Windy City Times talked with acclaimed New York Times best-selling author, feminist icon, and pop culture commentator Roxane Gay in advance of the upcoming event, “An Evening with Roxane Gay & Sasha-Ann Simons,” coming to Chicago’s Lake View neighborhood on Wednesday, March 26.
Presented by WBEZ and in partnership with Women & Children First, Gay will be discussing her newest book, The Portable Feminist Reader, a timely, energizing and foundational collection of works from prescient feminist scholars of the past and thought-provoking voices of now.
Featuring selected writings from Black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde, author and Evanston native Samantha Irby, transgender communist Leslie Feinberg and Chicana activist Cherríe Moraga, Gay compiles works touching on topics broadly ranging from prison abolition to queer identity, ecofeminism to immigrant experiences, all written through an LGBTQ+, anti-racist and feminist lens.
Windy City Times: In your book Bad Feminist, you wrote, “My favorite definition of ‘feminist’ is one offered by Su, an Australian woman who…said, feminists are ‘just women who don’t want to be treated like shit.’” Do you think that still holds true?
Roxane Gay: I think it definitely is part of the definition of feminism and probably the fundamental mission of it. Treat people, and women in particular, like human beings with dignity. Don’t do violence unto us, and don’t try to legislate our bodies. I found Su’s definition to be very succinct. It encompasses nearly every aspect of feminism, whether it’s that women need more support on the domestic front, or we deserve equal pay, or we deserve to be free from gender-based violence. All of these things.
WCT: A lot of alarmingly current issues are addressed in chapters that were written ages ago, like [Barbara] Bodichon in 1864 saying, “Women, more than any other members of the community, suffer from over-legislation.” What are your thoughts on the current glorification of trad wives and rigid gender roles that seem antithetical to feminism right now?
RG: Well, it’s not “seem,” it is antithetical to feminism, and it’s always interesting to see the ways in which people contort themselves to make something seem feminist and/or okay. Now, I firmly believe that every woman should do whatever she wants. You get to make your own choices about how you live your life, and if you are having some nostalgia for 1883, I question that, particularly given the nature of the world at that time. That’s your choice, but you don’t get to impose that choice on other people. And you don’t get to make that choice in a vacuum where you won’t be judged, and where people won’t ask you the difficult questions as to why. What are you getting out of this and do you not recognize that this serves the patriarchy?
My mother was a stay-at-home. She was incredible, has always said she never regretted that decision and I believe her. But she made that decision knowing what she was giving up. She made that decision knowing she was married to a man for whom she would not have to deal with a lot of the kinds of horrible things that women have to deal with. He’s a good man. They were equals. They treated each other as equals. In many ways she was very lucky that she married the right man to be able to safely make that choice. But many women are not in that position.
So, when we talk about women having the right to choose whether or not they work in the external workplace or they work on the domestic front, or because most women do both, we have to talk about the consequences of that. And that in 10 years, if your partner divorces you, you may find yourself in poverty much more rapidly than you can imagine. It’s a bigger conversation than just the catchy phrase “trad wives.”
WCT: As you’ve mentioned in past interviews, you work to elevate voices and bring attention to great writers. There are some well-known feminist scholars and writers in the book, like Gloria Steinem and Angela Davis. But how did you choose who to include beyond some expected choices?
RG: Certainly, as you know, there are certain feminist writers that we consider canonical. And in the introduction, I do try to engage with the idea of canon to complicate it. I was also trying to do that in action in terms of the writers I included. And certainly, I couldn’t do everything. So, I knew initially that I was going to keep it Western feminism-focused, not because global feminism doesn’t matter, but because that’s not my area of expertise and I didn’t want to create this sort of segregated little section in the book that wouldn’t do the breadth of global feminist scholarship service.
I was looking for writers who were engaging with really interesting topics and who were looking at things like eco-feminism, feminism and race, feminism and disability, trans feminism. I wanted to include a balance of writing from the 70s all the way to present day and, fortunately, my editor was really open to that.
WCT: Who do you think this book is for?
RG: This is for anyone. But it’s also not. You’re never writing to everyone and this is for people who are genuinely interested in feminist scholarship and want to go beyond some of the most canonical texts, who want to start to expose themselves to what contemporary feminism looks like in practice. Most of those readers are probably going to be women and non-binary people from their teens into their 60s, if not more. But I hope that everyone chooses to engage with the book because I believe that it has a lot to offer.
WCT: What are your thoughts on how we achieve a truly inclusive feminist future?
RG: Well, we have to want it first.You know?
Everything starts with the buyer and political will. And right now, especially for progressive leaders – or supposedly progressive leaders – we’re seeing a complete lack of political will and a whole lot of political malpractice. So first we have to have the desire and then the will…and I don’t even know how we get there. I’m just disgusted right now.
WCT: Yeah. Every day I wake up and it’s a fresh new hell, for sure. I think that one promising thing that stood out for me in the book was that there were a lot of pieces about fragile connections and women’s relationship to themselves and other women versus in relation to men. Whether that’s the bell hooks piece about relationships between black and white women, current or historic, or even, “The Woman-Identified Woman” by Radicalesbians. That seemed to be a prevalent theme.
RG: Yeah, the themes are just all of the issues that shape our lives, whether it’s disability, the environment, our interactions with men and yes, as you note, our interactions with other women. Because the reality is that just because we’re a woman does not mean that we’re a feminist. We’ve all been raised in the same patriarchal culture. We tend to, for better or worse, take on some of these toxic ideas. So, how do we talk to one another about that? How do we have productive relationships with each other? How do we have disagreements with each other? And these are questions that continue to interest me.
WCT: What do you expect at the event on 3/26 in Chicago? I know you’re talking with WBEZ’s Sasha-Ann Simons.
RG: I’m just looking forward to a conversation about not only the book, but the state of feminist scholarship and how, as feminists, do we respond to the state of the world.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Tickets for the March 26 event, WBEZ Presents: An Evening with Roxane Gay & Sasha-Ann Simons at Athenaeum Center, 2936 N. Southport Ave., can be purchased at https://www.wbez.org/event/wbez-presents-an-evening-with-roxane-gay-sasha-ann-simons