Bad Feminist

Having provided readers with her perspective on issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality, Gay closes by explicitly defining her brand of “bad feminism” and explaining why she chooses to embrace it. Here, she underscores the Plurality of Feminism theme by calling attention to the way that privilege and perspective produce different theories and practices of feminism. Bad feminism emerges from two significant points: a departure from the white, heterosexual, classist norms that inform essential feminism; and space for The Fullness and Complexity of Humanity.

Essay 36 deals most explicitly with essential feminism and the perspective that informs it: “Essential feminism suggests anger, humorlessness, militancy, unwavering principles, and a prescribed set of rules for how to be a proper feminist woman, or at least a proper white, heterosexual feminist woman” (304). With this quote, Gay demonstrates her awareness that the dominant discourse around feminism centers a particular demographic. While she mentions race and sexual orientation here, class plays an integral role. For example, Gay cites Elizabeth Wurtzel’s 2012 article claiming that “[r]eal feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own” (304). In the same article, Wurtzel also claims that economic equality is the only type of equality, and she suggests that women entering the workforce en masse is how they prove their solidarity with the feminist movement (308-09). Similarly, Gay notes that Anne-Marie Slaughter’s 2012 article speaks to “a small, elite group of women” in her suggestion that women “leave high-powered positions [. . .] to spend more time with their sons” (309). Gay points out Slaughter’s inattention to the fact that working-class women work because they have to put food on the table; they don’t have the privilege of leaving their jobs in order to “have it all” (309).

With these examples, Gay illustrates how positionality contributes to what women see as the proper theory and practice of feminism. While Wurtzel and Slaughter differ in their stance on work—one calls for women to enter the workforce and the other to leave it—both turn a blind eye to women who fall outside of an elite economic bracket. Inattention to race and racism is also glaring in both perspectives. Wurtzel seems to forget that white women have an easier time becoming employed than women of color, and Slaughter overlooks the link between race and class that means many women of color are not afforded the opportunity to leave their jobs and focus solely on childrearing.

The points to one of Gay’s biggest issues with essential feminism: “As a woman of color, I find that some feminists don’t seem terribly concerned with the issues unique to women of color” (307). She goes on to state that mainstream feminism’s willful ignorance towards and disinterest in those unique issues makes her “disinclined to own the feminist label” (308). However, Gay illustrates that her womanhood is just as significant to her as her race, citing Audre Lorde: “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” (307). Here, Gay points to the complexity that stems from multiple identifications and positionalities within society.

Thus, Gay chooses to embrace “bad feminism. By opening up Essay 37 with all the ways that she “fails” at feminism, Gay disrupts the essentialist notion of what a feminist looks like or how a feminist behaves. She also makes the significant point that her feminist advocacy “applies to seemingly less serious issues” (317)—music, comedy, social media, etc.—precisely because pop culture reveals the larger political milieu and grave situation that women face in a patriarchal society. Gay’s bad feminism is actually an embrace of her full humanity and an advocacy that this be recognized and expressed in all of life, society, culture, and politics.