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79e1a49
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If rape culture had a downtown, it would smell like Axe body spray and that perfume they put on tampons to make your vagina smell like laundry detergent.
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Roxane Gay |
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8c99ba5
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Oprah goes on to talk about how weight problems are never just weight problems, that there is often more to the story. This is often indeed true, but self-actualization, the catharsis of confronting demons is not what Oprah is truly selling. Instead, she is telling us that our ultimate goal is this better (th)inner woman we're supposed to diet toward. We will have our better body, and her empire will continue to grow.
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Roxane Gay |
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fabee85
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Or they say, "I know you don't like hugs, but I'm going to hug you anyway," and I have to dodge their incoming bodies as politely as I can. Why do we view the boundaries people create for themselves as challenges? Why do we see someone setting a limit and then try to push?"
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Roxane Gay |
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5031342
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I've been thinking about how so much testimony is demanded of women, and still, there are those who doubt our stories. There
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Roxane Gay |
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12e2bae
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We were three hours from Chicago, so my blackness was less of a curiosity, more of a threat. And there were the black students on campus, the nerve of them, daring to pursue higher education. In the local newspaper, residents wrote angry letters about a new criminal element--the scourge of youthful black ambition, black joy. In my more generous moments, I tried to believe the locals were using anger to mask their fear of living in a dying t..
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eiu
midwest-college-town
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Roxane Gay |
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b03a7b2
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Smoking felt good and always gave me a light buzz. Smoking also made me feel cool when I knew I was very, very uncool.
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Roxane Gay |
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f1e7ae1
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All too often, when we see injustices, both great and small, we think, That's terrible, but we do nothing. We say nothing. We let other people fight their own battles. We remain silent because silence is easier. Qui
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Roxane Gay |
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3b707a4
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I lost my voice, but I had words.
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words
writer
writing
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Roxane Gay |
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659f7e2
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Anger is always reserved for someone else. And yet, I've been in a room who escaped a war, who lost her father in ethnic cleansing, whose mother burned her hair, whose cousin raped her. 'What right do I have to be angry, when I am alive?' she said. Anger is the privilege of the truly broken, and yet, I've never met a woman who was broken enough that she allowed herself to be angry. An angry woman must answer for herself. The reasons for her..
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feminism
rape-culture
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Roxane Gay |
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eaa3fac
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It makes perfect sense that many of us obsess over our bodies. There is nothing more inescapable. Our bodies moves us through our lives. They bring pleasure and pain. Sometimes our bodies serve us well, and other times our bodies become terribly inconvenient. There are times when our bodies betray us or our bodies are betrayed by others. I think about my body all the time--how it looks, how it feels, how I can make it smaller, what I should..
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Roxane Gay |
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1fbaf65
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nostalgia is powerful and that power builds with time; it often reshapes our memories.
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Roxane Gay |
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6187687
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Deal with your resentment. Deal with your biases. Vigorously resist the urge to dismiss the gender problem. Make the effort and make the effort and make the effort until you no longer need to, until we don't need to keep having this conversation. Change
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Roxane Gay |
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836de8d
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It is far more important to discuss power than to exhaustively regurgitate the harmful cultural effects of power structures where women are consistently marginalized. We already know the effects. We live them and try to overcome them.
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Roxane Gay |
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251c0b5
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Celebrities understand the economy of thinness, and most of them are willing to participate in that economy, taking to social media, where they pose for selfies with their cheeks sucked in to make themselves appear even gaunter. The less space they take up, the more they matter.
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Roxane Gay |
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cca3d23
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The problem with movements is that, all too often, they are associated only with the most visible figures, the people with the biggest platforms and the loudest, most provocative voices. But feminism is not whatever philosophy is being spouted by the popular media feminist flavor of the week, at least not entirely.
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Roxane Gay |
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5f3a3a1
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Living in my body has expanded my empathy for other people and the truths of their bodies.
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Roxane Gay |
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7da9a85
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I am a real survivor because I survived, even if some days it feels like I didn't survive at all.
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zoe-medeiros
survivor
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Roxane Gay |
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552e138
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These are gifted adolescent women who don't get to be judged on their impressive talent: their bodies are already paramount to the work they want to do and it's only going to get worse. At sixteen these students are being judged on their sexual attractiveness. Their talent is a gift, but it is not enough.
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Roxane Gay |
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05d7a61
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Cooking reminds me that I am capable of taking care of myself and worthy of taking care of and nourishing myself.
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Roxane Gay |
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a37d2f0
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I love being with someone who is endlessly interesting because we are so different. Wanting to belong to people or a person is not about finding a mirror image of myself.
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Roxane Gay |
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30494e3
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I knew how to make sense of complicated things, as long as they had nothing to do with me.
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Roxane Gay |
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a12067e
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Everything was out of my control and I love control, so all my trigger points were being pressed at the exact same time.
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Roxane Gay |
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480bf1a
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Buying into the notion of not that bad made me incredibly hard on myself for not "getting over it" fast enough as the years passed and I was still carrying so much hurt, so many memories. Buying into this notion made me numb to bad experiences that weren't as bad as the worst stories I heard. For years, I fostered wildly unrealistic expectations of the kinds of experiences worthy of suffering until very little was worthy of suffering. The s..
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Roxane Gay |
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7ba11a4
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On bad days, though, I forget how to separate my personality, the heart of who I am, from my body. I forget how to shield myself from the cruelties of the world.
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Roxane Gay |
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ccabae9
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What may be most terrifying is just how real reality television is, after all. We say we watch these shows to feel better about ourselves, to have that reassurance that we are not that desperate. We are not that green. But perhaps we watch these shows because in the green girls interrupted, we see more than anything, the plainest selections of ourselves, garishly exposed but unfettered.
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reality
green-girl
self-reflection
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Roxane Gay |
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11e8c44
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These kids didn't know how to read so I got them dictionaries, and because they were too shy to discuss literacy in meetings, they would catch me walking across campus or in my office and whisper, "I need help reading." It had never crossed my mind before that it was possible for a child to be educated in this country and make it to college unable to read at a college level. Shame on me, certainly, for being so ignorant about the galling di..
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Roxane Gay |
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e51bc87
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I wanted a relationship where I could be independent but loved and looked after at the same time.
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Roxane Gay |
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05e68ce
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words in the Oxford English Dictionary? antidisestablishmentarianism--in short, conservatism; getting in the way of change. floccinaucinihilipilification--the action or habit of estimating something as worthless. MY FATHER'S FAVORITE COMEBACK IN AN ARGUMENT: "DON'T be facetious." Nothing I said had meaning. It was always simplistic, flippant, juvenile, unsubstantiable, silly, girlish. The synonyms pile up, evacuating whatever claim I'd made..
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Roxane Gay |
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4ee29f3
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Assuming Sandberg's advice is completely useless for working-class women is just as shortsighted as claiming her advice needs to be completely applicable to all women. And let's be frank: if Sandberg chose to offer career advice for working-class women, a group she clearly knows little about, she would have been just as harshly criticized for overstepping her bounds.
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sheryl-sandberg
diversity
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Roxane Gay |
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c29e25f
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Audre Lorde once stated, "I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womanness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable." As a woman of color, I find that some feminists don't seem terribly concerned with the issues unique to women of color--the ongoing effects of racism and postcolonialism, the status of women in the Thi..
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Roxane Gay |
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526a4fc
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Mine is not a success story. Mine is, simply, a true story.
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Roxane Gay |
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bd0b585
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There would be no evidence collected, no trial, no justice and without justice, there was no crime.
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Roxane Gay |
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bb6bc6b
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He wanted away from Mireille's parents, all these people who said one thing and meant another. "You"
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Roxane Gay |
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c0020ca
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Perhaps, then, unlikable characters, the ones who are the most human, are also the ones who are the most alive.
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Roxane Gay |
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966499e
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Rape humor is designed to remind women that they are still not quite equal.
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Roxane Gay |
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fe2fd4c
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Like most people, I'm full of contradictions, but I also don't want to be treated like shit for being a woman.
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Roxane Gay |
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bda474d
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That's a powerful thing, knowing you can reveal yourself to someone. It made me want to be a better person.
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Roxane Gay |
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abfcd0f
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Narratives about certain experiences are somehow legitimized when mediated through a man's perspective.
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Roxane Gay |
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ae875af
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though I didn't believe everything I learned, it was important to know such ideas, such truths, were out there.
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Roxane Gay |
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b9154f8
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Writing bridges many differences. Kindness bridges many differences too, and so does a love of One Tree Hill or Lost or beautiful books or terrible movies.
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Roxane Gay |
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a317cce
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Anytime I remember how I once disavowed feminism, I am ashamed of my ignorance.
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Roxane Gay |
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be80afc
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When you succeed early at an endeavor, you convince yourself you will easily replicate that success.
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Roxane Gay |
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ef336d2
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Messud, for her part, had a sharp response for her interviewer. For heaven's sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis?..
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Roxane Gay |
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9fa206d
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I'd rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all
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Roxane Gay |