A Quote by Roxane Gay

As I started to think about how I can claim feminism while also acknowledging my humanity and my imperfections, 'bad feminism' simply seemed like the best answer. — © Roxane Gay
As I started to think about how I can claim feminism while also acknowledging my humanity and my imperfections, 'bad feminism' simply seemed like the best answer.
I think feminism has always been global. I think there's feminism everywhere throughout the world. I think, though, for Western feminism and for American feminism, it not so surprisingly continues to center Western feminism and American feminism. And I think the biggest hurdle American feminists have in terms of taking a more global approach is that too often when you hear American feminists talk about international feminism or women in other countries, it kind of goes along with this condescending point of view like we have to save the women of such-and-such country; we have to help them.
I think the world is ambivalent about feminism. So I can't blame college students. I think they're reflecting the greater culture's attitude toward feminism. So what I can do is, in ways that are appropriate, advocate for feminism and help the students learn what feminism is about.
I had a real come-to-Jesus a couple of years ago when I started to see the direct line between feminism and everything else - feminism and climate change, feminism and poverty, feminism and hunger - and it was almost like I was born again and started walking down the street and was like, "Oh, my God, there are women everywhere! They're just everywhere you look. There's women all over the place!"
Yes, there's something dangerous about turning people into token social activists. I was thinking about this recently with our pop-culture feminism, when feminism is such a buzzword in the media now. We're covering it in a way that we haven't before, but also in a way that's way more surface level. And while I think that there's some danger in that, I also think it's a great gateway for some people.
Let's admit that feminism came from liberalism and it was very positive. But then it went dark. It went into a bad place. When feminism replaced biology with social construct, they started to say that everything about a human being was created by your environment or by your - by environmental cues as opposed to innate traits... Like you didn't achieve what you could get because it was your fault. They denied traits that are applied across all cultures. And that's where feminism went wrong is it denied biology and makes them look foolish.
Feminism's failings do not mean we should eschew feminism entirely. People do terrible things all the time, but we don't regularly disown our humanity. We disavow the terrible things. We should disavow the failures of feminism without disavowing its many successes and how far we have come.
I would suggest that a feminism which does not also seek to alter the exploitation of poorer women is not feminism at all, but is simply a variant form of upper-class politics and self-privileging.
People seem to think, because of the way that the media has appropriated third-wave feminism or young feminism, that all young feminists are about is like pole dancing and girls gone wild and how empowering it is. Like they'll start calling anything feminist.
[T]he presence of feminism in our lives is taken for granted. For our generation, feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice we have it - it's simply in the water.
The media is such a huge piece of how we understand feminism, particularly celebrity feminism, and I really do think that so much of how that stuff gets filtered through can be either finessed or really stymied by how media talks about it.
My debt to feminism is simply incalculable. Feminism allowed me to see past a 'reality' that I had once taken as a given. It helped me to pay attention to countless voices, my own included, that I had been taught 'don't count.' Feminism allows me to maintain hope.
I discovered feminism around 1970-72-precisely the time when feminism began to exist in France. Before that, there was no feminism.
I really dislike it when women reject feminism; that's ridiculous. I am a product of feminism. Without feminism I would not be making films.
People have accepted the media's idea of what feminism is, but that doesn't mean that it's right or true or real. Feminism is not monolithic. Within feminism, there is an array of opinions.
I think that there have been a lot of fear-based assertions that feminism is about aggression, and that is incorrect and untrue. Feminism is about equality; that's what it's about.
One's enemies are always talking about 'post-feminism.' It is a word invented by people who would like to do away with feminism.
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