Roxane Gay liv and wr the Midwt, for now.
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‘I’LL ALWAYS BE A BAD FEMIST!’: ROXANE GAY ON LOVE, SUCCS – AND UPSETTG PIERS MAN
Th was Roxane Gay propelled to the lerary stratosphere and – as such fairytal tend to go – sted to be forever after probed about the current state of, ne years on, do the wrer, edor, profsor, podster, cultural cric, and Gloria Steem Endowed Chair Media, Culture and Femist Studi at Rutgers Universy, New Jersey, still nsir herself a bad femist? “I thk I’m a better femist now than I was, ” says Gay when we meet on Zoom. ”It is mid-morng New York and Gay, 48, is drkg a takeaway cup of ffee the eav of the brownstone hoe she shar wh her wife Debbie Millman.
ROXANE GAY
“I am a wonrful marriage, ” Gay tells me. ”As an terviewee, Gay keeps her distance. Such quali are too often terpreted as ldns or ferocy women, but the abidg imprsn Gay giv is of someone who is not gog to promise herself.
”Last year Gay argued that ncel culture “is the bogeyman that people have e up wh to expla away bad behavur” and she prefers to thk terms of nsequence culture. ”In Bad Femist, Gay admted listeng to “thuggish rap … even though the lyrics are gradg to women and offend me to my re”. More recently she took her podst – The Roxane Gay Agenda, which she talks, mostly to Black women, about issu cludg race, femism, pop culture and polics – off Spotify over s “unfettered accs” to the “misrmatn” spread by Joe isn’t nsirg leavg Twter, notg that sce Elon Mk’s takeover the platform hasn’t “gotten measurably worse for me bee ’s always been terrible.
” The week after we speak Gay is one of nearly 1, 000 New York Tim ntributors to sign an open letter nmng the newspaper’s verage of trans, non-bary, and genr non-nformg people.