essays such as “How We All Lose,” “The Careless Language of Sexual Violence,” and “The Trouble With Prince Charming, or He Who Trespassed Against Us” provide keen-edged commentary on the ways in which our culture teaches men to disrespect women’s boundaries, and teaches women to accept that. Gay is unsparing in her critique of this cultural default setting, and equally honest about the ways in which toxic masculinity is as dangerous for men and boys as it is for women and girls. No less striking is Gay’s unflinching exploration of the Black experience in America today in “The Racism We All Carry,” “Surviving Django,” and “The Morality of Tyler Perry.” The pinnacle of this is perhaps the heartrending “The Last Day of a Young Black Man,” in which Gay delves full-throttle into the 2009 police shooting death of 22-year-old Oscar Grant and the subsequent movie about the tragedy, Fruitvale Station.

Bad Feminist shines a bright light on many aspects of our present national experience, but some of the book’s most poignant essays are those told in the context of Gay’s personal reality. These chapters are often the funniest, too. (I guarantee this book will open your eyes to the merits of both competitive Scrabble and Sweet Valley High.) But on the deeper end, Gay shines in her willingness to be vulnerable while illustrating, say, the complex relationship between the lack of safety for women’s bodies and women’s relationships with food. Gay is beyond skilled in her writing prowess, and it’s clear she could have chosen to make her point without exposing what are clearly her most closely guarded wounds. But her compelling, brutally honest narrative gives the book a pulse and a voice. The reader does not simply grasp Gay’s ideas in a cognitive and abstract way but instead experiences them, viscerally. The result is often a galvanizing flood of empathy and solidarity that sparks a new fire in the belly—a hunger for change.
Next month’s selection: The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood