Roxanne Guy's bad feminist confession, faded from the social clean, politically correct label, clarify who they are, understand their own perfect and imperfect, will understand what they want to have courage, efforts to fight.

Bad feminists give you a rethink: Have you ever been afraid of being labeled a feminist label?

Society gives feminists a clean, tidy, politically correct label, and when your behavior doesn't conform to the good definition of society, are you still a feminist?


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Roxanne Gay, author of Bad feminism, writes about his personal experience--as a black woman and from a socio-economically backward Haiti, Roxane the various forms of discrimination and pain she had endured had also doubted herself on the way to becoming a feminist, but when she grew older, she found that everyone had different growth threads. , there is a very different gap, and a very different growth background, and this has created the differences between each individual, because of these diversity, feminism should not be a single dogma, with a set of norms divided the world's women.

Roxanne, in his writings, stresses that even with the beginnings of differences, it doesn't matter to be the perfect feminist, she admits and embraces her imperfections and confusion, and when the society plans to label her, she uses her own thoughts to define "bad feminism", a bit lame, a little biased, even a mistake, But these processes have made her more aware of her worth, more profoundly recognized and proud of herself as a "bad feminist." (Recommended reading: Feminist Bad Religion: The third wave of feminist sexual writing )

Feminism should be a pluralistic and complex system with mutual tolerance, instead of a one-way dogma, the author, for example, inspires women in the world, proudly embracing their imperfections on the road to feminism: You can be a bad feminist, as long as you hold the courage to change for the world.

In June 2015, Roxanne Guy on the stage of TED talks, to the society to carry out a bad feminist confession, in pandering to the society or label themselves before the label, we have to understand ourselves, understand their own perfect and imperfect, only to recognize ourselves and have the value to adhere to, after We will know where we can stand, what to do and have the courage to fight hard.

Feminism is not a curse or a cult, but it is still my answer.

Roxanne guy

I'm a bad feminist: even if it fails, our value is still worth listening to.

I am a failed woman, I am a failure of the feminist.

I'm passionate about gender equality, but I'm worried that it might not be fair to good feminists when I'm free to label the "feminist" labels.

I'm a feminist, but it's probably a bad one. So I call myself "bad feminists", at least I wrote a paper, also out of the book called "Bad Feminist", then people began to call me "that bad feminist", this is only part of my circle of jokes and intentional provocative behavior, became my Representative, my logo.

Let me take a step back, when I was young, about more than 10 or 20, I had a lot of strange ideas about feminists, like hair, irritability, hate men, women who hated sex, and my perception of feminism seemed to be as bad as everyone thought. These days, I look at the experience of women all over the world, "angry" seems to be a reasonable response, but in the past, I care about the tone of voice, especially when I mentioned "I may be a feminist", the feminist label seems to be a curse words, to " The f"begins (Feminism) and is a bad word. (Recommended reading: reflect on feminism, why always miss the gender weakness?) )

I was labeled, said I this woman not according to the card cards, look forward to too much, think of themselves too lofty, incredibly believe that they are as great as men. You don't want to be a rebel woman until you know that you are the kind of woman in your bones, and you can't imagine that you have other possibilities.

As I get older, I begin to understand that I am, and I am, a feminist, and I am proud of it.

Tell you some facts that are self-evident:

Equal status of women and men; we deserve equal pay for the same work, and we have the right to move anywhere in the world where we want to live without the threat of intimidation and violence; We have the right to demand a social level of affordable birth control programs and maternity services; We have the right to make decisions for our bodies, free from legislative scrutiny or dogma. We have the right to be respected.

Of course, there are more problems in society, when we talk about women's needs, we have to take into account our other identities, we are not just women, we are also born as human beings, but with different physical characteristics, gender orientation, faith, class background, ability ... etc. so many differences, We have to consider these differences and the impact of these differences on us, just as we consider the impact of those similarities on us, and without such inclusiveness, what we call "feminism" is nothing.

The weakness of women should be returned to the social structure rather than her life choice.

I see these acts as self-evident facts, but let me be more clear: I am a mess, with all sorts of contradictions, and in many ways I have practiced feminism in the wrong way.

There's one more thing I want to be honest about. When I was driving to work, I listened to the rap and played it super loud, even though the lyrics were demeaning to women, the lyrics violated the core values I believed in, and I believed that some of the work in the world belonged to men-things I didn't want to do, such as weeding, dumping, etc. Pink is my favorite color, I also love popular magazines and beautiful things, I love to see romantic comedy, but also very stupid infatuation fairy tales come true, I have some behavior is different from what you think of feminism: If someone wants the surname, it is her choice, I have no position to criticize If a woman chooses to stay at home to take care of her child, I also embrace her choice. (Recommended reading:"Gender observation" feminism, to give people gentleness is to themselves gentle )

The problem is not that she has made herself an economic weakness in those choices, but that society has made her a choice and made her a weak social fabric, a social issue that we have to deal with.

I reject mainstream feminism that has long neglected or avoided the needs of certain women, like non-white women, labor women, homosexuals or transgender people who are biased against white, middle-class, heterosexual women, listen, if that's a feminist, I'm a very bad feminist.

As a feminist, I feel a lot of pressure, and we tend to worship openly feminist feminists, we expect them to perform perfectly, once they let us down, and we cheerfully put them off the stage of society, like I said, I'm a mess, before you put me on the stage, Just think about the way I got kicked out of the office.

For many women, especially women entrepreneurs or industry leaders, fearful of being labeled as feminists, they are afraid to stand up and say, "Yes, I'm a feminist." "Because they worry about the significance of the label and are worried about not being able to stick to unrealistic expectations, for example, Beyonce, who has emerged as a feminist in recent years, stood ten feet high in the 2014 MTV Music Video Awards." Feminism "Before the show, this rare scene not only let us see the rock star frankly accept feminism, and let young men and women know that being a feminist is worth celebrating.

After the show, many cultural comments began to debate: is Beyonce a feminist?
They eventually put her in the category of feminism, but not simply by an adult and self-thought women, the courage to express their own ideas to classify.

Feminists are required to be perfect, because we have a lot to fight for, we have a lot of things to pursue, and if we go beyond rational and constructive comment to the feminist standard of profiling a particular woman, in these standards and words, it will tear the feminist, but we don't need to do that.

The next step for the bad feminists: stick to the tiny brave, in order to change the situation

What is the next step, in the feminist sense, or in the case of feminists who are defined in a broad sense of English?

We begin by acknowledging our imperfections, by taking responsibility, and by having the courage to do so.

If I listen to music with no taste, I'm creating a need for musicians to have more space to create music, and these artists won't change how they comment on women in songs, unless we change their minds to change the way they look at gender, but to be honest, it's really hard.

It's hard to make a better decision, but it's easy to find excuses for a poor choice. But when I start making excuses for bad decisions, I make it harder for women to get real equality--and that's the equality that we all deserve, and I have to have that equality.

I think of my 3 or 4-year-old niece, they are both smart and brave girls, I hope they can be in a world that values them, they are so beautiful, full of creative people, I think of them, suddenly, make a better choice becomes much easier. (Recommended reading: The existence of feminism, not to embarrass men )

We can all make better choices, we can choose our TV programs, listen to the content, when the content involves sexual violence, sexual discrimination of the relevant words, we can switch channels; we can choose the radio channel, and when the song appears to degrade the female content, the turntable no longer listens ; We can spend money on movie tickets somewhere else, as long as the film treats the female characters as a vase of feminine beauty, if the athlete treats their partner as an air bag, we can choose to stop supporting the professional sports; other ways, men--especially white men who are heterosexual--say, "No!" I'm not going to issue your magazine, participate in your plans or work with you until you pull a percentage of women into a certain proportion, either as a participant or as a decision player. I will not work with you until your publication or your organization can accept all kinds of differences. 」

Those of us who are often neglected, when invited to participate in such a scheme, can also refuse to be part of it until we are invited to go beyond the previous proportions until we are no longer a minority of those who need to be reserved.

Without these efforts, without the insistence of these positions, our efforts so far have lost their meaning, through these little courageous gestures, we can expect our choices to influence empowered people, such as editors, musicians, filmmakers, executive-makers, legislators, and so on, who can make bigger and braver choices, Make a permanent and meaningful change.

Feminism makes me regain my voice, believing that I'm not what they say is nothing.

We can also boldly proclaim our feminism: good, bad, and grey areas.

"I would rather be a bad feminist than a feminist," I said in the last line of my book, "Bad Feminist confession". 」

To me this is the truth I believe, and I will believe so because of past experience, once I no longer believe that I have the right to sound, and feminism help me find my voice.

It was an accident, and I called it an accident to allow me to carry on living with this burden.

There were a few boys who hurt me, and I was too young to know how a boy could hurt a girl like that. They treated me as if I were worthless, and I began to believe that I was worthless, that they took our voices, and that I could never believe my voice or my own words had any meaning or weight.

But fortunately, I also have the ability to write, in my pen, I began to find their full appearance, I became stronger, I read other women's writings, they had similar experiences with me, they understood people like me, understood my life story, understood how it felt to be in the world with black skin, I read these words, they let me know that I am not worthless, I learn to imitate them to write, and gradually write their own style, I found my voice again, and began to believe that my voice power is infinite. (Recommended reading: Joseph Gaudenlivai, who embraces feminism: "Don't let the sex define who we are!") ")

Through writing and feminism, I also found that if I were braver, maybe other women would hear, see, and understand that no one was as worthless as the world was trying to tell us, and on the other hand I had the ability to do anything, and on the other hand, I held myself as a woman, This is a humble fact.

I'm a bad feminist, I'm a good woman, I tried to make myself better, better, and better than I thought I could, without having to despise anything that made me look the way I am now, and I hope we all try and be braver when we need courage.