Bad Feminist

Content Warning: This section references sexual violence, domestic violence, racial violence, and domestic terrorism.

“I think constantly about connection and loneliness and community and belonging, and a great deal, perhaps too much, of my writing evidences me working through the intersections of these things. So many of us are reaching out, hoping someone out there will grab our hands and remind us we are not as alone as we fear.”

Gay introduces the loneliness, community, and belonging motif to ground readers in her humanity and to begin building on the theme of The Fullness and Complexity of Humanity. By introducing herself in this way, she presents herself as relatable while also implying that all of her analyses and discussions are rooted in the sense that (marginalized) people may have of merely wanting their humanity to be recognized.

“What I remind myself, regularly, is this: the acknowledgment of my privilege is not a denial of the ways I have been and am marginalized, the ways I have suffered.”

Gay posits that privilege and marginalization are contextual: One does not negate the other. This quote is a significant precursor to Gay’s suggestions about stratification within marginalized groups and how awareness of one’s own contextual privilege is a prerequisite for solidarity. The fact that everyone brings their own life experiences to feminism is one reason for The Plurality of Feminism.

“The incredible problem Girls faces is that all we want is everything from each movie or television show or book that promises to offer a new voice, a relatable voice, an important voice. We want, and rightly so, to believe our lives deserve to be new, relatable, and important. We want to see more complex, nuanced depictions of what it really means to be whoever we are or were or hope to be.”

Gay points out the high expectation that people have placed on Dunham, which Gay finds unreasonable and an example of The Burden of Responsibility Placed on Marginalized People. At the same time, she acknowledges that the human need to belong undergirds the critique that women of color and working-class women have made about the show.