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1cce135
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you are whom you surround yourself with.
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Roxane Gay |
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c661a35
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There is a happily-ever-after, but the price exacted is terribly high. It is frightening to consider how many women might be willing to pay that price.
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Roxane Gay |
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29c4124
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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 just books.
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Roxane Gay |
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63c9d92
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Women's fiction is often considered a more intimate brand of storytelling that doesn't tackle the big issues found in men's fiction.
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Roxane Gay |
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532a5c2
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Judith Butler asserts that gender is a performance, an unstable identity that forms through how it is performed over and over.
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Roxane Gay |
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486ee66
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The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. While
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Roxane Gay |
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6e2acaf
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women, knowingly or unknowingly, perform femininity and the ways in which women are sometimes trapped by how they are expected to perform their gender. In
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Roxane Gay |
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f3d68ce
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I've been forced to look at my guiltiest secrets. I've cut myself wide open. I am exposed. That is not comfortable. That is not easy.
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Roxane Gay |
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5f405a1
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To read narrowly and shallowly is to read from a place of ignorance, and women writers can't fix that ignorance no matter what kind of books we write or how those books are marketed. This
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Roxane Gay |
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74ec237
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You'd be amazed what people are willing to do when they are given permission, either implicitly or explicitly. Given
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Roxane Gay |
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Even from a young age I understood that when a girl is unlikable, a girl is a problem.
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Roxane Gay |
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bb42e1e
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but he had a full head of hair and she thought that meant something.
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Roxane Gay |
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a52640c
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feminism is flawed because it is a movement powered by people and people are inherently flawed. For whatever reason, we hold feminism to an unreasonable standard where the movement must be everything we want and must always make the best choices. When feminism falls short of our expectations, we decide the problem is with feminism rather than with the flawed people who act in the name of the movement.
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Roxane Gay |
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99ba60c
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When you can't find someone to follow, find a way to lead by example.
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feminism
inspirational
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Roxane Gay |
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594dd79
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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
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Roxane Gay |
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5f2dee5
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I disavowed feminism because I had no rational understanding of the movement. I was called a feminist, and what I heard was, ,,You are an angry, sex-hating, man-hating victim lady person." This caricature is how feminists have been warped by people who fear feminism most, the same people who have the most to lose when feminism succeeds."
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Roxane Gay |
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3c5a291
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Better is not good enough, and it's a shame that anyone would be willing to settle for so little.
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Roxane Gay |
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7fd5125
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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. I have no interest in using the word to describe myself or any person of color, under any circumstance. There is no reclamation to be had.
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race-and-racism-in-america
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Roxane Gay |
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dc9112c
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It is often women who pay the price for what men want.
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Roxane Gay |
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4d8a814
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They require a diagnosis for her unlikability in order to tolerate her. The simplest explanation, of Mavis as human, will not suffice.
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Roxane Gay |
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0a757e8
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Social media is a curious thing. On the one hand, it offers an endless parade of ephemera from the daily lives of friends, family, and strangers--discussions of a fondness for yogurt, a picture of a barista's decoration in latte foam, descriptions of excellent meals, pictures of pets and small children or maybe an abandoned easy chair on a crowded street corner. There's all manner of self-promotion and relentless affirmation. There are knee..
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Roxane Gay |
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dc4d1e7
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Rosin is not wrong that life has improved in measurable ways for women, but she is wrong in suggesting that better is good enough.
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Roxane Gay |
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cff86ef
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The thing is, I am not at all sure that feminism has ever suggested women can have it all. This notion of being able to have it all is always misattributed to feminism when really, it's human nature to want it all--to have cake and eat it too without necessarily focusing on how we can get there and how we can make "having it all" possible for a wider range of people and not just the lucky ones."
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Roxane Gay |
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0404e5f
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When you succeed early at an endeavor, you convince yourself you will easily replicate that success. Ask child actors.
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Roxane Gay |
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cf2e2d7
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The Help, I have decided, is science fiction, creating an alternate universe.
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Roxane Gay |
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9e9e693
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We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn't "Is this a potential friend for me?" but "Is this character alive?" Perhaps,"
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Roxane Gay |
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1cb1e19
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He should have been above reproach. As Syreeta McFadden noted, "Only in America can a dead black boy go on trial for his own murder."
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Roxane Gay |
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It is bittersweet that something is better than nothing, even if the something we have is hardly anything at all.
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Roxane Gay |
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4b57f74
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Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read.
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Roxane Gay |
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8f4369a
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There is a comfort, I suppose, to consuming violence contained in ninety-minute segments, muted by commercials for household goods and communicated to us by former television stars with feathered bangs.
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Roxane Gay |
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a44d388
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I'm only one feminist, but I'm confident we'd be just fine if all were right with the world.
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Roxane Gay |
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e1b61d4
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Marissa Mayer, who was appointed president and CEO of Yahoo! in July 2012, said in an interview, I don't think that I would consider myself a feminist. I think that I certainly believe in equal rights, I believe that women are just as capable, if not more so in a lot of different dimensions, but I don't, I think, have sort of the militant drive and the sort of, the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that. And I think it's too ba..
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Roxane Gay |
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eaa3af6
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Somehow, though, it is only books by women, or books about certain topics, that require this special "women's fiction" designation, particularly when those books have the audacity to explore, in some manner, the female experience, which, apparently, includes the topics of marriage, suburban existence, and parenthood, as if women act alone in these endeavors, wedding themselves, immaculately conceiving children, and the like. Women's fiction..
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Roxane Gay |
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1769d2a
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One of the hardest things I've ever had to do is accept and acknowledge my privilege. It's an ongoing project.
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Roxane Gay |
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17db2d9
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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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The flaw here is the same as the flaw in The End of Men--an all-or-nothing outlook, and an unwillingness to consider nuance.
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Roxane Gay |
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89f6a51
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Everyone means well, but there's a lot of bureaucracy. I prefer common sense.
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Roxane Gay |
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Like Ana's inner goddess, I was so ready for these books, and that's an uncomfortable realization, that I can take pleasure in something so terrible. Like most people, I am a mass of contradictions.
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Roxane Gay |
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0d20129
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Nostalgia is powerful. It is natural, human, to long for the past, particularly when we can remember our histories as better than they were. Life happens faster than I can comprehend.
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Roxane Gay |
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subsequently passed a bill requiring a regular ultrasound, in a bit of bait-and-switch
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Roxane Gay |
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How do we reconcile the imperfections of feminism with all the good it can do? In truth, feminism is flawed because it is a movement powered by people and people are inherently flawed. For wathever reason, we hold feminism to an unreasonable standard where the movement must be everything we want and must always make the best choices. When feminism falls short of our expectations, we decide the problem is with feminism rather than with the f..
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Roxane Gay |
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0827485
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11. If four people are dining, split the check evenly four ways. We are adults now. We don't need to add up what each person had anymore. If you're high rolling, just treat everyone and rotate who treats. If you're still in the broke stage, do what you have to do.
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Roxane Gay |
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f6fdd44
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Perhaps, then, unlikable characters, the ones who are the most human, are also the ones who are 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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d9c2d50
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People who are placed on pedestals are expected to pose, perfectly. Then they get knocked off when they fuck it up.
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Roxane Gay |