Katie Jill Herchenroeder

Bad Feminist, By Roxane Gay

Opening Remarks

If all the world’s a stage and humans mere players, as Shakespeare so eloquently put, then women are front and center with tomatoes being thrown at them. In Shakespeare’s conception, “man” goes through seven ages before bidding the audience adieu. His verbiage entails a gradual emergence into a solidified entity existing in coordination with the other actors, growing betwixt them at “his” will. It is plainly glaring, in ways expounded upon below, that the life of womankind is less streamlined, and far more tumultuous. Before continuing, it is beyond vital to note a couple disclaimers for the following phonemes, morphemes, and syntax. First of all, this is a deeply feminist exploration into the disenfranchisement of women, and as such it focuses on the intersections of oppression that layer to shape idiosyncratic testimonies across geographical boundaries. Said another way, this is an inclusive text intentionally analyzing systemic processes that interact and perpetuate inequity for women, particularly women of color, transgendered women, and others who fall outside of traditional standards. Secondly, any critiques given throughout this text of women scholars are meant not as an attack on their gender or sex, but as an attempt to problematize justifications that fail to dig deeper into social statutes.

The subsequent academic inquiry hinges on dispelling certain verisimilitudes and replacing them with actualities backed by the hard work of women who have the passion to write. From Roxane Gay and her book Bad Feminist, to Under Western Eyes by Chandra Talpade Mohanty, women’s work breathes life into the arguments given throughout these pages. Actualities including but not limited to: Women theorists must engage with subjectivity, because anything less is a disservice to herself and intellectual property as a whole; vulnerability is paramount in feminist advocacy; women have the unique opportunity to fight against fallacious instances of synonymizing masculinity with objectivity; and having theory in your flesh and blood need no longer be labeled as biased and therefore unreliable. On the whole, these words desire to attest for necessary subjectivity and, in the same breath, press for empathy to continue on when subjectivity teeters out. Without further monologue, buckle your seatbelt and get ready for some theoretical turbulence.

What is Feminism?

There are more misconceptions about feminism than there are women in the senate: at least 20. Feminism, due to some legitimate and an exorbitant amount of illegitimate reasons, is the most complicated, commonsensical theory that is also a household name. To unearth the core of this clickbait word it is imperative to look at the literature. In Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay explains that feminism “is flawed because it is a movement powered by people and people are inherently flawed.” Gay continues on to note:

“I resisted feminism in my late teens and twenties because I worried that feminism wouldn’t allow me to be the mess of a woman I knew myself to be. But then I began to learn more about feminism. I learned to separate feminism from Feminism or Feminists or the idea of an Essential Feminism- one true feminism to dominate all of womankind. It was easy to embrace feminism when I realized it was advocating for gender equality in all realms, while also making an effort to be intersectional, to consider all of the other facts that influence who we are and how we move through the world. Feminism has given me peace. Feminism has given me guiding principles for how I write, how I read, how I live. I do stray from these principles, but I also know it’s okay when I do not live up to my best feminist self.”

Gay is not alone in her revelations. It is common to find strife within defining feminism and what it means for oneself and the larger social spheres one finds themself within. Put quite succinctly, as bell hooks does effervescently in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center:

“Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.”

hooks juxtaposes this definition with the one held by larger society, including Dictionary.com. It states, “The doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men.” hooks, when evaluating this denotation, raises the question, “Since men are not equals in a white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal class structure, which men do women want to be equal to?” In a society that delineates value based on race, class, and gender, yearning for women to quantifiably equate to men wholly ignores the truth that men themselves are stratified.

What is NOT Feminism?

Feminism is not an ideology that chooses to alter the status quo from within. Feminism is not an ideology that posits white women as superior to women of color. Feminism is not hierarchical. Feminism is not exclusive. Feminism is not a checklist complete with requirements for its participants. Feminism is not dependent upon the male gaze. Feminism is not a bandaid on the wound of oppression. Feminism is not complicit in supporting other oppressive power dynamics. Feminism is not a masquerade of objectivity. Feminism is not man-hate. Feminism is not passive. Feminism is not ahistorical. Feminism is not new. Feminism is not a negotiation with society. Feminism is not assuming. Feminism is not a two-sided story. Feminism is not one thing. Feminism is not stagnant. Feminism is not shaming. Feminism is not ameliorating. Feminism is not what Donald Trump says it is. Feminism is not easy. Feminism is not hard.

Audre Lorde is an American writer, poet, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. Lorde has dedicated her time, words, and love to feminist theorization and aptly outlines what must be understood about what feminism cannot be, what it cannot look like. “As women, we must root out internalized patterns of oppression within ourselves if we are to move beyond the most superficial aspects of social change.” In one of her most pinpointed excerpts, Lorde also shares:

“The old patterns, no matter how cleverly rearranged to imitate progress, still condemn us to cosmetically altered repetitions of the same old exchanges, the same old guilt, hatred, recrimination, lamentation, and suspicion. For we have, built into all of us, old blueprints of expectation and response, old structures of oppression, and these must be altered at the same time we alter the living conditions which are a result of those structures. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

In other words, feminism is not a monotonous retelling of past injustices with new clothing on. No. Rather, feminism is a rewiring, a complete reconceptualization of the very structures that support the disparities feminists adamantly rail against.

Holding a similar sentiment, Beatrix Campbell and Rahila Gupta, both journalists and feminists, stress that “In our global economy, patriarchy has been born in new ways,” and that bargaining for bare-minimum opportunity is no longer sufficient. They advance:

“End of Equality argues that there is a new global settlement: neoliberal neopatriarchy. This is an ugly term for an ugly relationship. Neoliberalisation is the subordination of the social state to the market, and neopatriarchy tolerates girls being astronauts or bankers, but resists genuine reform of the sexual division of labour.”

While adding “neo” to nearly every word can be obsessive and unnecessary, it is used here in a nuanced way that acknowledges the ways in which patriarchy frequents costume parlors.

Beauty Pageant Feminism and The Myth of “The Universal Woman”

Beauty pageants at their best are intricately choreographed displays of individual talent. Yet, at their worst and most clichéd, they are sheer parades of superficial reiterations that have been practiced more than graduation speeches at ivy leagues. Similarly, feminism and in turn women, are judged on stereotyped, archetypal notions pragmatically crafted by the oppressor. In fact, feminism is the only theory of human life whose champions are put into a physically descriptive box. Stated another way, just as women are judged upon bonkers regulations of beauty, so feminism is regulated into being all at once too much and not enough. There is not one beauty, nor is there one encompassed feminist.

Frustrated, Roxane Gay- in regards to articles on how to “be a woman,” whatever that means- avows:

“Alas, poor feminism. So much responsibility keeps getting piled on the shoulders of a movement whose primary purpose is to achieve equality […]. I keep reading this articles and getting angry and tired because they suggest there’s no way for women to ever get it right. These articles make it seem like, as butler suggests, there is, in fact a right way to be a woman and a wrong way to be a woman. The standard for the right way to be a woman and/or a feminism appears to be ever changing and unachievable.”

On the same accord, Chandra Talpade Mohanty brings forth the problematics of painting all women with the same attributes and calling it a day in her text Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. As the title hints, Mohanty probes into the different ways in which Western feminism places itself at the epicenter of morality, and in doing such, automatically instills a hero saves victim pattern to action. This sequence, being incessent by nature:

“Discursively colonize[s] the material and historical heterogeneities of the lives of women in the third-world, thereby producing/representing a composite, singular ‘third world woman’- an image which appears arbitrarily constructed but nevertheless carries with it the authorizing signature of western humanist discourse.”

In this way, Mohanty delves into the unfortunate consequences of trying to place women into a homogeneous pool- especially focusing on women who live outside of accepted social normalities.

Audre Lorde, highlighted earlier, maintains a coinciding opinion to Mohanty, observing that intersections of power dynamics in life must be acknowledged within feminist movements in her work Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference:

“Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm, which each one of us within our hearts knows ‘that is not me.’ In america, this norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure. It is with this mythical norm that the trappings of power reside within this society. Those of us who stand outside that power often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around difference, some of which we ourselves may be practising. By and large within the women’s movement today, white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class and age.”

And the kicker: “There is a pretense to a homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist.” Ignoring these differences, or even more treacherous, claiming “I do not see difference,” manifests in a feminism that, frankly, misses the bullseye.

Bio-Illogical

To be a woman is to have the capacity to be discriminated against. This truth is often debated begrudgingly as women either do not recognize their own stratification or are overtly privileged and apathetic. When looking into women as social actors, ones who engage with institutions that shape global orders, examining particular idiosyncratic strands of oppression within the community is staggering and crucial. As mentioned above, not all women have wombs. Nevertheless, due to the large numbers of women affected by reproductive freedom, it is relevant and pertinent to elucidate the ways in which a woman’s sovereignty becomes a question mark. Roxane Gay begins, “Rather than solve the real problems the United States is facing, some politicians, mostly conservative, have decided to try to solve the ‘female problem’ by creating a smoke screen, reintroducing abortion and, more inexplicably, birth control into a national debate.” Continuing on, she contends:

“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.”

In this same line of thought, Dr. Marsden Wagner, discussing maternal mortality and other complications in hospitals, confides:

“Obstetricians in the United States receive high-caliber education and training, and most have good intentions. The problem lies not with individual doctors but with a system in which stretched-thin doctors have an unjustified monopoly and women and babies are left to pay the price. It is important to note that in every country that has a lower maternal mortality rate than the United States- or a lower infant mortality rate- it is midwives, not obstetricians, who manage normal pregnancies and births.”

Placing power in the hands of women who have studied the art of birth will shift a paradigm that depends upon surgery and the subjugation of women. A biological move that could very well reshape power dynamics in the realm of reproductive freedom and justice.

A Social Where Women Are Psycho

Along with biological components, pursuing a psychosocial inspection is also beneficial. The social and psychological facets of life are simultaneously shaped by and shape the female experience. In Simone de Beauvoir’s famous text The Second Sex, she, while slightly antiquated, does an ample job at explicating one aspect of womankind. Even the act of being a philosophical scholar within society, de Beauvoir unpacks, is gendered negatively towards women:

“A man would never set out to write a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion. A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man. The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In actuality the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general.”

With men posited as objective, any and all theory that is birthed (pun intended) from women is judged two-fold: first on the basis of its author’s gender, and secondly, if it makes it that far, on the merit of its content. This dual attack on one’s work can intrinsically alter the composition of an individual’s view of self and how they place their value within a society.

Spirituality//Frugality

A large part of feminism is taking stigmatized words that have been used in a patriarchal environment to oppress women and reexamining them to take hold of a new definition. Audre Lorde goes on this locutionary journey in her essay Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic as Power. Throughout her reclamation, she speaks to the ways in which eroticism has been used to oversexualize and demean female bodies and intentionally shifts that denotation. Instead, Lorde protests “When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our work, our lives.” An energy, she notes, is not detached from the spirituality and political power of women:

“The dichotomy between the spiritual and the political is also false, resulting from an incomplete attention to our erotic knowledge. For the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic- the sensual- those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings.”

Attempting to dissociate women from their spiritual energy, as hypermasculinity embedded in a patriarchal atmosphere is keen to do, is attune to taking a harp away from a harpist and cutting the string one by one with toenail clippers: nonsensical, long-winded, and painful to observe.

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry

The documentary, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, “resurrects the buried history of the outrageous, often brilliant women who founded the modern women’s movement from 1966 to 1971,” as worded on their website. Throughout the film, the women who held the torch of the 60’s and 70’s spoke to their experiences, grievances, and hopes for the future. Chronologically organized, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, provides a window into the seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years that made the way for first, second, and third wave feminism. The film is a rollercoaster of emotion, ranging from pure glee to utter anguish, a perfect spectrum to epitomize the lineage of women’s advocacy. Yet, again, viewers cannot and should not expect every smidgen of information on feminism and the female struggle to be included within one hour, thirty-two minutes, and twenty-eight seconds. Nonetheless, in order to shift towards inclusive feminism in all areas of media, an understanding of the pros and cons of this film is endlessly constructive.

What this piece does really well is fully detail the ways in which the feminist movement embodied the notion that the personal is political. Such an pronouncement allows rhetoric to steer away from mythological objectivity and veer into the lane of necessary subjectivity breeded from personal experiences and theorizations. Moreover, there is a power in the vulnerability displayed during the film. Observers see women talking about things that carry overwhelming shame- abuse, abortion, assimilation. There is tangible strength to be found in a group of women sitting in a room speaking to their injustices. That strength is felt to the core while watching She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry. Of course, there is more explicitly visible resistance, resentment, and rage shown, but, the quiet, empathetic, and sober organizing of early feminists should never cease to amaze onlookers.

On the other hand, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry is a tad whitewashed and ultimately skewed towards the experiences of white, middle class women. This is not to say or imply that those women’s struggles be diminished or not given ample time. Alternatively, this critique is grounded in the affirmation that women of color, queer women, and transgendered women have an acutely unique perspective within feminism that has been systemically pushed under the rug for generations. There are two specific instances in which this mishap occurs in the film. First, when discussing reproductive freedom, the work gives an extensive retelling of the fight for a women’s right to choose to have an abortion or raise a family- a ceaseless attack of women’s freedom and bodily autonomy. However, they spend barely any time on the sterilization of women of color during similar time frames. Killing The Black Body, by Dorothy E. Roberts, grants the time necessary to this sector of reproductive regulation. In regards to race, the eugenics movement, and coercive sterilization, Roberts explains:

“The Eugenics movement, however, did not rely on nature to eliminate the unfit. It implemented a more direct means of weeding out undesirable citizens. The movement’s most lasting legacy is its coercive enforcement of negative eugenics, which aimed to prevent socially undesirable people from procreating. Eugenicists advocated compulsory sterilization to improve society by eliminating its ‘socially inadequate’ members.”

This step further in the conversation about reproductive freedom and justice was lost in the documentary, a genuinely sad exclusion.

Secondly, when looking at the “now” of feminism, the premeir example given is “The Slut Walk,” an annual demonstration of women dressed in whatever they please, self-defining as sluts as an act of reclaiming the word. This march was created after an incident in 2011 where canadian police officers told female students that, in order to stay safe, they need to avoid “dressing like sluts.” Whereas this occurrence is wholly unacceptable, and The Slut Walk originated from admirable intentions, it has become a movement that ostracizes women that find empowerment in covering up, rather than showing skin. It has received due criticism for defining freedom in limited terms. Just as a woman should have the right to wear more revealing clothing and not get assaulted, so another should be able to feel beautiful and sexy in full-garb. Theresa O’Keefe addresses this point in her journal My Body Is My Manifesto! SlutWalk, FEMEN, and Femmenist Protest:

“To be a proud ‘slut’ is not to challenge the policing of women’s sexuality but to reinforce the limited ways in which it is acceptable for women to be sexual. SlutWalk, through its unproblematized sexual expression, is a form of body protest that simultaneously celebrates and exploited the ‘sexy female body’.”

In this way, SlutWalk is missing the mark of inclusivity, intersectionality, and idiosyncrasy. If they are to digest this critique and expand their boundaries of protest, SlutWalk has the rare potential to redefine standards of beauty and sexuality that pervade modern culture. Had She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry focused further on these close-readings of social phenomenon, the documentary would have been a more complete retelling of the tale of womankind.

Inclusive “We” for a #MeToo Moment

This past year, The New York Times has worked tremendously to acquaint the public with the women of the #MeToo movement. This historical moment, led by African-American civil rights activist from The Bronx Tarana Burke, has begun a much larger conversation on what it looks like to properly be a woman in society- from a waitress, to an actress, and everything in-between. #MeToo is a feminist endeavour in its very essence, focusing on the nuanced and ancient ways in which women, and men, experience sexual violence. From breaking the story on the media menace Harvey Weinstein, to following the Cosby trial, The Times is raising the voices of women in ways unheard of in past decades. Without applauding a fish for swimming, their strides have been essential in sparking a long overdue conversation. On a similar note, The Times just published an article focusing on Black women and reproductive health: Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis. The author, a queer woman of color, Linda Villarosa, delves passionately into the intersections of race, class, and gender to illustrate the heartbreaking disparity between white women and women of color, regarding reproductive justice:

“Black infants in America are now more than twice as likely to die as white infants — 11.3 per 1,000 black babies, compared with 4.9 per 1,000 white babies, according to the most recent government data — a racial disparity that is actually wider than in 1850, 15 years before the end of slavery, when most black women were considered chattel. In one year, that racial gap adds up to more than 4,000 lost black babies. Education and income offer little protection. In fact, a black woman with an advanced degree is more likely to lose her baby than a white woman with less than an eighth-grade education.”

Roxane Gay, being herself a survivor of a gang rape, knows first-hand the importance of illuminating the real horrors experiences by living, breathing individuals. Throughout the beginning of Bad Feminist, Gay alludes to a time in the woods with some boys, always hinting at the traumatic experience until she explains in the chapter entitled “What We Hunger For.” Her words are as blunt as they are heartbreaking:

“The boy I thought was my boyfriend pushed me to the ground. He took my clothes off, and I lay there with no body to speak of, just a flat board of skin and girl bones. I tried to cover myself with my arms but I couldn’t, not really. The boys stared at me while they drank beer and laughed and said things I didn’t understand because I knew things but I knew nothing about what a group of boys could do to kill a girl.”

These stories echo across temporal, geographic, and classed boundaries. Sexual violence has become a reality for far too many women, especially women of color, with Native American women being the most impacted, according to The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

Without ameliorating past injustices committed by the mass media, including The Times, in regards to women, women’s rights, and feminism, it is essential to give credit where credit is due, and The Times deserves a hardy pat on the back for their recent coverage of women’s issues. In the past month alone, they have published dozens of articles on this moment. Including, but not limited to: Survey: Japanese Female Journalists Report Sexual Misconduct, #MeToo Hits Cannes Closing Ceremony With a Fury, Michigan State Will Pay $500 Million to Abuse Victims. What Comes Next?, Anita Hill Mentions #MeToo in University Commencement Speech, and a truly lamentable read, 45 Stories of Sex and Consent on Campus. In the latter, the authors, Jessica Bennett and Daniel Jones, compiled testimonies from young women and men all across the world. One student, Olivia, shared “Here is what you say: ‘No, no, no, no. Do I have to? Please stop.’ Here is what you can never forget that you finally say: ‘It’s fine.’”

Good Read: Bad Feminist

One can tell a lot about a writer by the way they end their chapters. It is common to expect an out-of-the-ballpark first line of a book, but what really shows the craft of an artist is how they morphe their kickers into tokens of wisdom that metaphorically tie a bow on that chapter. Roxane Gay, in Bad Feminist, passes this test with flying colors. Below are but a few examples of how Gay leaves the reader with a nugget of pure gold:

“I will keep writing about these intersections as a writer and a teacher, as a black woman, as a bad feminist, until I no longer feel like what I want is impossible. I no longer want to believe these problems are too complex for us to make sense of them.” – From “Feel Me. See Me. Hear Me. Reach Me.”

“Unlikable women refuse to give in to [being the woman a man wants]. They are, instead, themselves. They accept the consequences of their choices, and those consequences become stories worth reading.” – From “Not Here to Make Friends.”

“We are willing- even anxious- to see prominent figures in a state of helplessness as they sacrifice their privacy for the greater good. How helpless are we willing to be for the greater good? That question interests me most.” – From “A Tale of Three Coming Out Stories.”

“It is bittersweet that something is better than nothing, even if the something we have is hardly anything at all.” – From “The Morality of Tyler Perry.”

“I have never considered compassion a finite resource. I would not want to live in a world where such was the case. Tragedy. Call. Great. Small. Compasion. Response. Compassion. Response.” – From “Tragedy. Call. Compassion. Response.”

And the final kicker, “Like most people, I’m full of contradictions, but I also don’t want to be treated like shit for being a women. I am a bad feminist. I would rather be a bad feminism than no feminist at all.” – From “Bad Feminist: Take Two.”

Gay has a way of putting into words the phenomena that the silenced feel. Her book is not perfect. That’s okay. One book on feminism is not enough. That’s okay. She has implicit biases that shape her analyses. That’s okay. What lifts Gay’s words is her ability to allow her subjectivity to thrive in an intentional climate of introspective vulnerability. Gay sees her unique life-walk and uses that to inform her writing, her learning, her life. To expect one book to be everything to everyone is a product of the same logic that refuses to create an inclusive feminism for yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Bad Feminist is perfect for the human actor who is willing to think; for the individual who is dedicated to taking a second glance at the song they jam to in the car, the movie with the high reviews, or the nurtured assumptions within oneself.

A Party Favor

Untangling unequal and inequitable standards should allow for rigorous dedication to feminism. As Beatrix Campbell and Rahila Gupta concisely tell, the work of women’s liberation is “reasonable and revolutionary.” Then the question becomes, how? How can a people of anomalous compositions come together to raise up a movement in this historical moment that is inescapably wrought with pain and oppression? The above advocates for the beginning of an answer to this highly complex inquiry. In order for feminism to be all at once for the people and by the people it must dedicate itself to uphold the following: Women theorists must engage with subjectivity, because anything less is a disservice to herself and intellectual property as a whole; vulnerability is paramount in feminist advocacy; women have the unique opportunity to fight against fallacious instances of synonymizing masculinity with objectivity; and having theory in your flesh and blood need no longer be labeled as biased and therefore unreliable. Because, without these promises, feminism is fleeting, passive, and lost in the madness. Just as a kid receives a goodie-bag at the end of a birthday party, so take these words from bell hooks as your grain of truth from this exploration:

“To correct [the] inadequacy in past analysis, we must now encourage women to develop a keen, comprehensive understanding of women’s political reality. Broader perspectives can only emerge as we examine both the personal that is political, the politics of society as a whole, and global revolutionary politics.”

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