Good Feminist, Bad Feminist
On January 21st, 2017, I watched the largest mass demonstration in U.S. history play out from behind my computer screen. It was the Women’s March on Washington, a protest with the mission of “harnessing the political power of diverse women and their communities to create transformative social change”, and it was a display of solidarity unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
You see, I never used to identify as a feminist. I didn’t want to be associated with that word — so controversial, so divisive. I’ve always advocated for women’s rights on the basis of equality, but feminism seemed like a much more extreme brand of activism, one I wasn’t ready to embrace. I’d heard rumors about these feminists and seen their posts on social media. I knew that they never shaved their legs and hated all men and used the word “patriarchy” a lot, and I also knew that they were unabashedly proud of their involvement in the feminist movement.
“Even if I am a feminist,” I used to think, “I have to be the worst one of all time.”
And then I read Roxane Gay’s debut collection of essays, aptly titled Bad Feminist, and everything changed. In her introduction, Gay writes: “I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions.”
Gay’s essays invited me into a new public, one I had yet to explore. A public for women who identified with the principles of feminism, but didn’t want to be stereotypes of the movement. A public that includes many women I have admired and respected throughout my lifetime: Hillary Clinton, Meghan Markle, Emma Watson, and Shonda Rhimes. A public for “bad feminists”: women who support gender equality, but also love things that are at odds with feminist ideology.
Who does this public consist of? Women like me, for one, who used to disavow feminism because we did not want to be known as “angry, sex-hating, man-hating.” (Gay) Women who support gender equality but also love the color pink and want to have babies and think taking out the trash is a man’s job. Essentially, the public of ‘bad feminists’ encompasses women who defy the traditional topoi of “feminism” — which suggests that feminists are angry, sex-hating, and man-hating — and instead believe that feminism can come in many different shapes and forms.
This public excludes men, because Gay writes with the intention of reaching women, and it is her writing that inadvertently created said public. Her writing also discludes what Gay calls “Professional Feminists” from this public; Professional Feminists advocate feminism as part of their personal brand, and are placed on a Feminist Pedestal as the authority on How To Be a Good Feminist. Gay writes, “I openly embrace the label of bad feminist. I do so because I am flawed and human. 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.” In some ways, it seems like Gay is directly reaching out to other women like her, who share similar values and ideologies. It is almost as if she wants to tell them: “I can be myself and be a feminist at the same time and you can, too.”
Michael Warner states in his article Publics and Counterpublics that, “a public is the social space created by the reflexive circulation of discourse…no single text can create a public.” Bad Feminist paved the way for dialogue that resulted in the creation of the public of bad feminists. In a Vice article titled, “I Love Wolf Whistles and Catcalls: Am I a Bad Feminist?”, Paris Lees describes a trip to Ibiza, Spain in which she was “catcalled, sexually objectified, and treated like a piece of meat by men the entire” as “absolutely awesome.” Similarly, a Thought Catalog think piece asks: “Am I a Bad Feminist Because Sometimes All I Want For My Life Is To Get Married And Have Babies And a Nice House Out In The Country?” These articles are only two examples of gender-related discourse that have formed to create a public of bad feminists.
Perhaps Gay is so effective in her delivery due to her rhetorical usage of ethos and pathos. Gay draws on her experience as a novelist, writer, and social commentator to better persuade her audience; it is clear to her readers that she is well-versed in studies of gender politics and feels confident speaking on them. She combines this usage of ethos with a heavy dosage of pathos: Gay is witty, smart, honest, and relatable. She uses personal anecdotes and experience to support her statements about feminism, and appeals to the public she is trying to reach by writing candidly, at times with humor and at times with sorrow. In the most intimate of her essays, Gay reveals that she was raped as a young girl. “Just because you survive something does not mean you are strong,” she writes.
Why is it so important to address the public of “bad feminists?” For one thing, it negates the idea that all feminists are the same and that there is one overarching form of feminism that is better and more effective than any other. Instead, it embraces different forms of feminism. Not everybody is going to be an activist, and that’s okay. In fact, Gay’s favorite definition of feminism puts it simply: “Feminists are just women who don’t want to be treated like shit.”
This public also raises questions about the concept of a shared experience and community. Many women did not self-identify as “bad feminists” until after Gay’s collection of essays was published; in some ways, she paved the way for a subsect of feminism that once existed quietly (in the minds of women who feared being shamed for rejecting feminist ideologies) but all of a sudden had a loud voice. It’s historically been very easy to integrate with a radicalized group, assuming you share the same ideals and values; an “I think these things, so I identify as this” mentality. Bad feminism rejects these harsh, definitive labels and nurtures a new, more imperfect form of feminism that the world still really needs.
What is bad feminism’s counterpublic? Considering the entire premise of bad feminism consists of deviating from the public historical memory of what a feminist is, I would argue that this public’s counterpublic is Good Feminism. Let me explain: clearly, no type of feminism is better than another, and when we use the expression “bad feminist” we’re borrowing Gay’s usage of the term. So then what makes a good feminist a Good Feminist? Good Feminists typically fit the topoi of the feminist movement; like their aforementioned sibling, the Professional Feminist, they are highly active in the feminist community and typically spread their activism via social media and other public platforms. Good Feminists also believe that it’s their way or the highway. If you do not agree with their decisions and stances about what constitutes misogyny and patriarchy, it is very easy to be excluded from this group and dismissed as ‘complicit.’ In general, Good Feminists lean radical more often not than.
Good Feminists are also not necessarily supportive of their bad feminist counterparts. In an article for the New Yorker titled, “The Case Against Contemporary Feminism,” Jia Tolentino explains that “the decline of feminism is visible in how easy the label is to claim.” Indeed, feminism has become somewhat of a marketing tool for individuals with personal brands and/or businesses, who claim to be promoting a feminist platform in exchange for the accolades that come with it. Take, for example, Sophia Amoruso. Amoruso started the online fashion retailer Nasty Gal in 2006, at just 22 years old. She went on to write a memoir/self-help book titled “#Girlboss” and started a foundation with the mission of providing grant funding to up-and-coming female entrepreneurs. Yet in 2015, Nasty Gal was sued for firing four pregnant women on the basis of their pregnancy, and the company eventually went bankrupt. Clearly Amoruso embraces the feminist label, but her actions don’t point towards her truly understanding and aiding the movement.
So now we have three types of feminists: we have bad feminists, like myself and Gay and most of the women in the world. We have Bad Feminists — women like Amoruso, who want to capitalize on seeming “woke” about gender politics without actually supporting other women. And then we have Good Feminists (Professional Feminists fit into this category): women who use their knowledge of the movement to feel morally superior over those who do not know or are not doing as much as they are.
I believe that identifying these three categories of feminism is an important distinction when considering the social power the movement carries as a whole. There are women out there who still disavow feminism because of the numerous negative connotations that a specific sect of the movement has created; that’s why this dialogue is so important. Prior to reading Bad Feminist, I had no idea how much I truly cared about the feminist movement because I felt so excluded from it. I’m sure other women feel the same way, and if having an open and frank conversation about what contemporary feminism looks like can help these women to identify with tenets of feminism they never have before, that’s reason enough to explore this topic — at least to me.
