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16a17ab
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We hold all people to unspoken rules about who and how they should be, how they should think, and what the should say. We say we hate stereotypes but take issue when people deviate from those stereotypes.
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stereotypes
prejudice
people
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Roxane Gay |
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00607f7
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We all have the capacity to do hurtful things, but we differ from one another in terms of scale-how much we can hurt others, how far we will go to make a statement about our beliefs, how remorseful we might feel in the aftermath of committing a terrible act.
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people
limits
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Roxane Gay |
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2efee7e
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This tension-the idea that there is a right way to be a woman, a right way to be the most essential woman- is ongoing and pervasive.
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women
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Roxane Gay |
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5bca033
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When I was completely worn-out, I sank to the floor. The heat overwhelmed me. Already, my clothes clung to my body. I could smell myself. The edges of my face were damp with sweat. Heat
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Roxane Gay |
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ef64af5
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This is the uncomfortable truth: everything is a trigger for someone.
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Roxane Gay |
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c51270c
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Western opinions on the hijab or burkas are rather irrelevant. We don't get to decide for Muslim women what does or does not oppress them, no matter how highly we think of ourselves. In
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Roxane Gay |
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507350f
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Few things work in practice as well as they do in theory. Justice is anything but blind. All too often, the people who most need justice benefit the least. The statistics about who is incarcerated and how incarceration affects their future prospects are bleak.
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Roxane Gay |
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b0e3077
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We should be able to say, "This is my truth," and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist. Because at some point, doesn't privilege become beside the point? Privilege"
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Roxane Gay |
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c9f230c
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my hands, my fingers quickly slicking with
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Roxane Gay |
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69013d5
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I don't believe in safety. I wish I did. I am not brave. I simply know what to be scared of; I know to be scared of everything. There is freedom in that fear. That freedom makes it easier to appear fearless--to say and do what I want.
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Roxane Gay |
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3cac4ae
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When people wield the word "privilege," it tends to fall on deaf ears because we hear that word so damn much it has become white noise. One"
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Roxane Gay |
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d7b2899
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All to often, suffering exists in a realm beyond vocabulary so we navigate that realm awkwardly, fumbling for the right words, hoping we can somehow approximate an understanding of matters that should never have to be understood by anyone in any place in the world.
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Roxane Gay |
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9e8f6f9
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Luck and loneliness, it would seem, are very compatible.
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Roxane Gay |
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d557daf
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Abandon the cultural myth that all female friendships must be bitchy, toxic, or competitive. This myth is like heels and purses--pretty but designed to SLOW women down.
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Roxane Gay |
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8e93ac1
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Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds.
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Roxane Gay |
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4d70eb3
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do not understand the unspoken rules of trigger warnings. I cannot write the way I want to write and consider using trigger warnings. I would second-guess myself, temper the intensity of what I have to say. I don't want to do that. I don't intend to ever do that.
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Roxane Gay |
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1d71210
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Essential feminism suggests anger, humorlessness, militancy, unwavering principles, and a prescribed set of rules for how to be a proper feminist woman, or at least a proper white, heterosexual feminist woman--hate pornography, unilaterally decry the objectification of women, don't cater to the male gaze, hate men, hate sex, focus on career, don't shave. I kid, mostly, with that last one. This is nowhere near an accurate description of femi..
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Roxane Gay |
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bdf27e1
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I do not understand the unspoken rules of trigger warnings. I cannot write the way I want to write and consider using trigger warnings. I would second-guess myself, temper the intensity of what I have to say. I don't want to do that. I don't intend to ever do that.
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Roxane Gay |
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23f5087
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Nemeses aren't born. They are made.
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Roxane Gay |
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801d0be
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Their suggestions are, on one level, reasonable, mostly grounded in common sense, but these leaders traffic in respectability politics--the idea that if black (or other marginalized) people simply behave in "culturally approved" ways, if we mimic the dominant culture, it will be more difficult to suffer the effects of racism. Respectability politics completely overlook institutional racism and the ways in which the education system, the soc..
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Roxane Gay |
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499d06f
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There are many ways we have surrendered privacy in the information age. We willingly disclose what we've eaten for breakfast, where we spent last night and with whom, and all manner of trivial information. We submit personal information when registering for social media accounts and when making purchases online. We often surrender this information without question or reflection. These disclosures come so freely because we've long been condi..
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Roxane Gay |
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2002640
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In July 2013, while in Zurich to attend Tina Turner's wedding, Winfrey was informed by a store clerk at the Trois Pommes boutique that the purse she was interested in was too expensive for her. We don't need to cry for Oprah, prevented from buying an obscenely overpriced purse, but we can recognize the incident as one more reminder that racism is so pervasive and pernicious that we will never be respectable enough to outrun racism, not here..
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Roxane Gay |
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1d235e5
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As he so often does, Tyler Perry wants to have it every which way but right, and a high cost is being exacted so this man can get exactly what he wants.
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Roxane Gay |
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76a29a6
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I am a bad feminist because I never want to be placed on a Feminist Pedestal. People who are placed on pedestals are expected to pose, perfectly. Then they get knocked off when they fuck it up. I regularly fuck it up. Consider me already knocked off. When
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Roxane Gay |
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e3e6ad0
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How helpless are willing to be for the greater good? That question interests me most.
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Roxane Gay |
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1f77361
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We are having an ongoing and critical conversation about race in America. The question on many minds, the question that is certainly on my mind, is how do we prevent racial injustices from happening? How do we protect young black children? How do we overcome so many of the institutional barriers that exacerbate racism and poverty? It's a nice idea that we could simply follow a prescribed set of rules and make the world a better place for al..
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Roxane Gay |
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524782c
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we don't carefully talk about rape. We live in a strange and terrible time for women. There are days when I think it has always been a strange and terrible time to be a woman.
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Roxane Gay |
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7ebb05c
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Gender Trouble, Judith Butler asserts that gender is a performance, an unstable identity that forms through how it is performed over and over. She writes, Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts. The effect of gender is produced through the styliza..
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Roxane Gay |
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dff2801
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When we were together, he'd tell me what he wanted to do to me. He wasn't asking permission. I was not an unwilling participant. I was not a willing participant. I felt nothing one way or the other. I wanted him to love me. I wanted to make him happy.... The more I gave, the more he took. At school, he continued to look right through me. I was dying but I was happy.
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Roxane Gay |
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36df910
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The way we talk about gender makes it easy to forget Mars and Venus are part of the same solar system, divided by only one planet, held in the thrall of the same sun.
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Roxane Gay |
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49bfcd3
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I try to keep my feminism simple. I know feminism is complex and evolving and flawed. I know feminism will not and cannot fix everything. I believe in equal opportunities for women and men. I believe in women having reproductive freedom and affordable and unfettered access to the health care they need. I believe women should be paid as much as men for doing the same work. Feminism is a choice, and if a woman does not want to be a feminist, ..
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Roxane Gay |
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d7a111a
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This is no way to live but this is how I live.
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Roxane Gay |
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74f8888
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Privilege is a right or immunity granted as a peculiar benefit, advantage, or favor. There is racial privilege, gender (and identity) privilege, heterosexual privilege, economic privilege, able-bodied privilege, educational privilege, religious privilege, and the list goes on and on. At some point, you have to surrender to the kinds of privilege you hold. Nearly everyone, particularly in the developed world, has something someone else doesn..
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Roxane Gay |
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8430feb
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Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds.
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Roxane Gay |
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df5ef95
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Too many women are afraid to be labeled feminists, afraid to stand up and say, "Yes, I am a feminist," for fear of what that label means, for fear of how to live up to it, for fear of feminism as something essential, for fear of the punishments--both obvious and indirect--that come with openly owning feminism or doing feminism wrong."
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Roxane Gay |
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80b97ba
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When it comes to fat, there has to be a reason. We need to be able to trace the genealogy of obesity. Without that genealogy, we are simply mystified. People need an explanation for how a person can lose such control over her body. They want to know if you come from a fat family or if you have some kind of medical condition or if you are simply weak and really love food that much.
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obesity
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Roxane Gay |
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fce6ff2
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There are many instances in which an unlikable man is billed as an antihero, earning a special term to explain those ways in which he deviates from the norm, the traditionally likable.
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Roxane Gay |
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f38941c
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The world changes faster than we can fathom in ways that are complicated. These bewildering changes often leave us raw. The cultural climate is shifting, particularly for women as we contend with the retrenchment of reproductive freedom, the persistence of rape culture, and the flawed if not damaging representations of women we're consuming in music, movies, and literature.
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Roxane Gay |
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2ff9f28
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Damn The Man.
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Roxane Gay |
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ed7593b
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We are having inexplicable conversations about birth control, conversations where women must justify why they are taking birth control, conversations where a congressional hearing on birth control includes no women because the men in power are well aware that women don't need to be included in the conversation. We don't have inalienable rights the way men do.
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Roxane Gay |
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b4350bd
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When people wield the word "privilege," it tends to fall on deaf ears because we hear that word so damn much it has become white noise."
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Roxane Gay |
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1b916f9
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Ten minutes before my first class, I run to the bathroom and vomit. I'm afraid of public speaking, which makes teaching complicated.
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Roxane Gay |
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07b350e
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We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we'll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say, "This is my truth," and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist. Because at some point, doesn't privilege become beside the point?"
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Roxane Gay |
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252ebee
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No matter what issues I have with feminism, I am a feminist. I cannot and will not deny the importance and absolute necessity of feminism. Like most people, I am full of contradictions, but I also don't want to be treated like shit for being a woman. I am a bad feminist. I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.
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Roxane Gay |