The writer, academic and cultural critic has had a tumultuous few years, full of love, grief and phenomenal creativity. She discusses women’s rights, writer’s block and why every day with her wife remains an adventure
Once upon a time, almost a decade ago, a funny, fearless, and frank writer from Nebraska described herself as a bad feminist. “I am failing as a woman,” she wrote. “I am failing as a feminist. I am a mess of contradictions.” The resulting book of essays, Bad Feminist (2014), heralded a more intersectional era in the movement, calling for less essentialism in feminism and more pluralism. It showed what it was like “to move through the world as a woman”: specifically a Haitian-American in her late 30s, who loathed Django Unchained and loved Scrabble. Perhaps, more than anything it was a manifesto of human imperfection. Thus was Roxane Gay propelled into the literary stratosphere and – as such fairytales tend to go – destined to be forever after probed about the current state of feminism.
So, nine years on, does the writer, editor, professor, podcaster, cultural critic, and Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University, New Jersey, still consider herself a bad feminist? “I think I’m a better feminist now than I was,” says Gay when we meet on Zoom. “But I’ll always be a bad feminist. I don’t think the term has changed. When I coined it, it was partly serious and partly tongue in cheek: if good feminism is the feminism that overlooks the intersections of identity that we all inhabit, then I’d rather be a bad feminist. Most of the issues I wrote about are sadly just as relevant today. And, in many areas, such as reproductive freedom, we have lost ground, which is a bitter pill to swallow.”
