Being open minded means abandoning the old and tired victim narrative as far as gender inequality is concerned. Instead, it means being more open-minded and deliberate in the pursuance of gender equality.

This could essentially mean ensuring that women have equal access to job opportunities, healthcare, etc.īeing a bad feminist does not necessarily mean disavowing the above definition of feminism. Combining the two definitions, it is clear that feminism has got to do with the advancement of the rights of women in the realm of equality for all genders. On the other hand, to others, feminism is seen as “the broad goal of challenging and changing gender relations that subordinate women to men… (Ferree and Tripp 57). According to Hooks, in basic terms, “feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression (11). What this effectively means is that there are various definitions that have been floated in the past – all in an attempt to assign a definitive meaning to sexism. It should, however, be noted that feminism does not have an assigned definition. In real sense, however, this is the wrong notion of feminism. The popular image of a feminist is that of a close-minded woman who not only hates men, but also hates sex and is angry at the world around her. For a while, the mental notion that most people have of feminism is that of a white heterosexual woman seeking to unconventionally find her place in a male-dominated society. This brief description offers the relevant background or basis for an evaluation of the meaning of bad feminism.įrom the onset, it is important to note that the idea that most people today have of feminism is far from what Gay projects in Bad Feminist. In so doing, I first briefly describe the popular notion of feminism and then proceed to provide the academic definition of feminism. In this text, I explore what it really means to be a ‘bad feminist’ in the context of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist. In essence, the essays offer a new and different perspective of the contemporary topic of gender inequality.

What exactly does it mean to be a ‘bad feminist?’ Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist is an amazing and insightful collection of numerous essays that cover a various topics.

Roxane bad feminist