Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Reviewed by Graduate Fellow Emily Wistner

Roxane Gay’s New York Times bestselling book, Bad Feminist, is a collection of essays loosely (sometimes too loosely) tied together through the theme of feminism and what feminism should be. Gay admits forthrightly that she is, as the title states, a bad feminist because of her human nature (i.e., imperfection), her lack of expertise on feminist history, and her differing opinions from mainstream feminism. She describes her label as “freeing” because her personality, her human nature, and her feminism are not bound by what others say all the time.

Gay advocates for a more inclusive, flexible, and forgiving version of feminism that understands that pop culture can be misogynist but still listens to rap music while trying to learn more about being a better feminist. Along with the increase in flexibility, Gay calls for greater intersectionality— intersectionality is a tool for understanding compound discrimination — for example, my life as a white woman is at a disadvantage, but a black woman’s life (such as Gay) has different challenges because of systemic racism in the US (for more on intersectionality, a quick Google search could help). She argues for including race, class, privilege, and personal complexity in feminism because women occupy all of these categories and need to be represented. The book is split up into 5 sections, with each section pertaining to a different overall theme: gender and sexuality, race and entertainment, politics, gender, and race, and two chapters with Gay’s reflections.

As I stated in the opening, the essays are loosely tied together based on this theme of redefining feminism and accepting not being perfect at it. As someone with a good deal of knowledge of feminism in both an academic and a personal sense, but also a member of a younger generation, many of the essays spoke to me. There are, however, many pop culture references that I think allow Gay to reach a broader audience to draw them into understanding feminism, but it can also shut another audience out if they are not fluent in popular movies, shows, or people. Personally, I thought this added some realism to the often very elusive and difficult-to-understand feminism I encounter sometimes at the academic level. On the note of “loosely tied together,” some of the essays seem too far off the theme/thesis for this book. Of course, intersectionality must be brought into the fold, but at points, essays focus on race and politics or entertainment with no connection, unless the average reader understands the complex connections between race and feminism, to women or the feminist movement.

I also found that there were more points I wished were fleshed out and others repeated to the point that I was bored. I thought that there would be more intricate connections between gender and race and how that affects politics, especially in our current political state. While the book was initially published in 2014, the themes of gender and race in connection to the nation have not changed much in the past 11 years. It is understandable that because these are essays, they must be short and to the point. But, this does not mitigate the fact that certain connections were barely discussed when they would have fallen in line with the book's main points. I saw, for example, limited acknowledgments of the connections between feminism and capitalism rooted in pop culture and materialism. Regarding critiques of popular culture, this connection could have served as an added critique to the misogyny.

Even with these critiques, just about everybody should read this book. It is not too academic. It is not too pop culture-based. It is a good mixture, maybe not perfect, but then again, Gay would not be rooting for perfection. It is an excellent collection for those seeking to understand feminism without the big words and academic jargon in other feminist non-fiction works. This book might just open your eyes to seeing how we can all be bad feminists and better feminists and how we can arm ourselves with Gay’s thought-provoking claims and criticisms.