Bad Feminist

Gay notes that happiness is an unpopular subject in literary fiction because writers struggle to see complexity and texture in it. Gay herself is comfortable in writing about darkness, suffering, and unhappiness, but she believes that her stories have happy endings, although they may not be apparent on the surface. She posits that contemporary art unites the real and the fantastic, and she points to Thornton Dial’s 2011 exhibit Hard Truths as an example of this.

Gay provides some background on Dial, noting that he grew up in the rural South in the early- to mid-20th century, where he faced racism and economic hardship that inform his work. Knowing Dial’s background and seeing the first few pieces in the exhibit lead Gay to believe that there won’t be any happy endings in the work; she describes the bitter humor of Strange Fruit: Channel 42 and the dark and angry tone of Looking Good for the Price. Then, to Gay’s surprise, she reaches the final room of the exhibit, with its bright color and other elements conveying “redemption, salvation, triumph, hope, happiness, a happy ending after a long, sorrowful journey” (125). She concludes that Dial’s art argues that light and dark can both arise from the artist’s experience.

She also discusses Dawn Tripp’s A Game of Secrets, a novel about secrecy and mystery that seems to make a happy ending implausible. However, there are happy endings for almost all of the characters, which leads Gay to reiterate that happy endings don’t always look as expected. Her consideration of Dial and Tripp’s works makes her wonder how she as a writer and how people generally can complicate the themes of art and achieve a more nuanced understanding of happiness.

In this essay, Gay critiques the New York Times article, written by James McKinley, Jr., discussing the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl by 18 men in Texas. Gay is troubled that McKinley portrays the men as victims, blames the girl, and questions the whereabouts of the girl’s mother with no reference to the father. She finds the article dismissive of the rape’s impact on the victim, and she attributes this careless language to the pervasiveness of rape culture. The omnipresence of sexual assault and its resultant numbing effect are evident in TV and film. Gay provides several examples, but she emphasizes Law and Order: SVU, questioning what it means that she herself watches the show religiously.

Gay is also troubled by the intellectual distance between violence and representations of violence, noting that “[w]e talk about rape, but we don’t carefully talk about rape” (132). She emphasizes the particularly deleterious emotional and physical impact of gang rape on victims, including PTSD and irreparable damage to the reproductive system. She questions if the term “rape culture” adequately identifies who is perpetrating such violence and, citing Sarah Nicole Prickett, suggests that the conversation be reframed to hold the perpetrators accountable for the ways that they wield power over women.

Gay’s interest in the language around sexual violence also stems from the fact that she feels a responsibility to intelligently critique rather than exploit sexual violence in her fiction. This requires closing the gap between violence in fiction and violence in the real world. She cites Laura Tanner on the reader’s detachment from the material dynamics of violence that they’re reading about to support her own point about media representations of rape. Gay advocates the need to re-read rape—i.e., restore it to its literal, bodily impact.

Gay is drawn to The Hunger Games series and the complex world and characters that its author, Suzanne Collins, creates—particularly for what it conveys about women’s strength and the cost of that strength. After Gay found herself captivated and appreciative of the first book’s messaging on strength, endurance, suffering, and survival, she read the next two books and saw the movie. Although she notes the books’ imperfections—the successive weakening of the prose, the poor development of secondary characters, the erasure of sexuality, etc.—she finds these easy to forgive.

Gay notes that people often assume she is strong, although she sees herself as lonely and a “bottomless pit of need” (141). She recalls how this loneliness played into a life-altering experience in middle school. She had a crush/boyfriend who ignored her when they were at school, but whose attention when they were outside of school filled her gaping need for companionship. Afraid to lose this companionship, she sought to satisfy him, including when he began pressuring her to have sex. One day, he took her to a cabin in the woods, where he and other boys from the school sexually assaulted her. After the experience, she hated and blamed herself, and she hid what happened to her. The boys went back to school and told a different story, which prompted her peers to begin “slut-shaming” her.

In 2011, Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote a Wall Street Journal article claiming that young adult fiction had taken a dark turn and discussed matters that were too complex and mature for young readers. Given Gay’s experience, she is troubled by the suggestion that reality should be sanitized for young readers. Citing Sherman Alexie, she notes that books allow young readers to deal with complex emotions, especially in the face of trying circumstances. Books have been pivotal in pulling Gay out of dark places, so she finds Gurdon’s claim untenable, and she appreciates The Hunger Games for conveying that suffering can be relentless and that it takes a lot—sometimes everything—to overcome it.

Gay concludes by noting the inspiration that Katniss Everdeen, the books’ protagonist, offers. She is human and relatable, and she endures the unendurable. In her flaws, she is still loved and loveable. Thus, the books offer readers “the tempered hope that everyone who survives something unendurable hungers for” (146).

The debate about TV depictions of violence has been ongoing since the first congressional hearing on the subject in 1954. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 enacted TV guidelines and ratings, but Gay questions how effective those are. She cites Joann Cantor et. al. on the finding that parental controls increase children’s desire to view the restricted content. Gay finds that “trigger warnings” have the same impact on her, and like parental controls, she finds them illusory in terms of protection.

She notes all of the things that she’s seen trigger warnings for, arguing that all of life could have a trigger warning because anything can trigger someone. The past is inescapable, and while people may think they’re beyond it, even something objectively innocuous can trigger the person’s memory and produce visceral reactions. She considers the debate about trigger warnings from both sides and concludes that both sides can be true at the same time.

Gay herself doesn’t believe people can be protected from their pasts. Furthermore, there’s no standard/universal guide on what requires a trigger warning, and they can begin to feel like censorship when used excessively. Most importantly, they don’t heal the wounds from traumatic events. Instead, she advocates that people learn how to deal with and respond to their triggers. At the same time, she concedes that trigger warnings are for people who need the illusion of safety; therefore, she and others who don’t need that illusion should have little say in the matter.