The Evolution of a Bad Feminist with Roxanne Gay

Roxane Gay makes her readers laugh just before she makes them flinch. Her humor sneaks up right before commentary on hard truths — about gender, race and the contradictions of being human — that leave audiences thinking long after their laughter fades. 

At the Chicago Humanities Festival, where she spoke on an Oct. 18 panel celebrating the 11th anniversary of her 2014 book, “Bad Feminist,” Gay reminded audiences that comedy, media and critique aren’t contradictory. They’re survival tools in activism.

“I wanted it to feel like a time capsule to look at how bad things were and how much progress we’ve made,” Gay said. 

“Bad Feminist” is a love letter to the messy, sometimes contradictory act of consuming long-form media — film, essays, books and TV shows that both shape and reflect who we are. 

Throughout her collection of essays, Gay writes as someone who understands what it means to love culture and be frustrated by it, to watch reality television and see the spectacle for what it is — politically and culturally meaningful. 

At its core, “Bad Feminist” lies in the contradictions inherent to political activism and humanity. 

When reflecting on what she might now change in her essays, Gay mentioned being approached by people who mistakenly believe feminism excuses them from accountability for their actions.

“We do need to have more space within feminism to recognize that we’re all different, we’re human and we’re flawed or inconsistent,” Gay said. “I should have added the accountability piece. Yes we’re bad, but what do we do to get better?”

Gay also reflected on how the phrase “bad feminist” took on a life of its own, being easily misunderstood in the time since its first publication. 

“One of the biggest misperceptions people took from the book was that it was a carte blanche to do whatever you want,” she said. “Especially early on, white women would say, ‘I’m a Republican and pro-life, but I’m a bad feminist.’ And I was like, ‘Girl, you’re not a feminist. You’re just bad.’”

That tension between contradiction and accountability is at the heart of “Bad Feminist,” where Gay writes as someone who both critiques and delights in popular culture.

For example, the author admits to loving the young adult novel series “Sweet Valley High” and reality TV  competitions while wanting to dismantle the gendered and racial performances they enforce.

In her essay “Not Here to Make Friends,” Gay interrogates how women on reality shows, in literature and in the public sphere are punished for unlikability, examining the line between entertainment and social cruelty. 

“I was being honest, and I was being human,” Gay wrote. “It is either a blessing or a curse that those are rarely likable qualities in a woman.”

Later, in “The Careless Language of Sexual Violence” Gay reflects on how the words we use to describe harm, pleasure and women work to perpetuate harmful ideas society refuses to confront. 

Gay cited episodes of the popular “Beverly Hills 90210,” “Private Practice,” “General Hospital” and “Law and Order: SVU” that all use rape as drivers of plot. 

“Language in this instance, and far more often than makes sense, is used to buffer our sensibilities from the brutality of rape, from the extraordinary nature of such a crime,” Gay wrote. 

However, “Bad Feminist”  — like all works of cultural criticism — leaves gaps. 

In “A Tale of Three Coming Out Stories,” Gay calls out the artist Tyler, the Creator, due to his use of the homophobic rhetoric and slurs in his music.

“When we support musicians like Tyler, the Creator, we are falling short,” Gay wrote. “We are failing our communities.”

Her subsequent denouncement of slur reclamation raises a tension within activism itself — the difficulty of calling out harm without policing the expression of identity. 

The collection builds towards its core tension explored in the final essay, “Bad Feminist: Take Two,” in which Gay attempts to define and resist the label of “bad feminist.”

In the closing essay, “Bad Feminist: Take Two” Gay writes about how she likes pink, doesn’t understand cars and shaves her legs. 

When Gay writes about liking pink, not understanding cars or shaving her legs, she exposes the tension between femininity and society’s perception of feminism — the sense that to embrace one is to betray the other. 

Gay’s work dwells in the space between consumption and critique. She reminds us that watching, reading and listening to media are not passive acts but essential ways to engage in culture. 

To love culture as Gay does is to approach it with honesty — to recognize that while the media can signal progress, it can just as easily reflect society’s shortcomings. 

Such awareness does not diminish joy; it sharpens it, allowing audiences to hold admiration and accountability simultaneously. 

“This is fiction,” Gay wrote, “and if people cannot be flawed in fiction there’s no place left for us to be human.”