![roxane gay work friend chocolate roxane gay work friend chocolate](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41KhEb4MXUL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
I thought, “Isn’t it obvious I am a feminist, albeit not a very good one?” When I dismantled his pseudo-theories, he said, “You’re some kind of feminist, aren’t you?” His tone made it clear that to be a feminist was undesirable. He expounded, at length, about how women should talk to men. I was stunned because no one had ever said such a thing to me. He said, “Don’t you raise your voice to me,” which was strange because I had not raised my voice. I try not to read comments because they can get vicious, but I couldn’t 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 of passionate.Ī more direct reprimand came from a man I was dating, during a heated discussion that wasn’t quite an argument. For example, in an essay for Salon, I wrote about Daniel Tosh and rape jokes. 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. 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.
![roxane gay work friend chocolate roxane gay work friend chocolate](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FQeiOBdWQAchPzw.jpg)
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 aren’t-and that in turn creates a self-fulfilling essentialist prophecy. There seems to be little room for multiple or discordant points of view. The most significant problem with essential feminism is how it doesn’t allow for the complexities of human experience or individuality. She is suggesting that a woman’s worth is, in part, determined by her beauty, which is one of the very things feminism works against. No liberated woman would misrepresent the cause by appearing less than hale and happy.” It’s too easy to dissect the error of such thinking. She says, “Looking great is a matter of feminism. She takes the idea of essential feminism even further in a September 2012 Harper’s Bazaar article where she suggests that a good feminist works hard to be beautiful. 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 of feminism.Ĭonsider Elizabeth Wurtzel, who, in a June 2012 Atlantic article, says, “Real feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own.” By Wurtzel’s thinking, women who don’t “earn a living, have money and means of their own,” are fake feminists, undeserving of the label, disappointments to the sisterhood.
#Roxane gay work friend chocolate how to
There is an essential feminism, the notion that there are right and wrong ways to be a feminist, and there are consequences for doing feminism wrong.Įssential 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 woman-hate pornography, unilaterally decry the objectification of women, don’t cater to the male gaze, hate men, hate sex, focus on career, don’t shave. They are bad women.īutler’s thesis could also apply to feminism. Women who don’t adhere to these standards are the fallen, the undesirable. Good women are modest, chaste, pious, submissive. Depending on whom you ask, good women bear children and stay home to raise them without complaint. Good women work but are content to earn 77 percent of what men earn. Good women are charming, polite, and unobtrusive.
![roxane gay work friend chocolate roxane gay work friend chocolate](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/412euXUBZ6L._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
We see this tension in socially dictated beauty standards-the 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. As Judith Butler writes in her 1988 essay, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution”: “Performing one’s 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 tension-the idea that there is a right way to be a woman, a right way to be the most essential woman-is ongoing and pervasive.
![roxane gay work friend chocolate roxane gay work friend chocolate](https://i2.wp.com/theaerogram.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/paradigm-shift-desserts.jpg)
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. My favorite definition of a feminist is one offered by Su, an Australian woman who, when interviewed for Kathy Bail’s 1996 anthology DIY Feminism, described them simply as “women who don’t want to be treated like shit.” This definition is pointed and succinct, but I run into trouble when I try to expand it.