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I am a bad feminist and a good woman. I am trying to become better in how I think and say and do - without abandoning what makes me human.

Roxane Gay

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Roxane Gay
Age: 50
Born: 1974
Born: October 15
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Scrabble Player
Writer
Omaha
Nebraska
Better
Human
Humans
Without
Abandoning
Trying
Feminist
Good
Woman
Think
Makes
Thinking
Become

More quotes by Roxane Gay

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When I write on Twitter, I do other things: I'm working, grading, or reading, and I'm procrastinating, and I'll pop on Twitter and be like, Hey, what's up? Yogurt's delicious.
Roxane Gay
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When you look past the image, a celebrity is merely a person you know nothing about.
Roxane Gay
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Nemeses aren't born. They are made.
Roxane Gay
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I was called a feminist, and what I heard was, 'You are an angry, sex-hating, man-hating victim lady person.' This caricature is how feminists have been warped by the people who fear feminism most, the same people who have the most to lose when feminism succeeds.
Roxane Gay
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It's gut instinct that helps me determine how to write a story. I love the surreal because I am faced with the challenge of making the unbelievable believable. That challenge is thrilling.
Roxane Gay
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I am human. I am messy. I'm not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I'm right. I am just trying - trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.
Roxane Gay
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With my writing, I generally just pretend that no one's reading it. I allow myself that delusion so that I can write the things that I write.
Roxane Gay
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Fiction offers escape but it also interrogates the world we live in, whether the past, present or future.
Roxane Gay
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The actual act of writing brings me such pleasure - to tell stories, to engage in cultural criticism, to reflect, to question, all of it is invigorating.
Roxane Gay
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We don't all have to believe in the same feminism. Feminism can be pluralistic so long as we respect the different feminisms we carry with us, so long as we give enough of a damn to try to minimize the fractures among us. Feminism will better succeed with collective effort, but feminist success can also rise out of personal conduct.
Roxane Gay
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We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we'll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say, “This is my truth,” and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist.
Roxane Gay
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I write for myself, first and foremost and I also write for people, mostly women, who just want to be seen and heard and all too often aren't.
Roxane Gay
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People of color are not under any kind of obligation beyond working hard, doing their best, and learning from their mistakes.
Roxane Gay
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I don't want the success to go away. I don't want it to seem unearned.
Roxane Gay
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Somewhere along the line we started misinterpreting the First Amendment and this idea of the freedom of speech the amendment grants us. We are free to speak as we choose without fear of prosecution or persecution, but we are not free to speak as we choose without consequence.
Roxane Gay
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I wrote myself back together. I wrote myself toward a stronger version of myself . . . Through writing and feminism, I also found that if I was a little bit brave, another woman might hear me and see me and recognize that none of us are the nothing the world tries to tell us we are.
Roxane Gay
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I'm fat positive, in that I don't see fat as a bad thing. But what I do see as a bad thing is how I'm treated. I can have the most positive outlook in the world, but that is not going to change how hecklers and people walking down the street are yelling at me.
Roxane Gay
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Some women being empowered does not prove the patriarchy is dead. It proves that some of us are lucky.
Roxane Gay
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Truth can hurt so very much.
Roxane Gay
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You don't necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don't have to apologize for it. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about.
Roxane Gay