Highlights From ‘Let’s Talk Feminism’ With Roxane Gay At Brooklyn Historical Society
“Feminism is not dead,” declared Angélique Roché, Ms. Foundation’s vice president of external affairs, standing before the sold-out auditorium at the first installment of Let’s Talk Feminism. Grunts of approval rippled through the audience.
Tuesday’s event was part of a lecture series hosted by the Ms. Foundation for Women and the Brooklyn Historical Society, which will feature more than a dozen feminist writers, academics and thought leaders seeking to broaden the mainstream definition of feminism, echoing a conversation people are engaged in both on social media (over 120 million people, according to the Ms. Foundation) and IRL.
People stood in the back and crowded the doorways to hear the conversation between Roxane Gay – best-selling author, editor, professor, cultural commentator and “bad” feminist, and Dodai Stewart, former deputy editor of Jezebel and current Executive Editor of Fusion.net. (Avid This American Life listeners might also remember Roxane Gay from a recent episode titled “Tell Me I’m Fat” about about living in a fat phobic culture.)
The discussion, titled “Moving Through This World: A Conversation with Roxane Gay,” true to its name, touched on many topics including race and gender, intersectionality, the label ‘morbidly obese’, Black Lives Matter, Beyonce, and the absurd joys of People Magazine — Gay punctuating each topic with her incisive intelligence and wit. The audience roared with laughter at least a dozen times during the 45 minute talk and Q & A that followed.
Stewart’s questions ranged from weighty (What is the state of feminism right now?) to personal (What is your favorite word? — to which Gay answered, “My favorite word is ‘fuck’ — It’s got the soft beginning and the hard ending.”)
If you missed the sold out event, check out some highlights from Roxane Gay below.
On the presidential campaign:
“There is a lot of hatred, and people like Donald Trump make people comfortable expressing it publicly… The fact that Donald Trump is the candidate speaks to how virulent misogyny continues to be.”
On inequity and standards for excellence:
“Why are we setting the bar at heterosexual white men? That’s a low bar. For so long they’ve been the standard of excellence in every field, let’s just reframe the conversation. I’m a realist — we will always see inequities, but the ones we’re seeing today are so alarming that we have to set a new standard for moving through the world. There are women in the world who cannot leave the safety of their home, and that is a real problem. “
On her upcoming book, Hunger:
“The real challenge was facing myself and facing my body, how I went from a skinny kid who loved to read to someone who was morbidly obese and stayed there. It’s a book that’s painful and honest, and that’s overrated — lying to myself is so much easier.”
On ‘morbid obesity’ and a fat-phobic culture:
“The medical establishment has no idea how to treat fat people, it’s one of the most under-appreciated issues of our time. It’s doctors who say they don’t have the equipment to accommodate our bodies, gynecologists who said they “don’t want to get all up in there.” It’s appalling that the term is ‘morbidly obese’, it’s like calling us the walking dead. It’s an impersonal term that doesn’t understand my history or my level of health. You get to a point where [going to the doctor] isn’t worth the humiliation, but it’s embarrassing so no one talks about it.”
On Twitter and “being part of the cultural conversation in a real time way”:
“I’ve lived in rural America now for 11 years… living surrounded by cornfields. When you’re a black woman, and a black queer woman, sometimes online is the only space where you can find people who aren’t going to yell the N word at you when you’re walking down the street. They yell it at you over the internet.”
On why Gay loves People Magazine:
“They spend so much time policing the human body — Beach body! Bikini body! She got her body back! She lost 256 pounds and you won’t believe how she did it! Then you have amazing moments of celebrities standing on a corner drinking Starbucks, and these weird puff pieces like ‘Come and see Melania’s Kitchen!’ and you think… really? I love it because they take it so seriously, and they do a glossy every single week of 96 to 128 pages. They tweet weird things, sometimes weird rhetorical questions or making Kylie Jenner’s latest fart seem newsworthy. I love to highlight the absurdity of what they’re doing, so I tweet at them constantly… and sometimes they favorite it.”
On Intersectionality:
“We inhabit many identities, we’re not just women, and all women are not created equal. People are also saying, of this election, that it’s great for women. It’s great for white women! Women of color are still being left behind. We overlook Shirley Chisholm, who was the first visible woman who ran for president and she was a black woman. She gets erased from the history books constantly and that’s frustrating. I genuinely believe that Hillary Clinton has the right people talking to her… but we can’t sit there and think that her success means things are better for women, when black women, asian women, latina women are still struggling. So we need to ask how do we lift all women, not just the most famous white woman in the world, before we say it’s a victory for women.”
On teaching:
“I stayed in academia because I love teaching, very much, and because I never had any black teachers when I was in college. There are so few black students on so many campuses that it breaks my heart to think of them there alone without people who look like us there teaching them. How can other people enter the professoriate if they don’t see examples of what the black professor looks like. It’s absolutely imperative.”
Check out a preview of Roxane Gay’s upcoming book, Hunger, HarperCollins June 2017.
Be sure to check out the upcoming installments in the #LetsTalkFeminism series this fall at the Brooklyn Historical Society. (Get your tickets early, this one sold out!)