Am I a Bad Feminist Moments of Reflection and Negotiation in Contemporary Feminist Identity

In 2014 Roxane Gay published Bad Feminist, a collection of personal essays written from her position as a Haitian American feminist academic. This work quickly skyrocketed in popularity across both academic and nonacademic audiences. Representative of the increasingly public-facing authoethnographic scholarship of feminist academic women, Gay's work is a product of its time. For this dissertation, I examine Bad Feminist along with two other also wildly popular autoethnographic works produced in the same decade, Tressie McMillan Cotton's Thick: And Other Essays and Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts. I examine these texts as public-facing, accessible works that communicate their academic feminist authors'; feelings of feminist inadequacy in order to address larger issues of feminist practice and theory. Utilizing Sara Ahmed's theory of becoming feminist, I analyze the "bad feminist moments" expressed in these texts as moments of feminist crisis to identify what causes them and what functions they might serve. Using qualitative methodological triangulation, better known as mixed-methods research, I employ topic modeling and content analysis across all three texts to identify patterns that reveal not only why and how academic feminists might feel like they are bad feminists, but how and why they choose to share the moments in which they feel like bad feminists with others. Fighting to maintain their feminist identities in a world rife with gendered and raced violence, neoliberal ideals of self sufficiency and individual perfection, rapidly evolving technologies, and intersecting historical structures of oppression, these authors utilize moments of feminist imperfection to create space and time to disarticulate and rearticulate their relationships to feminism, their relationships to other people, and their relationships to academia. In this project, I conclude that bad feminist moments might be reactions to the pressures of both historical and contemporary structures of oppression, but the choice to reflect on them and share with others is based in feminist principles of reflexivity and collective inspiration to resist perpetuating ongoing structures of oppression inside and outside of the academy.

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Bad Feminist

'Pink is my favourite colour. I used to say my favourite colour was black to be cool, but it is pink – all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I’m not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue.' In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of colour (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture. Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny and sincere look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

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Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay Summary

Do you want more free book summaries like this? Download our app for free at https://www.QuickRead.com/App and get access to hundreds of free book and audiobook summaries. Discover Why Being a Bad Feminist is Better Than Not Being a Feminist At All. When you hear the word feminism, what do you think of? In today’s climate, you likely think about the many women’s marches and the #MeToo movement that have taken over the media. All of these fight for the rights of women in every area of life, including equal pay, reproductive rights, and more. But according to Roxane Gay, feminism is flawed. There is no right or wrong way to be a feminist, which is why Gay proudly labels herself as a bad feminist. As a bad feminist, Gay recognizes that humans are flawed, and therefore, their views and opinions don’t always fit perfectly into a neatly wrapped package. For instance, while Gay enjoys going against the grain, her favorite color is still pink and she enjoys reading Vogue, both of which are typical female stereotypes. At the end of the day, feminism looks different for everyone but being a bad feminist is better than not being a feminist at all! As you read, you’ll learn how reality television is harmful to the fight for equality, how racial profiling can end in murder, and how movies like The Help only advance racial stereotypes.

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Fight Like a Girl

Nearly every day there's another news story or pop cultural anecdote related to feminism and women's rights. #YesAllWomen, conversations around consent, equal pay, access to contraception, and a host of other issues are foremost topics of conversation in American (and worldwide) media right now. Today's teens are encountering these issues from a different perspective than any generation has had before, but what's often missing from the current discussion is an understanding of how we've gotten to this place. Fight Like a Girl will familiarize readers with the history of feminist activism, in an effort to celebrate those who paved the way and draw attention to those who are working hard to further the cause of women's rights. Profiles of both famous and lesser-known feminists will be featured alongside descriptions of how their actions affected the overall feminist cause, and unique portraits (artist's renderings) of the feminists themselves. This artistic addition will take the book beyond simply an informational text, and make it a treasure of a book.

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Fictional Feminism

This book focuses on the ways in which second-wave feminism has been represented in American popular culture, and on the effects that these representations have had on feminism as a political movement. Kim Loudermilk provides close readings of four best-selling novels and their film adaptations. According to Loudermilk, each of these novels contains explicitly feminist characters and themes, yet each presents a curiously ambivalent picture of feminism; these texts at once take feminism seriously and subtly undercut its most central tenets. This book argues that these texts create a kind of "fictional feminism" that recuperates feminism's radical potential, thereby lessening the threat it presents to the status quo.

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How to Win at Feminism

Be the best feminist you can be—or at least look like one—with this definitive manual, from the satirical creators of the wildly popular "feminist Onion" humor website, Reductress. From hot feminist sex to a trendy feminist up-do, the bold and brilliant minds behind Reductress reveal the secrets to being super progressive—and cool, hip, and pretty. Feminism today means demanding gender equality—and a fabulous manicure. After all, we’re not wearing girdles and cleaning the house anymore. We’re wearing Spanx and hiring a cleaning lady. That’s feminism! How to Win at Feminism defines what’s feminist and what isn’t, shows you how to take up space (but not too much space), identifies which clothes and products to be offended by, and offers funny insight, knowledge, tips, and advice every fourth-wave feminist needs, including: How to Love Your Body Even Though Hers is Better The 9 Circles of Hell for Women Who Don’t Help Other Women Designer Handbags to Hold All Your Feminism How to Apologize for Having it All Finding Your Spirit Feminist Rebranding Your Relationship Issues as Feminist Issues How to Do More With 33 Cents Less With this ultimate guide—complete with four-color sidebars and illustrations—you can femsplain feminism to basic friends, and and learn how to battle the patriarchy while maintaining a dependable moisturizing routine. We may have come a long way, baby, but we have a long way to go. How to Win at Feminism is the road map to get there!

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Feminist Review

A unique combination of the activist and the academic, Feminist Review has an acclaimed place within women's studies courses and the women's movement. Feminist Review is produced by a London based editorial colective and publishes and reviews work by women; featuring articles on feminist theory, race, class and sexuality, women's history, cultural studies, black and third world feminism, poetry, photography, letters and much more. Feminist Review is available both on subscription and from bookstores. For a Free Sample Copy or further subscription details please contact Terry Sleight, Routledge Subscriptions, ITPS Ltd., Cheriton House, North Way, Andover SP10 5BE, UK.

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Gender and Women s Studies Second Edition

Now in its second edition, Gender and Women’s Studies: Critical Terrain provides students with an essential introduction to key issues, approaches, and concerns of the field. This comprehensive anthology celebrates a diversity of influential feminist thought on a broad range of topics using analyses sensitive to the intersections of gender, race, class, ability, age, and sexuality. Featuring both contemporary and classic pieces, the carefully selected and edited readings centre Indigenous, racialized, disabled, and queer voices. With over sixty percent new content, this thoroughly updated second edition contains infographics, original activist artwork, and a new section on gender, migration, and citizenship. The editors have also added chapters on issues surrounding sex work as labour, the politics of veiling, trans and queer identities, Indigenous sovereignty, decolonization, masculinity, online activism, and contemporary social justice movements including Black Lives Matter and Idle No More. The multidisciplinary focus and the unique combination of scholarly articles, interviews, fact sheets, reports, blog posts, poetry, artwork, and personal narratives reflect the vitality of the field and keep the collection engaging and varied. Concerned with the past, present, and future of gender identity, gendered representation, feminism, and activism, this anthology is an indispensable resource for students in gender and women’s studies classrooms across Canada and the United States.

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Daring to be Bad

"A fine introduction to the bold, contentious, complicated women who categorically refused to be good little girls, and thereby changed the way our culture defines male-female relations".--Voice Literary Supplement.

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Radical Feminism Writing and Critical Agency

Links radical feminist writings of the 1960s and 1970s to contemporary online women's networks.

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Community Activism and Feminist Politics

This collection demonstrates the diversity of women's struggles against problems such as racism, violence, homophobia, focusing on the complex ways that gender, culture, race-ethnicity and class shape women's political consciousness in the US.

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Feminism and Method

Naples draws on different research topics, such as welfare, poverty, sexual identity, and sexual abuse, to illustrate some of the most salient dilemmas of feminist research: the debate over objectivity, the paradox of discourse, the dilemma of "standpoint," and the challenges of activist research. By linking important feminist theoretical debates with case studies, Naples illustrates the strategies she developed for resolving the challenges posed be postmodern, Third World, postcolonial, and queer studies.

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Feminism is for Everybody

'Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.' So begins Feminism is for Everybody, a short, accessible introduction to feminist theory by one of its liveliest and most influential practitioners. Designed to be read by all genders, this book provides both a primer to the question 'what is feminism?' and an argument for the enduring importance of the feminist movement today.Beginning with a broad survey of feminism's most important themes and concerns, bell hooks demystifies contentious concepts and turns apparent ideology into common sense. Providing a critical evaluation of the successes and failures of contemporary feminism, she looks at a wide variety of topics including reproductive rights, sexual violence, race, class and work. hooks encourages us to demand alternatives to patriarchal, racist and homophobic culture and thereby to seek out a different future.

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Bad Attitude s on Trial

Mainstream, or straight, pornography still flourishes, while those centering on gay and lesbian sex and s/m sex, are the focus of censorship. A critical analysis of pornography after the Supreme Court's Butler (1992) decision.

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Masculinity in Breaking Bad

Following on author Peter Rollins’ motto “If it isn’t popular, it isn’t culture,” this collection of new essays considers Vince Gilligan’s award-winning television series Breaking Bad as a landmark of Western culture—comparable to the works of Shakespeare and Dickens in their time—that merits scholarly attention from those who would understand early the 21st century zeitgeist. The essayists explore the series as a critique of American concepts of masculinity, with Walter White discussed as a father archetype—provider, protector, author of a legacy—and as a Machiavellian warrior on the capitalist battleground. Other topics include the mutual exclusivity of intellect and masculinity in American culture, and the dramatic irony as White's rationales for his criminal life are gradually revealed as a lie. In “round table” chapters, contributors discuss the show’s reception, fans who root for “Team Walt,” “Skyler-hating” and Breaking Bad as a feminist text.

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Feminism and Documentary

Documentary and feminist film studies have long been separate or parallel universes that need to converse or collide. The essays in this volume, written by prominent scholars and filmmakers, demonstrate the challenges that feminist perspectives pose for documentary theory, history, and practice. They also show how fuller attention to documentary enriches and complicates feminist theory, especially regarding the relationship between gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, class and nation. Feminism and Documentary begins with a substantial historical introduction that highlights several of the specific areas that contributors address: debates over realism, the relationship between filmmaker and subject, historical thinking about documentary and thinking about the historical documentary, biography and autobiography, and the use of psychoanalysis. Other essays, most of which appear here for the first time, range from broad overviews to close analyses of particular films and videos and from discussions of well-known works such as Roger and Me and Don't Look Back to lesser known texts that might revise the canon. The collection includes an extensive filmography and videography with useful distribution information and a bibliography of work in this neglected area of scholarship. Lucid, sophisticated, and eye-opening, this book will galvanize documentary studies and demonstrate the need for women's and cultural studies to grapple with visual media.

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Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is an issue in which feminists are usually thought to be on the plaintiff's side. But in 1993—amid considerable attention from the national academic community—Jane Gallop, a prominent feminist professor of literature, was accused of sexual harassment by two of her women graduate students. In Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment, Gallop tells the story of how and why she was charged with sexual harassment and what resulted from the accusations. Weaving together memoir and theoretical reflections, Gallop uses her dramatic personal experience to offer a vivid analysis of current trends in sexual harassment policy and to pose difficult questions regarding teaching and sex, feminism and knowledge. Comparing “still new” feminism—as she first encountered it in the early 1970s—with the more established academic discipline that women's studies has become, Gallop makes a case for the intertwining of learning and pleasure. Refusing to acquiesce to an imperative of silence that surrounds such issues, Gallop acknowledges—and describes—her experiences with the eroticism of learning and teaching. She argues that antiharassment activism has turned away from the feminism that created it and suggests that accusations of harassment are taking aim at the inherent sexuality of professional and pedagogic activity rather than indicting discrimination based on gender—that antiharassment has been transformed into a sensationalist campaign against sexuality itself. Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment offers a direct and challenging perspective on the complex and charged issues surrounding the intersection of politics, sexuality, feminism, and power. Gallop's story and her characteristically bold way of telling it will be compelling reading for anyone interested in these issues and particularly to anyone interested in the ways they pertain to the university.

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Gender and Women s Studies in Canada

With essays from some of the most influential contemporary feminist writers, such as Jessica Valenti, bell hooks, Afua Cooper, Gloria Steinem, and Kim Anderson, and covering topics as diverse as women with disabilities, transgender rights, abortion, ageism, and Tyra Banks, this collection goes beyond the Canadian context to form an ideal introductory-level textbook for the contemporary gender studies classroom. Reflecting the intersectional nature of feminist thought today, these essays incorporate voices from across multiple marginalities, discussing gender, race, class, Aboriginality, ability, age, sexuality, and weight. A unique combination of scholarly articles, news clips, fact sheets, blog posts, poetry, short fiction, and personal narratives keep the collection engaging and varied. Editors Margaret Hobbs and Carla Rice have compiled a comprehensive introduction to the past, present, and future of gender and women's studies in Canada. Features: includes feminist theory and scholarship stemming from multiple disciplines such as sociology, psychology, Indigenous studies, cultural studies, health studies, Canadian studies, political economy, and anthropology provides a strong foundation in the history of the field, while also offering fresh perspectives that point toward the future direction of this meaningful area of inquiry contains rich pedagogy, including critical thinking questions, statistics, and activist insights

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Varieties of Feminist Liberalism

The essays in this volume present versions of feminism that are explicitly liberal, or versions of liberalism that are explicitly feminist. By bringing together some of the most respected and well-known scholars in mainstream political philosophy today, Amy R. Baehr challenges the reader to reconsider the dominant view that liberalism and feminism are incompatible. Visit our website for sample chapters!

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Getting Here from There

This book of conversations between Margaret R. Miles and Hiroko Sakomura compares the experiences of two women who grew up in different societies, with different educations, different professions, and different religious orientations. Reflecting on the different ways in which Japanese and American societies inhibited and enabled them, these two women share their struggles, difficulties, and achievements. All of this is set in the context of one of the most radical social movements in the history of the world, as women are gaining increments of equality with men in designing and administering the institutions of public life with opportunities, dangers, and rewards. This is a moment in which a critical mass of women "want it all now," in the best sense of the phrase, seeking to preserve and reinterpret traditional values while exercising their capabilities and skills both in the home and in public life. This book is the memoir of two women's painful and joyful experiences in "getting here from there."

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