Badass Feminism in Roxane Gay’s ‘Bad Feminist’

I openly embrace the label of bad feminist. I do so because I am flawed and human. I am not terribly well versed in feminist history. I am not as well read in key feminist texts as I would like to be. I have certain… interests and personality traits and opinions that may not fall in line with mainstream feminism, but I am still a feminist. I cannot tell you how freeing it has been to accept this about myself.

I wish everyone would read this book. I’d quote the whole thing at you if I could—I practically did over at my tumblr. Reading these essays was like sitting down with my best friend and having casual but heartfelt discussions about the problematic nature of pop culture and politics, or like delving into a series of the best blog posts ever written about feminism and entertainment.

But I don’t want to put Gay on a “Feminist Pedestal,” a position she intentionally tries to avoid by preemptively labelling herself as a bad feminist: “People who are placed on pedestals are expected to pose, perfectly. Then they get knocked off when they fuck it up. I regularly fuck it up. Consider me already knocked off.”