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Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker, and Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks. It’s doing something instead of doing nothing.Īs well as Bad Feminist and An Untamed State, what books are essential reading for young feminists? And writing can only accomplish so much, and we have to keep that in mind. I mean there can be, but most people write for good reasons, and have important things to say. No, I don’t feel like there’s a vanity to writing, at all. There’s no way of quantifying the impact works of literature can make, but you’ve written about the fact that in face of real injustice, that “silence is not an option but words are not enough.” Without meaning to criticise you or any other writer, do you ever feel that there’s a vanity to writing during times like these? It’s just that the writer is not doing their job well. And so if it’s just me-me-me, and there’s no reaching outward, then that’s the problem, it’s not the “I” that’s the problem. I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem, I think that essays have to look inward and outward, they have to be relevant to the reader in some way. I think it’s sort of prioritising the self, and making it clear that voices matter.
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I just want to let go.ĭo you have any thoughts on the prevalence of the “I” speaker in the contemporary essay form? Is it about enunciating the self, these days, or has it become a matter of style? If I’m thinking about audience, I’ll try and temper my opinions, and I don’t want to do that when I’m writing. I try not to think about audience at all, I write for myself. People are going to do what they’re going to do, and I’m going to write what I’m going to write.Īre you conscious of your audience when you’re writing? Or does that come later? I worry about that all the time, but I can’t let that control my life, or I’ll never get anything done. Many of your essays are framed very personally, and this probably sounds inane, but I wonder if you ever worry that your readers will ever judge you, or misinterpret you through your writing? Sometimes when I’m not writing I’m still thinking, or still reading, or doing something that will eventually manifest itself through writing. I know I’m hard on myself, and I oftentimes have unrealistic expectations of what productivity looks like. Yeah, I think we’re very hard on ourselves as writers. Do you think that’s true? That in trying to earn a living out of writing, writers develop pretty vast expectations of themselves?
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I kind of think that writers get a bit excessive about what they think labour means to them.
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You’re hugely prolific, but I read on your Tumblr that some days, you “don’t feel right calling a writer” because instead of writing you’ve spent the day watching TV and refreshing your email and whatnot. Absolutely! I’m not a saint, I’m not a saint.
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I spoke with Gay - who will appear at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne on March 5, and the All About Women festival in Sydney on March 8 - about some of those imperfections, those expectations, Twitter fame, laziness, and early femmo reading. Gay’s “bad feminism,” which has informed many young women who’ve read the book, is simply her recognition of the term feminism, and the fact that she, like everyone else, sucks at being perfect: “Feminism is flawed because it is a movement powered by people and people are inherently flawed.” When this dude assumed that I was compromising my feminism by hanging out with him in ways that supported the fact that I could be friends with boys, forgive individuals for their political folly, and say, without shame: “I think this is the cutest I’ve ever looked,” his presumption was that feminism was not about fighting for women to live safe, full, and satisfying lives regardless of their sexual, biological, or gendered positions, but rather that feminism was just a clubhouse for pathetic, humourless, and dejected losers.