Bad Feminist

In 2013, Texas Senator Wendy Davis filibustered a legislative measure trying to close 37 of Texas’s (then) 42 abortion clinics. The filibuster was livestreamed on YouTube, partly because none of the major news networks were covering the story. Gay emphasizes the duality of social media: It can be trivial, but it can also draw attention to significant issues. Gay also posits that the difference between social media and major news outlets is becoming more pronounced. Good journalism requires the kind of time and research that social media doesn’t allow, and it seems that major news networks are not keeping up with the pace at which social media moves.

While smart journalistic perspectives would be helpful, ordinary people have had to turn to Twitter and other social media sites, as well as the Internet as a whole, to do their own research. Gay notes that there have been times when traditional journalism has been useful, such as when the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act and disenfranchised a significant number of voters, but there have been other times where social media was more useful in informing the public, such as when the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act. She concludes that in the modern age, traditional journalism’s role is to provide grounding and context while social media reminds society to be present and conscientious.

Gay has been thinking about reproductive freedom in the context of widespread national and state debates about abortion and birth control. Men have dominated these debates, seemingly forgetting that women have always protected themselves against unwanted pregnancy. Gay sees the contemporary debates as a ploy to distract the masses from attention to economic issues, the racial climate, the health care system broadly, LGBTQ+ rights, wars, and global threats to humanity’s existence.

Gay asserts that pregnancy is simultaneously a private and public experience, with public intervention ranging from the mild and necessary (such as doctor’s appointments) to the overt and interruptive (such as legislation). Gay points to the various ways that the right to abortion has been contested since it was established in 1973 by Roe v. Wade. For example, several states have required pregnant people to have ultrasounds before abortion procedures, with some states trying to mandate transvaginal ultrasounds. Some states require waiting periods, multiple sonograms, and pre-abortion counseling designed to discourage pregnant people from going through with the abortion. Gay finds the tactics to limit reproductive freedom “invasive, insulting, and condescending” (272), and she asserts that women should have the right to choose what happens to their bodies. She also questions what role doctors play in reinforcing the limitations, given their oath to serve the best interests of their patients.

Gay reiterates that the debates over reproductive freedom are a diversion tactic, but she also emphasizes that they show reproductive freedom is negotiable and therefore not an inalienable right (although she believes it should be and struggles to accept that her body is up for legislative debate). She discusses debates about birth control, saying the current debates are an affront to Margaret Sanger’s legacy and the work she and other women in the early 1900s did to secure the right to contraception. Gay notes that the fight for birth control is directly related to the risk that women face when legal abortion access is limited, which requires them to turn to illegal procedures that put their lives and fertility at risk. Furthermore, birth control gives women the right to choose when (or if) they will assume the responsibility of rearing a child.

Not only do congressional hearings on birth control leave women out, but the public also demands that women justify their decision to use contraception, as if being a sexually active human who doesn’t want to get pregnant is not enough of an explanation. Gay points out that an unspoken fact in the birth control debates is that men don’t want to assume their fair share of responsibility for contraception or subject their own bodies to legislation. In addition, there is profitability in birth control being a women’s matter. Gay ponders starting an underground birth control network, warning that the worst is yet to come.

Gay points out America’s obsession with heroism and the embodiment of ideals that ordinary humans cannot achieve. However, purported heroism is ubiquitous to the point that it is diluted, which Gay believes is a result of people being so cynical about humanity that ordinary, decent human behavior appears “heroic.” She also points out the suffering and sacrifice that heroes face, but she understands why society aspires to heroic status, given that heroes also fight for justice.

Gay considers George Zimmerman’s hero aspirations when he murdered Trayvon Martin. However, she emphasizes that the case is not about heroism but rather race. She points to the irrationality of Zimmerman’s self-defense claim, which relied on attributing superhuman/demonic qualities to Martin as well as the stereotypical association of young Black men with criminality. This brings Gay’s discussion back to the idea of justice and its relation to heroism. She questions whether or not a guilty verdict for Zimmerman would really be justice for Martin. Gay concludes that justice would be overcoming the pervasive cultural belief in superhuman qualities and recognizing that Martin was merely a young boy—that is to say, a human.

Gay asserts that danger does not have a specific look. She points to the discourse around Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a prime example. His being featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine demonstrates that American society holds certain ideas about who looks dangerous and who doesn’t. The accompanying article, written by Janet Reitman, reinforces the idea that he looks like the kind of “normal American teenager” to whom empathy and understanding are afforded (286). For Gay, the discourse exemplifies white privilege, which affords Tsarnaev the retention of humanity and a low threshold for forgiveness.

Gay compares the treatment of Tsarnaev to the treatment of Trayvon Martin. Where people looked for the good and humanity in Tsarnaev in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, people worked overtime to uncover Martin’s failings and demonize him, despite him being the victim. Gay identifies this difference specifically, and the way society sees danger generally, as racial profiling and points to New York’s “stop and frisk” laws as another example. She also cites Katheryn Russel-Brown on how America treats Black people as the repositories for its fear of crime and danger and on how media images reinforce this association. Gay concludes that the Rolling Stone cover indicates that danger cannot in fact be profiled.

In this essay, Gay discusses Paula Deen’s unapologetic racism to make the point that everyone could stand to improve in terms of racism. After Deen was sued by a former employee for workplace harassment, the deposition transcript revealed that Deen regularly engaged in racist behavior, such as using the N-word and making antisemitic jokes. Given that Deen is an older white woman from the Deep South, Gay is baffled by the public’s surprise at the revelations, although she acknowledges that her own lack of surprise reflects her biases and ideas about the South. She sees Deen’s casual racism as an indication of Deen’s cultural conditioning—that is, being surrounded by like-minded people who take racism for granted.

However, Deen’s behavior also defied the unspoken and complex rules of racism—i.e., knowing when, where, and with whom to exhibit racist behavior and how to behave in private and public settings. Gay cites Teju Cole on how the ensuing Internet uproar is really about Deen breaking those unspoken rules. Gay recalls an encounter with her landlord’s receptionist that illustrates the rules of racism in a multiracial context. She explains how the receptionist felt comfortable making racist comments to her about Korean neighbors. While Gay didn’t take the opportunity to educate the receptionist about the inappropriateness of racism, she does wonder why the receptionist felt comfortable displaying that racism to her and what the receptionist might actually have thought of Gay.

Gay discusses Anders Behring Breivik’s murder of eight people in Oslo, Norway, as well as 69 people (mostly teens) on the island of Utoya on the same day. Gay describes the tragedy as so incomprehensible that it tests the limits the language. She notes how the media discourse around Breivik largely expressed disbelief that someone who looked like him could perpetrate such an act, and she points out that the Wikipedia page on Breivik emphasizes his extreme views so as to explain how he could become such an egregious perpetrator. Even the King of Norway chose grace in his public speech on the tragedy. Gay posits that everyone has the capacity to do hurtful things but that the capacity for the scale of harm and how far people will go to assert their beliefs differ. She wonders what Breivik feels, although she admits that she fails to feel compassion for him. At the same time, she doesn’t want him to face the death penalty.

Gay argues that while social media and blogs offer space for the public to grieve collectively, some people use such media to distance themselves from emotional discomfort or to take political stances in the wake of tragic news. Thus, the Internet sometimes costs the public the privilege of time, space, and distance to properly think through, feel, and care about tragedy. An example is how people used social media to create a hierarchy of tragedy and grief in the aftermath of Breivik’s murders, suggesting that Amy Winehouse’s death, which occurred shortly after, was less deserving of people’s grief and compassion. Gay believes that people should understand that tragedy, grief, and compassion are multiple, not finite, and not neat.