Every day of Women’s History Month the MSU Women*s Student Services have been posting to their instagram different women that have had an impact. Here is the link to Roxane Gay’s Virtual Trading Card.
Writer, feminist, and activist Roxane Gay has been published many times for her work including Bad Feminist, Difficult Women, and Hunger as well as many other anthologies and columns. She is also a contributor for The New York Times. She also has a newsletter of which you can subscribe! Her Instagram is also very active for aspiring activists to follow and interact with.
“I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I’m right. I am just trying – trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.”
When Gay was 19, she disappeared while studying at Yale. Instead of starting the new term, she boarded a plane to San Francisco where she met a man she found online. What everyone saw was her good life: a well-off and supportive family, strong academics, and a bright future; but, she had spent years struggling with her childhood sexual assault that was kept a secret.
Gay spend a year there. A year of adventure and liberation. She told no one where she was. Eventually, her parents tracked her down via a private investigator. She was placed back in Nebraska to be near her parents where they enrolled her at another university. As amazing as this experience was, it was not a resolution or a solution.
Gay’s success has been both unexpected and amazing. We rarely see a small-town woman in her thirties this successful and known. She openly embraces the label bad feminist “because I am flawed and human.” As a Black and queer woman she didn’t always feel that feminist was for her. The movement “…has, historically, been far more invested in improving the lives of heterosexual white women to the detriment of all others…” She also speaks often on the lack of nuance of online discourse as well as living as a fat person.
“I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.”
Gay also gave a Ted Talk called “Confessions of a Bad Feminist” where she talks about “failing” as a feminist and how “The feminst label was an accusation, it was an ‘F’ word, and not a nice one.”
So, why is Roxane Gay important?
Honestly, I hope this has already been answered. But, if you haven’t yet gotten it: her writing is so impactful and brilliant that it needs to be read and listened to by all.