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7583fc0
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When I drive to work, I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume even though the lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core. The classic Ying Yang Twins song 'Salt Shaker'? It's amazing.
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women
salt-shaker
rap
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Roxane Gay |
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26f545c
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Sorrow allows us a freedom that happiness does not.
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Roxane Gay |
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e936ed0
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Some experiences are universal. A girl is a girl whether she lives in West Omaha or Sweet Valley. Books are often far more than books.
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humanity
meaning-of-books
universal-experiences
universal-human-condition
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Roxane Gay |
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cb0611c
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One of my biggest weaknesses, one that has always shamed me, is that I have always been lonely. I've struggled to make friends because I can be socially awkward, because I'm weird, because I live in my head. When I was young, we moved around a lot, so there was rarely any time to get to know a new place, let alone new people. Loneliness was the one familiar thing, making me this bottomless pit of need, open and gaping and desperate for anyt..
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Roxane Gay |
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f595bd5
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College and kindergarten aren't as different as you'd think.
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Roxane Gay |
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01542ed
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Perhaps, then, unlikable characters, the ones who are the most human, are also the ones who are the most alive. Perhaps this intimacy makes us uncomfortable because we don't dare be so alive.
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Roxane Gay |
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712ab3e
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When I drive to work, I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume even though the lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core.
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Roxane Gay |
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4dceb1d
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I have my own printer. The luxury of this cannot be overstated. I randomly print out a document; I sigh happily as the printer spits it out, warm.
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Roxane Gay |
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dfa502d
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Rather than solve the real problems the United States is facing, some politicians, mostly conservative, have decided to try to solve the "female problem" by creating a smoke screen, reintroducing abortion and, more inexplicably, birth control into a national debate. Women have been forced underground for contraception and pregnancy termination before, and we will go underground again if we have to. We will risk our lives if these politician..
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Roxane Gay |
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4a7b602
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There was an incident with some boys in the woods, and suddenly, I was stuffing my face with Twinkies or ordering a pizza late at night, trying to fill this ragged, ugly thing inside me that couldn't be filled or quieted. I ignored my parents and their worry entirely. All I wanted to do was eat. My body grew, became more significant, more noticeable and more invisible at the same time. Most important, though, the bigger I made my body, the ..
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Roxane Gay |
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da209ed
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My favorite definition of "feminist" is one offered by Su, an Australian woman who, when interviewed for Kathy Bail's 1996 anthology DIY Feminism, said feminists are "just women who don't want to be treated like shit." This definition is pointed and succinct, but I run into trouble when I try to expand that definition."
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Roxane Gay |
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ec84374
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The unspeakable will be televised.
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Roxane Gay |
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c754059
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Racial profiling is nothing more than a delusion born of our belief that we can profile danger. We want to believe we can predict who will do the next terrible thing. We want to believe we can keep ourselves safe.
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Roxane Gay |
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f925883
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This is fiction, and if people cannot be flawed in fiction there's no place left for us to be human.
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Roxane Gay |
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a362f5c
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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, ablebodied 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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5723831
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I wondered why she thought she could reveal that casual racism in mixed company. I wondered, as I often do about people, what she truly thinks about me.
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Roxane Gay |
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5e245b1
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It's good that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is on the cover of Rolling Stone, tousled hair and all. We need a reminder that we must stop projecting our fears onto profiles built from stereotypes. We need a reminder that we will never truly know whom we need to fear.
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Roxane Gay |
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6dab909
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am not easy to love but I am well loved. I try to love well in return.
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Roxane Gay |
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6785909
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Sorrow allows us a freedom happiness does not.
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Roxane Gay |
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a9b9da8
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I am a bad feminist. I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.
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Roxane Gay |
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67f32e8
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am being open about who I am and who I was and where I have faltered and who I would like to become.
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Roxane Gay |
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dcb8915
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We've seen what the hoarding of privilege has done, and the results are shameful.
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Roxane Gay |
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38dc839
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It's hard not to feel humorless, as a woman and a feminist, to recognize misogyny in so many forms, some great and some small, and know you're not imagining things. It's hard to be told to lighten up because if you lighten up any more, you're going to float the fuck away.
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Roxane Gay |
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f64c463
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I excused myself and ran to the restroom, where in the privacy of my stall, I whispered, "I beat you, I beat you, I beat you." There was fist pumping."
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Roxane Gay |
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779f062
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We put a lot of responsibility on popular culture, particularly when some pop artifact somehow distinguishes itself as not terrible.
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popular-culture
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Roxane Gay |
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4465445
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The [Sweet Valley High] books were the most familiar and resonant expressions of our angst and our fondest wishes for ourselves, the girls we wanted to become.
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Roxane Gay |
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c407c5a
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This is where we should start focusing this conversation: how men (as readers, critics, and editors) can start to bear the responsibility for becoming better, broader readers.
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men
feminism
reading
readers
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Roxane Gay |
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b358c16
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There is no collective slavery revenge fantasy among black people, but I am certain, if there were one, it would not be about white people, not at all.
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racism
slavery
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Roxane Gay |
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a167485
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I knew I was in love with The Hunger Games when I did not want to get off the treadmill
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Roxane Gay |
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e810e77
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if you cannot recognize your privilege, you have a lot of work to do
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Roxane Gay |
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c89a8de
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I think, One of these things is not like the other, and it is a haunting, lonely feeling, thinking you don't belong with the very people who know you in the truest, deepest ways.
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Roxane Gay |
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7d89460
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Maybe I'm a bad feminist, but I am deeply committed to the issues important to the feminist movement. I have strong opinions about misogyny, institutional sexism that consistently places women at a disadvantage, the inequity in pay, the cult of beauty and thinness, the repeated attacks on reproductive freedom, violence against women, and on and on. I am as committed to fighting fiercely for equality as I am committed to disrupting the notio..
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Roxane Gay |
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ed5a72a
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I was a daydreamer and I resented being pulled out of my daydreams to deal with the business of living.
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Roxane Gay |
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3eada4e
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These pictures from the photo albums of my childhood are artifacts of a time when I was happy and whole. They are evidence that, once, I was pretty and sometimes sweet.
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Roxane Gay |
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e554398
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I have presence, I am told. I take up space. I intimidate. I do not want to take up space. I want to go unnoticed. I want to hide. I want to disappear until I gain control of my body.
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Roxane Gay |
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375558d
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A different day has come, though. I flinch less and less when I am touched. I don't always see gentleness as the calm before the storm because, more often than not, I can trust that no storm is coming. I harbor less hatred toward myself. I try to forgive myself for my trespasses. In my novel, An Untamed State, after Miri, my protagonist, has been through hell, she thinks about how sometimes broken things need to be broken further before the..
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Roxane Gay |
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8bc9d62
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To be fair, I hate the N-word and avoid using it because the N-word has always been a pejorative, a word designed to remind black people of their place, a word to reinforce a perception of inferiority.
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Roxane Gay |
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f91e813
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For years at a time, there was me, and the woman I saw myself as while living in my head, and the woman who had to carry around my overweight body. They were not the same person. They couldn't be, or I wouldn't have survived any of it.
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Roxane Gay |
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5a9f057
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Want nothing but the best for your friends because when your friends are happy and successful, it's probably going to be easier for you to be happy.
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Roxane Gay |
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73081b9
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There are times when I wish finding community was as simple as entering some personal information and letting an algorithm show me where I belong. And
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Roxane Gay |
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d21c4a0
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Each time my mother took me to the mall, I went straight to Waldenbooks
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Roxane Gay |
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3e2da25
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On my more difficult days, I'm not sure what's more of a pain in my ass--being black or being a woman. I'm happy to be both of these things, but the world keeps intervening. There are all kinds of infuriating reminders of my place in the world--random people questioning me in the parking lot at work as if it is unfathomable that I'm a faculty member, the persistence of lawmakers trying to legislate the female body, street harassment, strang..
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Roxane Gay |
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60ed8aa
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I very much like men. They're interesting to me, and I mostly wish they would be better about how they treat women so I wouldn't have to call them out so often.
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men
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Roxane Gay |
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662663c
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If you and your friend(s) are in the same field and you can collaborate or help each other, do this without shame. It's not your fault your friends are awesome. Men invented nepotism and practically live by it. It's okay for women to do it too.
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Roxane Gay |