Bad Feminist

“What I remind myself, regularly, is this: the acknowledgment of my privilege is not a denial of the ways I have been and am marginalized, the ways I have suffered.”

Gay posits that privilege and marginalization are contextual: One does not negate the other. This quote is a significant precursor to Gay’s suggestions about stratification within marginalized groups and how awareness of one’s own contextual privilege is a prerequisite for solidarity. The fact that everyone brings their own life experiences to feminism is one reason for The Plurality of Feminism.

“The incredible problem Girls faces is that all we want is everything from each movie or television show or book that promises to offer a new voice, a relatable voice, an important voice. We want, and rightly so, to believe our lives deserve to be new, relatable, and important. We want to see more complex, nuanced depictions of what it really means to be whoever we are or were or hope to be.”

Gay points out the high expectation that people have placed on Dunham, which Gay finds unreasonable and an example of The Burden of Responsibility Placed on Marginalized People. At the same time, she acknowledges that the human need to belong undergirds the critique that women of color and working-class women have made about the show.

“Books are often far more than just books.”

Here, Gay refers to how she identified with the Sweet Valley High series even though she was not “supposed” to. At other points in the text, Gay underscores this idea that books offer a reprieve for her (and young people/young adults generally) in the face of trying circumstances.

“What may be most terrifying is just how real reality television is, after all. We say we watch these shows to feel better about ourselves, to have that reassurance that we are not that desperate. We are not that green. But perhaps we watch these shows because in the green girls interrupted, we see, more than anything, the plainest reflections of ourselves, garishly exposed but unfettered.”

Implicit in this quote is an idea that Gay makes explicit in her list on female friendships—the way women distance themselves from one another due to harmful stereotypes about women’s characteristics. Here, Gay suggests that the gender performativity reflected in reality television is recognizable and relatable to female viewers, which is why they tune in even as they deny having anything in common with the shows’ stars. This illustrates the importance of The Representation of Marginalized Identities.

“Certainly we can find kinship in fiction, but literary merit shouldn’t be dictated by whether we want to be friends or lovers with those about whom we read.”

Here, Gay refers to the unlikable character discourse in the literary world, illustrating how the rules differ for men and women. Where unlikable male characters are lauded as anti-heroes and considered indicative of literary complexity, unlikable female characters prompt people to call the (typically female) authors’ literary merit into question. While this disparity may seem relatively trivial, it is a reminder of The Spectrum of Patriarchy.

“In response to these limited ways in which we talk, write, and think about gender, these vacuums in which we hold cultural conversations, no matter how good our intentions, no matter how crafted our approach, I cannot help but think, This is how we all lose.”

Gay refers to cultural conversations on gender that take narrow outlooks, like maintaining a rigid gender binary or not considering the way race and class interact with patriarchy. She argues that such lack of nuance harms everyone, including the feminist writers who fail to consider the complexities of patriarchal violence.

“When we’re talking about race or religion or politics, it is often said we need to speak carefully. These are difficult topics where we need to be vigilant not only in what we say but we how express ourselves. The same care must extend to how we write about violence and sexual violence in particular.”

Here, Gay states the main argument of Essay 13, which is that writing must handle violence and sexual violence with care. The point has to be made because of the frequency with which the media inundates society with images of sexual violence. This creates numbness to sexual violence’s material effects, resulting in careless writing around the topic that Gay calls out.

“You think you are alone until you find books about girls like you. Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds.”

Calling back to her assertion that books are more than just books, Gay explains how they have helped her cope with difficult situations. This quote responds to another writer’s claim that young adult fiction has become too mature and complex for its target audience. Having discussed the sexual violence that she endured in middle school, Gay makes the point that life hits young people with such mature and complex situations anyway and that books offer reprieve and reflection in the face of difficult circumstances.

“It is untenable to go through life as an exposed wound. No matter how well intended, trigger warnings will not stanch the bleeding; trigger warnings will not harden into scabs over your wounds.”

Gay considers trigger warnings an illusion of safety, and she points out that they will not actually resolve the deeper issue—the experience of trauma still living in the body—that they aim to protect people from. Instead, she advocates that people find ways to cope with their triggers and work through the trauma they have experienced. However, Gay also acknowledges at the end of the essay that she and others who don’t see the necessity of trigger warnings should have no say in the debate, as trigger warnings are designed for those who need the illusion of safety.

“Any time your body represents some kind of difference, your privacy is compromised to some degree. A surfeit of privacy is just one more benefit the privileged class enjoys and often takes for granted.”

Here, Gay points out the relationship between privacy and privilege to underscore her point about public figures disclosing their orientation. People who are heterosexual are not expected to tell the public about their sexuality in the way that LGBTQ+ figures are. The point applies broadly to all marginalized people and the burden they are expected to carry of sacrificing themselves and their private lives for the sake of social justice advocacy.

“Male readership shouldn’t be the measure to which we aspire. Excellence should be the measure, and if men and the establishment can’t (or won’t) recognize that excellence, we should leave the culpability with them instead of bearing it ourselves.”

Again, Gay points to the gendered standards of the literary world. Where fiction by men is judged according to merit and assumed to deal with big social themes, fiction written by women is relegated to a subcategory regardless of content, which often deters male readership. Gay alludes to the burden of marginalization by emphasizing that women writers know the merit of their work; it is not their responsibility to convince male readers or the establishment of that merit. Instead, male readers and the establishment need to put in the effort to seek out women’s work and judge it based on its contents, not on their patriarchal biases.

“Somewhere along the line we started misinterpreting the First Amendment and this idea of freedom of speech the amendment grants us. We are free to speak as we choose without fear of prosecution or persecution, but we are not free to speak as we choose without consequence.”

Gay refers to the entitlement of “edgy” comedians joking about anything they want, regardless of the joke’s impact or the marginalized communities it may effect. Gay notes that just because something can be said doesn’t mean it should, so comedians will have to face the consequences if those whom their jokes offend call them out.

“It’s hard not to feel humorless, as a woman and a feminist, to recognize misogyny in so many forms, some great and some small, and know you’re not imagining things. It’s hard to be told to lighten up because if you lighten up any more, you’re going to float the fuck away. The problem is not that one of these things is happening; it’s that they are all happening, concurrently and constantly.”

Here, Gay points to the insidiousness of the spectrum of patriarchy. This quote also alludes to an issue that marginalized people often face: having their perceptions called into question.

“The joy of fiction is that, in the right hands, anything is possible. I firmly believe our responsibility as writers is to challenge ourselves to write beyond what we know. When it comes to white writers working through racial difference, though, I am conflicted and far less tolerant than I should be. If I take nothing else from the book and movie in question, it’s that I know I have work to do.”

Gay refers to the lessons that she takes from The Help with respect to the white writers of the book and screenplay. While Gay believes in writers trying to challenge themselves to try to write across difference, she doesn’t believe that The Help’s writers made any credible effort. She also acknowledges her personal biases in terms of white authorship regarding racial difference. Thus, while she is critical of Stockett and Taylor’s work, she also knows that her experience as a Black woman and the human feelings that arise from it play a role in her perceptions.

“There is no collective slave revenge fantasy among black people, but I am certain, if there were one, it would not be about white people, not at all. My slavery revenge fantasy would probably involve being able to read and write without fear of punishment or persecution coupled with a long vacation in Paris. It would involve the reclamation of dignity on my own terms and not with the ‘generous’ assistance of benevolent white people who were equally complicit in the ills of slavery.”

After Gay points out that Django Unchained does not actually center Black characters or slavery (she argues that it is a white man’s slave revenge fantasy), she shares what her slave revenge fantasy would be. Significantly, her fantasy involves fairly mundane and seemingly insignificant activities. However, reading, writing, and rest are privileges that enslaved people did not have. Thus, Gay’s slave revenge fantasy offers an important contrast to Tarantino’s stylized violence because it actually considers and indicates a historical awareness of the experiences of enslaved people.

“There is no one way to tell the story of slavery or to chronicle the black experience. It’s not that slavery and struggle narrative shouldn’t be shared but that these narratives are not enough anymore. Audiences are ready for more from black film—more narrative complexity, more black experiences being represented in contemporary film, more artistic experimentation, more black screenwriters and directors allowed to use their creative talents beyond the struggle narrative.”

This quote points to the way that Hollywood’s obsession with the struggle narrative doubly denies human complexity to Black people. Not only does it restrict the portrayal of Black experience, but it also restricts the creative freedom of Black artists. The restriction of creativity and expression is essentially the denial of a person’s humanity.

“We must stop pointing to the exceptions—these bright shining stars who transcend circumstance. We must look to how we can best support the least among us, not spend all our time blindly revering and trying to mimic the greatest without demanding systemic change.”

This quote refers to one of the ways that respectability politics set a normative standard to which marginalized people must aspire, arguing that Black exceptionality plays a role in reinforcing the notion. Black exceptionality is often pointed to as evidence that what holds other Black people back are behavioral and cultural deficiencies. The implication is that the exceptions have attained success by overcoming these deficiencies, which obscures the role of institutional racism. Thus, Gay’s advocacy for alleviating the burden placed on marginalized people includes taking the exceptions off a pedestal and instead providing community care and demanding systemic change.

“Social networks are more than just infinite repositories for trivial, snap judgments; they are more than merely convenient outlets for mindless joy and outrage. They offer more than the common ground and solace we may find during culturally significant moments. Social networks also provide us with something of a flawed but necessary conscience, a constant reminder that commitment, compassion, and advocacy neither cannot nor ever should be finite.”

Gay takes a balanced view on social media that in many ways mimics her view on the relationship between pop culture artifacts and feminism. While social media may seem frivolous, it is actually politically significant, not only in the way that it complements traditional journalism but also in how it provides a platform for social activism and advocacy.

“This debate is a smoke screen, but it is a very deliberate and dangerous smoke screen. It is dangerous because this current debate shows us that reproductive freedom is negotiable. Reproductive freedom is a talking point. Reproductive freedom is a campaign issue. Reproductive freedom can be repealed or restricted. Reproductive freedom is not an inalienable right even though it should be.”

Gay argues that women’s bodies can and will be sacrificed on the altar of a patriarchal political structure. By pointing out that the debate is both a distraction and a campaign strategy, Gay demonstrates that the reproductive debates are not actually about moral or religious beliefs, or caring for women or unborn children, as many politicians claim. Instead, they are about power—specifically men’s commitment to exercising power over women—and political preservation.

“Few things work in practice as well as they do in theory. Justice is anything but blind. All too often, the people who most need justice benefit the least.”

In her essay about Trayvon Martin, Gay explicitly links justice and the recognition of marginalized people’s humanity. In saying that the people who need justice the most benefit the least, she is alluding to the fact that Martin’s humanity was not acknowledged in either the interaction with Zimmerman or in the trial and media.

“Racial profiling is nothing more than a delusion born of our belief that we can profile danger. We want to believe we can predict who will do the next terrible thing. We want to believe we can keep ourselves safe.”

Here, Gay ties racial profiling to the illusion of safety motif. She demonstrates that the association of Blackness with criminality bolsters the illusion but that disillusion comes, perhaps, when people who look like Tsarnaev and Breivik commit terrible crimes.

“I have never considered compassion a finite resource. I would not want to live in a world where such was the case.”

In Essay 35, Gay discusses how she held space for both the victims of the Norway attacks and Amy Winehouse at the same time. People across social media at the time suggested that such simultaneous grief and compassion was not possible and that the Norway victims should be prioritized. Thus, Gay finds it necessary to articulate that compassion is not finite. Two things can be true at the same time, and two tragedies can be mourned without one taking precedence over the other.

“As a woman of color, I find that some feminists don’t seem terribly concerned with the issues unique to women of color—the ongoing effects of racism and postcolonialism, the status of women in the Third World, the fight against the trenchant archetypes black women are forced into (angry black woman, mammy, Hottentot, and the like).”

Gay points out the racism endemic to white feminism, which deters her from claiming the label “feminist” for herself. While Gay acknowledges that white feminists see a concern with racial issues as an impediment to sisterhood and solidarity, it’s more accurately the dismissiveness of white feminists towards women of color that impedes sisterhood and solidarity. Gay’s observations regarding white feminism call back to her discussion of privilege in Essay 2. White feminists aren’t being asked to deny their marginalization as women but rather to acknowledge their privilege as white people.