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Bad Feminist
By Roxane Gay (/people/roxane-gay)

! 21-MINUTE READ

ISSUE: Fall 2012 (/issues/88/4/fall-2012)

y favorite definition of a feminist is one offered by Su, an Australian woman

who, when interviewed for Kathy Bails 1996 anthology DIY Feminism,
described them simply as women who dont want to be treated like shit. This
definition is pointed and succinct, but I run into trouble when I try to expand it. I fall
short as a feminist. I feel like I am not as committed as I need to be, that I am not
living up to feminist ideals because of who and how I choose to be. I feel this tension
constantly. As Judith Butler writes in her 1988 essay, Performative Acts and Gender
Constitution: Performing ones gender wrong initiates a set of punishments both
obvious and indirect, and performing it well provides the reassurance that there is an
essentialism of gender identity after all. This tensionthe idea that there is a right
way to be a woman, a right way to be the most essential womanis ongoing
andpervasive.
We see this tension in socially dictated beauty standardsthe right way to be a
woman is to be thin, to wear make up, to wear the right kind of clothes (not too slutty,
not too prude, show a little leg, ladies), and so on. Good women are charming, polite,
and unobtrusive. Good women work but are content to earn 77 percent of what men
earn. Depending on whom you ask, good women bear children and stay home to raise
them without complaint. Good women are modest, chaste, pious, submissive. Women
who dont adhere to these standards are the fallen, the undesirable. They are
badwomen.
Butlers thesis could also apply to feminism. There is an essential feminism, the
notion that there are right and wrong ways to be a feminist, and there are
consequences for doing feminismwrong.
Essential feminism suggests anger, humorlessness, militancy, unwavering principles,
and a prescribed set of rules for how to be a proper feminist woman, or at least a
proper white, heterosexual, feminist womanhate pornography, unilaterally decry
the objectification of women, dont cater to the male gaze, hate men, hate sex, focus
on career, dont shave. I kid, mostly, with that last one. This is nowhere near an
accurate description of feminism, but the movement has been warped by
misperception for so long that even people who should know better have bought into
this essential image offeminism.
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Consider Elizabeth Wurtzel, who, in a June 2012 Atlantic article, says, Real feminists

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earn a living, have money and means of their own. By Wurtzels thinking, women
who dont earn a living, have money and means of their own, are fake feminists,
undeserving of the label, disappointments to the sisterhood. She takes the idea of
essential feminism even further in a September 2012 Harpers Bazaar article where
she suggests that a good feminist works hard to be beautiful. She says, Looking great
is a matter of feminism. No liberated woman would misrepresent the cause by
appearing less than hale and happy. Its too easy to dissect the error of such thinking.
She is suggesting that a womans worth is, in part, determined by her beauty, which is
one of the very things feminism worksagainst.
The most significant problem with essential feminism is how it doesnt allow for the
complexities of human experience or individuality. There seems to be little room for
multiple or discordant points of view. Essential feminism has, for example, led to the
rise of the phrase sex-positive feminism, which creates a clear distinction between
feminists who are positive about sex and feminists who arentand that in turn
creates a self-fulfilling essentialistprophecy.

I sometimes cringe when someone refers to me as a feminist, as if I should be

ashamed of my feminism or as if the word feminist is an insult. The label is rarely
offered in kindness. I am generally called a feminist when I have the nerve to suggest
that the misogyny deeply embedded in our culture is a real problem, requiring
relentless vigilance. For example, in an essay for Salon, I wrote about Daniel Tosh and
rape jokes. I try not to read comments because they can get vicious, but I couldnt help
but note one commenter who told me I was an angry blogger woman, which is
simply another way of saying angry feminist. All feminists are angry instead
ofpassionate.
A more direct reprimand came from a man I was dating, during a heated discussion
that wasnt quite an argument. He said, Dont you raise your voice to me, which was
strange because I had not raised my voice. I was stunned because no one had ever said
such a thing to me. He expounded, at length, about how women should talk to men.
When I dismantled his pseudo-theories, he said, Youre some kind of feminist, arent
you? His tone made it clear that to be a feminist was undesirable. I was not being a
good woman. I remained silent, stewing. I thought, Isnt it obvious I am a feminist,
albeit not a very goodone?
Im not the only outspoken woman who shies away from the feminist label, who fears
the consequences of accepting thelabel.
In an August 2012 interview with Salons Andrew OHehir, actress Melissa Leo,
2 of known
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for playing groundbreaking female roles, said, Well, I dont think of myself02/11/2016,
as
a feminist at all. As soon as we start labeling and categorizing ourselves and others,

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thats going to shut down the world. I would never say that. Like, I just did that
episode with Louis C.K.
Leo is buying into a great many essential feminist myths with her comment. We are
categorized and labeled from the moment we come into this world by gender, race,
size, hair color, eye color, and so forth. The older we get the more labels and
categories we collect. If labeling and categorizing ourselves is going to shut the world
down, it has been a long time coming. More disconcerting, though, is the assertion
that a feminist wouldnt take a role on Louis C. K.s sitcom Louie, or that a feminist
would be unable to find C. K.s brand of humor amusing. For Leo, there are feminists
and then there are women who defy categorization and are willing to embrace career
opportunities. In a July 2012 Guardian interview, critically acclaimed performance
artist Marina Abramovic, when asked how she felt about being invited to lead a
woman-only lecture, said, I really had to think about it. I am very clear that I am not
a feminist. It puts you into a category and I dont like that. An artist has no gender. All
that matters is whether they make good art or bad art. So I thought about it, but then I
saidyes.
Again, we see this fear of categorization, this fear of being forced into a box that
cannot quite accommodate a woman properly. Abramovic believes an artist has no
gender, but there are many artists who would disagree, whose art is intimately shaped
by their gender, such as artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois, for whom feminism was
a significant influence. In a 1982 Time article on Bourgeois and her Museum of
Modern Art retrospective, Robert Hughes wrote, The field to which Bourgeoiss work
constantly returns is female experience, located in the body, sensed from within. I
try, she told an interviewer, with regard to one work, to give a representation of a
woman who is pregnant. She tries to be frightening but she is frightened. Shes afraid
someone is going to invade her privacy and that she wont be able to defend what she
is responsiblefor.
Trailblazing female leaders in the corporate world tend to reject the feminist label,
too. Marissa Mayer, who was appointed president and CEO of Yahoo! in July 2012,
said in aninterview,
I dont think that I would consider myself a feminist. I think that I certainly believe in equal
rights, I believe that women are just as capable, if not more so in a lot of different dimensions,
but I dont, I think, have, sort of, the militant drive and the sort of, the chip on the shoulder that
sometimes comes with that. And I think its too bad, but I do think that feminism has become in
many ways a more negative word. You know, there are amazing opportunities all over the world
for women, and I think that there is more good that comes out of positive energy around that
than negative energy.
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For Mayer, even though she is a pioneering woman, feminism is associated with

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militancy. Despite the strides she has made through her career at Google and now
Yahoo!, shed prefer to eschew the label for the sake of so-called positiveenergy.

Audre Lorde once stated, I am a black feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as
well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my
womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts areinseparable.
As a woman of color, I find that some feminists dont seem terribly concerned with the
issues unique to women of colorthe ongoing effects of racism and post-colonialism,
the status of women in the Third World, working against the trenchant archetypes
black women are forced into (angry black woman, mammy, Hottentot, and thelike).
White feminists often suggest that by believing there are issues unique to women of
color, an unnatural division occurs, impeding solidarity, sisterhood. Other times,
white feminists are simply dismissive of these issues. In 2008, prominent blogger
Amanda Marcotte was accused of appropriating ideas for her article, Can a Person Be
Illegal? from the blogger Brownfemipower, who posted a speech she gave on the
same subject a few days prior to the publication of Marcottes article. The question of
where original thought ends and borrowed concepts begin was complicated
significantly by the sense that a white person had yet again appropriated the creative
work of a person ofcolor.
Around the same time, feminist press Seal Press was taken to task for not devoting
enough of their catalogue to women of color, which made senior editor Brooke
Warner and other white feminists defensive. Warner went so far as to respond to a
comment made by blogger Blackamazon, on her eponymous blog, saying, Seal
Press here. We WANT more WOC. Not a whole lotta proposals come our way,
interestingly. Seems to me it would be more effective to inform us about what youd
like to see rather than hating. In addition to assuming a defensive posture, Warner
also placed the burden of her presss diversity on women of color instead of assuming
that responsibility as a senior editor. To be fair, Warner was commenting on a blog
and perhaps did not think her comment through before posting, but she is neither the
first nor will she be the last white feminist to suggest that the responsibility for
making feminism and feminist organizations more inclusive lies with women ofcolor.
The feminist blogosphere engaged in an intense debate over these issues, at times so
acrimonious that black feminists were labeled radical black feminists who were
playing the racecard.
Such willful ignorance and disinterest in incorporating the issues and concerns of
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women into the mainstream feminist project makes me disinclined to own the
feminist label until it embraces people like me. Is that my way of essentializing

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feminism, of suggesting theres a right kind of feminism or a more inclusive

feminism? Perhaps. This is all murky for me, but a continued insensitivity toward race
is a serious problem in feministcircles.

Theres also this: lately, magazines have been telling me theres something wrong with
feminism or women trying to achieve a work/life balance or just women in general.
The Atlantic has led the way in these lamentations. In the aforementioned June 2012
article, Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation, wrote a searing polemic about 1 percent
wives, who are hurting feminism and the progress of women by choosing to stay at
home rather than enter the workplace. Wurtzel begins the essayprovocatively:
When my mind gets stuck on everything that is wrong with feminism, it brings out the
nineteenth century poet in me: Let me count the ways. Most of all, feminism is pretty much a
nice girl who really, really wants so badly to be liked by everybodyladies who lunch, men who
hate women, all the morons who demand choice and dont understand responsibilitythat it has
become the easy lay of social movements.

There are problems with feminism, you see. Wurtzel says so, and she is vigorous in
defending her position. Wurtzel goes on to state there is only one kind of equality,
economic equality, and until women recognize that and enter the workforce en masse,
feminists, and wealthy feminists in particular, will continue to fail. They will continue
to be bad feminists, falling short of essential ideals of thismovement.
The very next issue of the Atlantic included Anne-Marie Slaughter writing 12,000
words about the struggles of powerful, successful women to have it all. She was
speaking to a small, elite group of womenwealthy women with very successful
careerswhile ignoring the millions of women who dont have the privilege of, as
Slaughter did, leaving a high-powered position at the State Department to spend more
time with her sons. Many women who work do so because they have to. Working has
little to do with having it all and much more to do with having food on thetable.
Slaughter wrote, Id been the woman congratulating herself on her unswerving
commitment to the feminist cause, chatting smugly with her dwindling number of
college or law-school friends who had reached and maintained their place on the
highest rungs of their profession. Id been the one telling young women at my lectures
that you can have it all and do it all, regardless of what field you arein.
The thing is, I am not at all sure that feminism has ever suggested women can have it
all. This notion of being able to have it all is always misattributed to feminism when
really its human nature to want itall.
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Alas, poor feminism. So much responsibility keeps getting piled on the shoulders of a

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movement whose primary purpose is to achieve equality, in all realms, between men
and women. I keep reading these articles and getting angry and tired because these
articles tell me that theres no way for women to ever get it right. These articles make
it seem like there is, in fact, a right way to be a woman and a wrong way to be a
woman. And the standard appears to be ever changing andunachievable.

Which leads me to confess: I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To

freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a
feminist, I am a rather badone.
I want to be independent, but I want to be taken care of and have someone to come
home to. I have a job Im pretty good at. I am in charge of things. I am on committees.
People respect me and take my counsel. I want to be strong and professional, but I
resent how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to receive a fraction of the
consideration I might otherwise receive. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming need to
cry at work so I close my office door and lose it. I want to be in charge and respected
and in control, but I want to surrender, completely, in certain aspects of mylife.
When I drive to work I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume even though the
lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core. The classic Ying Yang Twins
song Salt Shaker? Its amazing. P poppin til you percolate / First booty on duty no
time to wait / Make it work, with your wet T-shirt / Bitch you gotta shake it til your
calf musclehurts.
Poetry.
(I am mortified by my musicchoices.)
I care what peoplethink.
Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is
pinkall shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and
Im not doing it ironically though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the
September issue. I demonstrate little outward evidence of this, but I have a very
indulgent fantasy where I have a closet full of pretty shoes and purses and matching
outfits. I love dresses. For years I pretended I hated them, but I dont. Maxi-dresses
are one of the finest clothing items to become popular in recent memory. I have
opinions on Maxi-dresses! I shave my legs! Again, this mortifies me. If I take issue
with the unrealistic standards of beauty women are held to, I shouldnt have a secret
fondness for fashion and smooth calves,right?
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I know nothing about cars. When I take my car to the mechanic, they are speaking a

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foreign language. A mechanic asks whats wrong with my car, and I lose my mind. I
stutter things like, Well, theres a sound I try to drown out with my radio. The
windshield wiper fluid for the rear window of my car no longer sprays the window. It
just sprays the air. I dont know how to deal with this. It feels like an expensive
problem. I still call my father with questions about cars and am not terribly interested
in changing any of my car-related ignorance. I dont want to be good at cars. Good
feminists, I assume, are independent enough to address vehicular crises on their own;
they are independent enough tocare.
Despite what people think based on my writing, I very much like men. Theyre
interesting to me, and I mostly wish they would be better about how they treat women
so I wouldnt have to call them out so often. And still, I put up with nonsense from
unsuitable men even though I know better and can do better. I love diamonds and the
excess of weddings. I consider certain domestic tasks as gendered, mostly all in my
favor as I dont care for choreslawn care, bug killing, and trash removal, for
example, are menswork.
Sometimesa lot of the time, honestlyI totally fake it, because its easier. I am a
fan of orgasms, but they take time, and in many instances I dont want to waste that
time. All too often I dont really like the guy enough to explain the calculus of my
desire. Then I feel guilty because the sisterhood would not approve. Im not even sure
what the sisterhood is, but the idea of a sisterhood menaces me, quietly reminding me
of how bad a feminist I am. Good feminists dont fear the sisterhood because they
know they are comporting themselves in sisterhood-approvedways.
I love babies, and I want to have one. I am willing to make certain compromises (not
sacrifices) in order to do sonamely maternity leave and slowing down at work to
spend more time with my child, writing less so I can be more present in my life. I
worry about dying alone, unmarried and childless because I spent so much time
pursuing my career and accumulating degrees. This kind of keeps me up at night, but
I pretend it doesnt because I am supposed to be evolved. My success, such as it is, is
supposed to be enough if Im a good feminist. It is not enough. It is not evenclose.
Because I have so many deeply held opinions about gender equality, I feel a lot of
pressure to live up to certain ideals. I am supposed to be a good feminist who is
having it all, doing it all. Really, though, Im a woman in her thirties, struggling to
accept herself. For so long I told myself I was not this womanutterly human and
flawed. I worked overtime to be anything but this woman, and it was exhausting and
unsustainable, and even harder than simply embracing who Iam.
And while I may be a bad feminist, I am deeply committed to the issues important to
7 of the
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that consistently places women at a disadvantage, the inequity in pay, the cult of

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beauty and thinness, the repeated attacks on reproductive freedom, violence against
women, and on and on. I am as committed to fighting fiercely for equality as I am
committed to disrupting the notion that there is an essentialfeminism.
Im the kind of feminist who is appalled by the phrase legitimate rape and
politicians such as Missouris Todd Akin, who reaffirmed his commitment to opposing
abortion, drawing from pseudo-science and a lax cultural attitude toward rape: If its
a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But
lets assume that maybe that didnt work or something. I think there should be some
punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist, and not attacking
thechild.
Being a feminist, however, even a bad one, has also taught me that the need for
feminism and advocacy also applies to seemingly less seriousissues.
Im the kind of feminist who knows it is complete hypocrisy that actress Kristen
Stewart is being publicly excoriated for cheating on her boyfriend Robert Pattinson
even though, if you believe the tabloid stories, Pattinson cheated on her for years.
Being a bad feminist allows me to get riled up when I read that Stewart could be
dropped from the Snow White and the Huntsman sequel while, say, Chris Brown, a
known abuser with anger issues, is still performing at awards shows and selling
albums, adored by a legion of ardentfans.
Im the kind of feminist who looks at the September 2012 issue of Vogue with the
Edith Wharton photo spread and knows theres a serious problem. Wharton is my
favorite writer. I also love Vogue or, perhaps, hate to love Vogue. This photo spread
would normally thrill me. But. Jeffrey Eugenides portrays Henry James, Jonathan
Safran Foer portrays architect Ogden Codman, Jr., and Junot Diaz portrays diplomat
Walter Van Rensselaer Berry. Wharton is portrayed by model Natalia Vodianova; she
is gorgeous, and Vogue is a fashion magazine, but a great disservice is beingdone.
The editors of Vogue are, apparently, unaware of the famous, talented, contemporary
women writers who would be excellent choices for the photo essay. Zadie Smith
released a book in September. Theres also Karen Russell, Jennifer Egan, Aimee
Bender, Nicole Krauss, Julianna Baggott, Alicia Erian, Claire Vaye Watkins, and the
list could go onforever.
This disservice rises, in part, out of a culture that assumes women writers are less
relevant than their male counterparts, that women in general are simply not as
important, that their writing is not as critical to arts and letters. This disservice rises
out of a culture where Jonathan Franzen lost the Pulitzer rather than Jennifer Egan
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All too often, these seemingly smaller issues go unchecked because there are so many
more serious issues facingwomen.
Theres more to the problem. Too many women, particularly groundbreaking women
and industry leaders, are afraid to be labeled feminists, afraid to stand up and say,
Yes, I am a feminist, for fear of what that label means, for fear of how to live up to it,
for fear of feminism as something essential, for fear of the punishmentsboth
obvious and indirectthat come with openly owning feminism or doing
feminismwrong.

At some point, I got it into my head that a feminist was a certain kind of woman. I
bought into grossly inaccurate myths about who feminists aremilitant, perfect in
their politics and person, man hating, humorless. I bought into these myths even
though, intellectually, I know better. Im not proud of this. I dont want to buy into
these myths anymore. I dont want to cavalierly disavow feminism like far too many
other women havedone.
I also want to be myself. Bad feminism seems like the only way I can both embrace
myself as a feminist and bemyself.
No matter what issues I have with feminism, I am one. I cannot nor will not deny the
importance and absolute necessity of feminism. Like most people, Im full of
contradictions, but I also dont want to be treated like shit for being awoman.
I am, therefore, a bad feminist. I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist
atall.

Roxane Gay (/people/roxane-gay)

Roxane Gay is the author of the essay collectionBad Feminist (Harper
Perennial, 2014), the title essay of which appeared in VQR; the novelAn
Untamed State (Black Cat, 2014); andAyiti (Artistically Declined Press,
2011). Her writing has appeared inBest American Mystery Stories,Best
American Short Stories,Best Sex Writing,A Public
Space,McSweeneys,Tin House,Oxford American, theNew York Times
Book Review,Bookforum,Time, theNation, the Rumpus, and Salon, among
others. She is the coeditor ofPANK.

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ISSUE: Fall 2012

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Volume 88

# 4 (/issues/88/4/fall-2012)

PUBLISHED: September 22, 2012

TOPICS: feminism (/tags/feminism)

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