Reviews with content warning for Bullying - Bad Feminist

Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

12 reviews

vaykay's review against another edition

reflective medium-paced

3.5

I struggle sometimes to review older material such as Bad Feminist (10 years later) because oftentimes it loses relevancy. Many essays in this book have lost all relevancy or are on popular cultural artifacts that have been discussed to shit by now (i.e. The Help and Orange is the New Black). It isn't a crime to be dated or to discuss the then-and-now with no concern for how relevant it will be 10 years from now, but I want to warn other readers that much of it is outdated. Many essays were good and interesting; some essays were extremely hypocritical and irritating due to what felt like an elementary level of self-reflection and understanding as well as comfortability with her voice as an essay writer. Gay's implications that reveling in more traditionally feminine things like pink, materialism, weddings, and — I guess — sucking dick means you're not a feminist (or at least not a good one) was weird. That implication was probably the least feminist thing about Bad Feminist because in her moment of self-doubt and projection, she tore down other women. It felt weird and uncomfortable... and not the sort of discomfort that is well-meaning in its ability to challenge you. Unfortunately, the first and last essays are the worst ones in the text, which seems like an interesting choice to hook readers and leave them fulfilled by the ending.

That said, I want to read more of Gay's more recent work to see how her voice and ideas have grown and changed in the last 10 years.

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smkoontz's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

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dreareads_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

3.25

Reading this book made me feel like a Bad Feminist because I did not love it...

I will begin by saying that there are plenty of essays to love, and Roxane Gay is at times a very engaging author. Her writing is at its best when she is clearly passionate about the topic and unrestrained in her opinions.

That being said, I feel like this book is a clear product of its time. The discussions on feminisn, gender, and representation in media were examples of the liberal feminism that was rampant in the early 2010's. This is not necessarily a bad thing (the essays were written at that time) but it does make it more difficult to fully engage with it in 2024. I also had my own frustration with her takes on academia, because while I agree with majority of her criticisms, as a woman of color in Academia myself I found that some of her stances perpetuated a kind of toxic expectation on students of colors that is prevalent amongst academic of colors from older generations. I was also left wishing for a more in depth exploration on the significant role of class and wealth and discussions of representation.

I still believe this is a book worth while reading. Especially because despite of it being a product of the 2012's a lot of the discussions on misogyny are still unfortunately too relevant today. I look forward to reading more of her contemporary work and seeing how (and if) her perspective has evolved in the years since the release of Bad Feminist.

(Idk how relevant this is, but I listened to the audio book and I was disappointed that it was not narrated by her. It created a sense of disconnection between the written essays and the audience that I hadn't experienced before)

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snowiceblackfruit77's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

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florizona's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

2.25

This wasn’t really what I expected- rather than a collection of serious essays, it’s more like a series of hastily written, personal POV-driven op-ed columns. Nothing particularly well-considered, heavy-hitting or profound. Just not into it at all, despite enjoying some other writing by the author.

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maggieparedesauthor's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.0

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lady_moon's review against another edition

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1.5

Some version of the dream of this book still lives in the back of my head and maybe one day I'll find the excellent collection of essays that this book absolutely was not.

Bad Feminist had a good start. I had fun listening in the beginning, I enjoyed her talking about her time as an advisor, about privilege and her time as professor. There was an essay about scrabble...? That was boring and pretty pointless. Then there was an essay about how to have women friends, which was... a list with just common sense and stupid points. But I tell myself, okay I can ignore that.

But there were also essays that talked about random pieces of media? Some shows and books, some critique, like... I don't know any of this media, except The Hunger Games, so I wasn't really invested in all this. I wasn't fan of the The Hunger Games essay though. I just didn't care to be honest? It didn't add anything to the conversation. If this was a memoir or something, fine, but it isn't - this is book with essays named Bad Feminist. Such essays were just a little out of place. And I personally was annoyed at the unnecessary amatonormativity that was present.

Now, I could have ignored all of this. I really could have. But then the trigger warning discussion came. And it pissed me off. For the most part there was nuance and dissection, about censorship and what can be a trigger. But then she basically said she can't understand how some people live in the illusion of safety and that trigger warning won't protect them from what already is inside them. I'm sorry but what the fuck?? Does she know think "warning" means? It's not there to protect you or to prevent you from consuming this media (as she also thinks) but to warn you what you're going to consume so you can take care of yourself if needed. What was this bullshit, honestly? This is the first time I really felt there's something not quite right with this book.
(Not to mention before that there's a heavy discussion of rape and her own rape and right after that to have is an essay about trigger warning... I mean, that's petty.)

Then there's one waaayyy too long essay that criticize Fifty Shades of Grey. Woman, what the hell 😭 We all know this book is shit, there really wasn't need of such deep critique of it (half of which is a rant, honestly). I was really tempted to DNF at that point.

Other thing that baffled me: The hunting of witches is, apperantly, because rulers wanted to prevent abortions?? 😭 What is this woman talking about, I- Tell me you don't know anything outside of USA history without telling you don't know anything outside of USA.
The hunting of witches isn't some trick the government to take down people who know the medicine for abortion (maybe that was someone's idea, I don't know). Hunting witches was rooted in superstition, xenophobia, bigotry and most of all - misogyny. Don't make it related to something irrelevant just so it can appeal to American issue.

After that it was a series of discussion of different movies with Black representations. I knew exactly two of this movies/Tv series, one of which I haven't watched. This was curious for me, as a white person who doesn't watch a lot of these genres, let alone critique of it.

Overall, there just... wasn't anything new? Anything even remotely deeper to add to the discussion regarding feminism. Not even to the conversation about race to be honest? There wasn't anything new, anything interesting, not even in the way it was presented to us. I do enjoyed some things in the beginning but then it quickly became painfully average. Kudos for the advertisement lol, I was really convinced I'm picking up an amazing book.

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d0505's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

3.5

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brookey8888's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

3.5

I did really enjoy a lot of these essays and what they were about. That being said I do feel like a few had nothing to do with feminism so that was whatever. Also there was a few things I didn’t agree with. One of them being if you go out with friends you should split the bill evenly even if one of your friends doesn’t have the same amount of income. I don’t agree with that if I know my friend doesn’t have the same amount of money as me I’ll either pay for her or we can pay for what we ordered. Also she was like oh I’m not as much as a feminist because I like want kids like that’s not what feminism is and she kind of went into that but it gave me the wrong vibes. But I do think a lot of this was very good and very intellectual and if you want to know about some of these ideas. This is good for starting out. It was mostly just her opinion about things and just certain things at that, very broad.

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emmagreenwood's review against another edition

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5.0

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