Value City Furniture Credit Card

thank you all so much for attending our finalevent for the 36th annual gender studies symposium. my name is abbey griscom and i am one of thesymposium co-chairs, the past three days have been filled with passionate discussion, insightfulpanels, and meaningful workshops, we want to thank everyone for participating in thesymposium we also want to thank everyone who was apart of the symposium process and volunteeringas well and want to give an extra special

Value City Furniture Credit Card, thank you to kim brodkin who is the life forceand very much the only reason the symposium happens every year so thank you so much. we'veworked so hard to put together this symposium and i hope that you have enjoyed it as muchas we have, before i hand it over to shade to introduce our keynote speaker dr. roxanegay, i'd like to remind all of you of some

housekeeping notes, please silence your cellphone but also remember to live tweet during the even using the hashtag symposium lc gendersymp. we are recording tonights presentation and will post the video to the symposium websitein the upcoming weeks, no personal recording of the event is authorized. during the q&aportion of this event please approach one of the two microphones to ask a question,there is one microphone in the center isle and another on the left side of the room.after dr. gay's presentation she will be signing books in the gregg pavilion, please allowtime for dr. gay to be escorted out of the room before you leave, there will also bebooks for sale, we will ask you to form two lines, one for people who wish to purchasebooks to be signed and one of people who are

just waiting to have their book signed. thankyou so much for your attention and now i'm going to hand it over to shade. good evening.my name is shade samuelson and i'm one of the co-chairs of this year's gender studiessymposium, i'm honored and excited to introduce someone who probably needs no introductiondr. roxane gay, distinguished writer, professor, and feminist. every year the symposium strivesto bring speakers from interdisciplinary backgrounds to discuss the intersections between gender,sexuality, and other systems of oppression. in considering this year's theme point ofaccess, the co-chairs along with our incredible program director kim brodkin, unanimouslyagreed that dr. gay would be the perfect person to address issues of the access to and withinfeminism, academia, and social justice, no

one can ignore how relevant and importanta speaker like roxane gay is in this particular and political and social moment when it canoften feel as though the language surrounding oppression is itself alienating we need someonelike roxane gay whose refreshing and yet devastating revealing humor invites us to examine assumptionsabout modern society and culture. as dr. gay writes i no longer want to believe these problemsare too complex for us to make sense of them. i don't think i'll be alone in saying thatshe is one of the most distinctive, approachable, and necessary voices today. as those of uswho follow her loyally on twitter can attest she's been on tour since the beginning ofthe year promoting her new book of short stories difficult women which you should definitelypurchase next door in the pavilion after the

talk if you're able to. we really appreciatedr. gay in making the trip to be here with us tonight, roxane gay is probably best knownfor her new york times bestselling essay collection bad feminist, in her words, her work is aboutcreating new more inclusive measures for literary excellence, her essays explores topics oftenconsidered traditionally feminine such as romance novels, soap operas, and reality televisionand i know that a lot of us are wondering if she's going to let us in on who she thinksis going to win on the bachelor on monday. she's a hilarious commentator and dedicatedblogger on tumblr and even though our program director kim brodkin will probably never forgiveme for this, she swears by dr. gay's review of magic mike xxl and reads it whenever she'shaving a bad day or feeling sad and she also

has never seen the movie. in addition to writingbad feminist and difficult women, dr. gay is also the author of the short story collection,ayiti, the novel an an untamed state, and her forthcoming book, hunger. she's an opinionwriter for the new york times, and avid competitive scrabble player, a professor of english, andone of the founders of pink magazine, a literary magazine fostering access to emerging andinnovative poetry and prose. in roxane gay's writing she works to make feminism accessible,her critiques of aspects of pop culture are both politically and culturally astute. partof her broad appeal is in the way she is able to balance biting criticism with warmth andhumor. she shows us that there's a way to balance our effort to rid the world of violenceand injustice and also have fun, and roxane

gay's writing is just that, she's hilariousand honest and isn't afraid to be a difficult woman. so please help me in welcoming dr.roxane gay. well, hello it's been a pleasure to be here in portland, or. it took me a minutelike somedays i don't know where i am and i have to look at the weather app on my phoneand the very first screen will tell me where i am, but it's a real pleasure to be hereand shade is correct that review of magic mike xxl is the best thing i've ever writtenlike you know fuck the books whatever magic mike xxl was just transcendent and i thinkof it as a biblical text really. i don't know how many of you have seen it but in the moviemy husband channing gets, he gets just the feeling of dance and he's in his workshopat home and all of a sudden just all of a

sudden pony by ginuwine starts playing andwhen my husband feels the rhythm he can't control himself and so he starts grindinga piece of metal to the beat while thrusting his hips and then he starts having sex withall of the furniture in the room and when that happened, my soul left my body and ifinally understood why we take communion. it was just incredible and by the end of themovie the theater i was seeing it in women were throwing dollar bills at the screen andi mean that's just talent when you can i mean that's just talent so i write stuff in additionto writing about magic mike, i tend to write short stories which is actually the very first,its my first love and it's the first thing i ever started writing so i have a new bookout called difficult women so i thought i'd

read a couple stories from difficult womenand just have a conversation with you guys about anything including channing and hisneck but also current events because there's a lot going on. today's been a very interestingday. so often times when i am interviewed about my fiction, interviewers always askme you know what's the meaning or what was the inspiration and what they really wantis a very deep and profound answer about the inspiration so the story open marriage, iwrote it because i was watching a yogurt commercial for activia with jamie lee curtis and i justwatched that commercial and i thought i wanna be as happy as jamie lee curtis eating thisyogurt and so i went to the grocery store and i bought some activia which i do not recommend,it is the most disgusting thing like yogurt

syrup, it's just disgusting, and it does exactlywhat the commercial says that it does so if you're gonna get on an airplane or leave yourhouse in any way just plan accordingly. anyway, the first time i read this story, a womanin the audience threw up so i was like yes! so this is open marriage. we are having aheated debate about whether or not yogurt can expire when my husband suggests we staytogether but see other people. he says open marriage intrigues him, that he couldn't behappier but he read this article on lying this one time. i tell him yogurt cannot expirebecause it is filled with bacteria, i don't know if this is true but i have seen commercialsabout yogurt that mention things like bacteria and the word probiotic so i feel like i havea sufficient hand on the topic. i give him

a look, i say that he is welcome to try tofind other women to sleep with but i'm fine and his face falls because he thinks i'm playinga trick on him, i'm not he has no game, none, at all. if i hadn't taken matters in handwe would still be sitting on his couch in his bachelor apartment, his arm snaking aroundmy shoulders with every yawn, i am not worried he is the kind of man that gets ideas butis largely unable to follow through on them as we're talking he shoves his hands intohis jeans. this is something he does often wearing right through the pockets of his pants.he leans against the kitchen counter, he says he wants cultivating and open marriage tobe something we do together. i politely decline once more and say i'm not inclined to openup my half of the marriage which only confuses

him further because i'm quick tempered andwhat he calls feisty which means i talk back to him and give him road head once in a whileand i am the first woman who has ever done this in his very limited experience so it'sstill something of a novelty. it's still something that requires terminology, i take a bite ofthe yogurt that started our scientific debate, it expired more than four months ago, butit appears edible. when i dip my spoon into the container the yogurt gives way easily,it tastes very sour, my husband's face is red and sweat beads on his upper lip, he asksif i would seriously be fine with him having no strings attached sex with another womanand say yes baby of course, he tells me i'm amazing in bed, that is not about being unsatisfyingand then i say yes baby of course. i rock

his world on the regular and we both knowit, he can barely string three words together after we make love he just lies there tryingto catch his breath muttering goddamn over and over, i say good luck and be safe anddon't you break my heart baby, don't you break my heart. his eyes widen, i eat the entirecontainer of yogurt, even going so far as to scrape the sides of the container untilit is clean, i vocalize my appreciation for the expired yogurt and so a lot of elaboratesounds, spoon licking. i hold my husband's gaze the entire time, he was a virgin whenwe first met, he looks away first. so if you ever have a partner come to you and say iwould like an open relationship, just go to the yogurt, thank you. as a total aside, doesanyone here watch the bachelor? did you guys

notice how raven kept talking about her ex-boyfriendwho didn't make her orgasm, i was just like girl yes, don't stop, and so my question isis that man in witness protection now because everybody in the world knows he can't makea woman cum and i think that's awesome. i mean it just helps to know sometimes likeso you don't waste your time and so now every woman in his town can just be like mm no thanks.anyway about 17 years ago my parents moved to maples, fl and they moved into a gatedcommunity and we're from nebraska where people live in neighborhoods like normal people andwe were just like what is this gated community thing because everybody in florida lives ina gated community, even the shitty neighborhoods are in gated communities as if the gates arejust keeping the shitty in. and so i was just

really interested in these sort of intentionalcommunity and the kinds of people that choose to live in the and so this is a series ofvignettes called florida. thirty three, thirty three palmetto crest circle, the adjustmenthad been uncomfortable, all her life marcy had lived in the midwest with people who atered meat and starchy foods who allowed their bodies to spread without shame and then herhusband was transferred to naples, marcy's mother said "naples like in italy?" and marcysaid, "no, florida" and her mother said "oh dear." the women in naples all look the same,lean and darkly tanned, their faces narrow with hunger discipline, whittled by the samesurgeon. they stared at marcy's relatively ample physic with disgust or envy or somethingbetween the two. at night marcy worried about

her ass and thighs, her husband always said,"baby you are perfect" and she flushed angrily. his reassurances were so reflexive as to beinsulting. in omaha they lived in a neighborhood, in naples they moved into a gated community,palmetto landing, where each estate was blandly unique and sprawling. the first time theydrove up to the gate house man by a white hair gentleman in polyester, marcy leanedforward to study the landscaping, tall cupressus, and peruvian lilies blooming over the guardhouse. she sighed and said, "this is a bit much." her husband said," baby people lovethe illusion of safety and the spectacle of enclosure." they were given barcoded stickersfor their cars, their community had a country club, they joined because the transfer camewith a promotion and a raise. marcy's husband

said it was important to live up to theirnew station, he mostly wanted to play golf with men whose bellies were fatter than his.in palmetto landing, the men's bodies expanded at an inverse proportion to those of her wives.each morning there was a group fitness class at the clubhouse, spinning, zumba, kickboxing,always something different. the instructor was a young, agressively fit woman, caridad,the other wives loved to say her name, trilling their r's to show caridad, "ellas hablan espanol."marcy stood in the back of the studio in sweatpants and an old t-shirt of her husband's whilethe women around her perspired in their perfectly coordinated outfits that were fancier thanmost of marcy's wardrobe. marcy enjoyed the pleasant soreness as she drove the two blockshome after each class, she liked how for an

hour there was a precise set of instructionsshe was meant to follow, a clear sense of direction. the other wives were quietly fascinatedwith marcy in that she was a rare species in the wealthy enclave of first wife. ellenkats who lived three doors down, often squeezed marcy's shoulder with her cool bony hand,she'd say, "we're rooting for you kid" and offered words of encouragement as marcy'sfigure slimmed. marcy never knew what to say during these moments, but she smiled politelybecause she understood these people and how they existed only in relation to those aroundthem. forty four eleven, palmetto pines way, at first news of the brothel was only a rumor,men would rush in to and out of the spa in palmetto landing at all hours, often lookingharried on the way in and very relaxed on

the way out, but we had no proof. then evelynmarshall caught her husband getting a blowjob. she was getting a hot stone massage when sheheard a familiar groan from an adjacent room. i mean hmm. news spread through our smallcommunity quickly but no one alerted the authorities, we felt important having such goings on inour miss. in the afternoon, the therapists often sit on the large ledge behind the spain negligence and pen wars and heavy makeup, smoking and drinking bright colored fruitydrinks waiting for their next clients. my front balcony looks out on into this ledgewhere these ladies lounge, they're not as beautiful as you might imagine but they areinteresting and they talk loudly. they never seem to sweat despite the humidity, theirvoices are deep and velvety in the way of

women who know things, i sit on my balconymost of the afternoons wearing a pair of sunglasses, i hold a book in my lap and pretend to read.one of the women who works at the spa is very tall the kind of tall in a woman that makespeople stare, she has long dark hair that she always wears down. she is beautiful andi love looking at her and how she moves, the anger in her eyes, she caught me staring once,stood up, her robe falling open, she lifted a leg and propped it on the railing and pointedin between her thighs and through her hands in the air. i did not stop staring and shedid not close her legs. i went to see her. the woman at the desk studied me carefullyshe said, "nadia is one of our special therapists, she charges high fees." i said, "i know."the receptionist shrugged, soon after i was

escorted to the back, i heard interestingsounds, nadia had a thick russian accent but spoke english well. "you want message, candles,what" she asked. i said, "i want to fuck." the words felt heavy and strange in my mouth,nadia cocked her head to the side, "you are different" she said. later her tongue wascool and soft between my thighs, i twisted my fingers through her hair, resting my heelson her back. i wanted to explain myself. it took me a long time to cum, it always doesbut nadia was patient. i reciprocated her intentions, i was not afraid. as i was leaving,i ran into my next door neighbor, she pulled her purse closer to her body and looked away,i pressed my hand against my neighbor's shoulder as we passed. she still refused to look atme but she leaned into my touch, now nadia

stares at me when she's on her ledge and iam up on my balcony. i don't look away. my husband calls me a wildcat, after we makelove, he whistles under his breath and slaps my thigh and says, "woman, one of these daysyou're gonna kill me." on our wedding day, my mother pulled me aside the chapel, i wasonly half dressed walking around in white pantyhose, a corset, and white leather heels,my dress was a monstrosity of satin and cheffau and i wanted to wear it for as little timeas possible. we stood in a dark vestibule and my mother began straightening my curls,pulling them from my face, messing with the headband holding my hair back, she said, "lookbaby there is no mystery in keeping a man" she dabbed at my lipstick with a tissue shehad been holding folded in the palm of her

hand she said, "you do whatever sick thinghe wants, whenever he wants, and you will never have a problem." that was the only advicemy mother has ever given me. she and my father divorced when i was 9. thank you. thank you.i ask my parents not to read that book but they don't listen to me and then they getwhat they get. so i also write non-fiction and have thoughts and opinions about almosteverything, my opinions have opinions and so i've been thinking a lot lately, especiallysince november about this moment that we're in because we hear a lot of conversation aboutthis moment, and what's interesting is that the way people will talk about this momentis as if we're all encountering the same moment, but we're not, and so these are just somethoughts that i have about this age of american

disgrace. on tuesday, november 8th 2016, donaldtrump was elected president of the united states, i spent the evening watching electionreturn with each passing hour, the hope of hillary clinton as our first woman presidentfaded a little more, but i still held onto some hope because that was far easier thanfacing reality. although i don't think of myself as an idealist, i could not allow myselfto believe that a man like trump could be elected. i didn't even think that he was goingto guard other republican nomination. for some foolish reason, i believed that therewere enough people across the country who believed in social progress and the greatergood to overcome those who for whatever reason thought then to trump's harmful rhetoric.i am stunned even now. i am ashamed of being

so stunned and so unprepared to face thisamerican reality. the morning after the election, my mother called and i ignored my phone becauseit was 7am and according to haitian parents, if you're in bed at 7am then you've wastedthe entire day. i knew she was also calling to check in on me, i knew she was worriedbecause we had spoken throughout election night and i was taking it really hard becausewith each passing hour, i was watching all those little gizmos on cnn that we're predictingthe outcome and i just thought perhaps technology has finally failing us, alas it did not. afew minutes later she texted me, "the sun is shining today miss america and we're alivestill together and definitely stronger, wake up." i did not want to wake up or i wishedi was experiencing a nightmare and could wake

up in the world that we lived in on november7th, an imperfect world to be sure, but a world where reality star who goes by chitoliniwas not the president elect. i did not want to wake up in a world where suddenly everythingbecame precarious for far too many people. on wednesday i went about my day, i had toaccept that the world was not coming to an end, even though it felt that way. i did mediainterviews even though i had no idea what to say, i had no way of making sense of theincomprehensible. what do we do next? i was asked time and again and what i wanted tosay was i had no fucking idea. i couldn't because you're not allowed to curse on theradio. while i was running errands, the sun was indeed shining, the air was crisp on aperfect fall day, people were out living their

lives. at my gym, everyone bantered as theyusually do. the woman who works at the dry cleaners smiled and wished me a good day asshe usually does, and i wished her a good day as i usually do. life went on, at leastit seemed that way. i kept wanting to scream, "don't you know what's going on?" and at thesame time because i live in a fairly small town in indiana, i looked at each and everyperson and thought you probably voted for donald trump, how could you? do you have anyidea what you've done? in 2016 i did not write a lot about the presidential campaign andi regret that now, i wanted to but i did not have the words to express my support and admirationfor hilary clinton, or to express my frustration with the narrow field of candidates of democratsoffered or to express my horror at the shit

show that was the republican field of candidatesand how they consistently overcame very shallow expectations. now though i'm not so much interestedin re-litigating the election, what happened, happened and now we must face reality. i aminterested instead in figuring out where we go from here. i am interested in figuringout how we survive this age of american disgrace, and let us be clear to call what is currentlyhappening a disgrace is my way of being exceedingly polite. less than a month into his presidency,trump had already set into motion an executive order to build a wall between the united statesand mexico. he tried to dismantle the affordable care act. he lied repeatedly, he has spentthe past what four weekends at his florida estate where he has discussed matters of nationaland international security with no regard

for actual security. he has tried to ban muslimsfrom entering the country, including green card holders. he has ordered ice raids onundocumented immigrants, specifically targeting sanctuary cities. his former national securityadvisor, michael flinn was resigned, had to resign because flinn discussed sanctions withthe russian ambassador and then lied to the vice president, mike pence. flinn if you missedit let a vigorous chant of lock her up during the presidential campaign because you knowhilary clinton and these emails. throughout the campaign i did think about language eventhough i didn't write and i thought about how careless we got with the words we use.i thought about language because i'm a writer and words are how i make sense of the worldand my place in it. there were all kinds of

pithy catch phrases that became very popular.michelle obama said, "they go low, we go high." and for a woman in her position that madesense, she was beholden to the role of first lady and she was right in her belief in thatsometimes there is no need to sink lower than your opponent, but millions of people wenton to parent these words with no understanding of the world and how it really works. toomany people were and are invested in this idea of ideological purity and infallibility,to realize that there is no purity when fighting everything donald trump represents. thereis no high road with a man who appointed a white supremacist as his chief strategist.when they go low we have to be willing to go way lower if we have any hope of resistingtheir greedy, shallow, and insular brand of

fascism. the phrase, "love trumps hate" isequally loathsome because that is in fact rarely the case and in saying that over andover and over people were literally centering trump. language matters and sometimes it becomesand empty container for whatever bullshit people want to fill it with. go high, trumphate, be nasty, wear a pantsuit. the election results prove that love does not trump hatenot at all as catchy as it sounds, i am not a nasty woman because there is no reclaimationin how trump sees women and while pantsuits are a charming and fashionable rallying outfit,they are not going to get us to the promise land. i don't begrudge people who found comfortor solidarity in these words and ideas but goddamn we needed to do better then and weneed to do better now. we need to get uncomfortable

and that means moving beyond tighty wordsthat make up feel like the world is a better, more unified place than it actually is. thoseof us who are in the crosshairs of a trump presidency are devastated but our eyes arewide open, especially as the good white folk who voted for clinton keep centering theirwhiteness every chance they get. they are ashamed of their country and they keep voicingthis shame but i don't want you shame. i want your fight. i want to hear your voices risingabove the dim. not enough people with visible platforms are facing the ugly truth of whathappened in this election. the majority of white men and white women voted for trump.some feminists are shocked that white women would value their whiteness over their womanhoodbut people of color aren't surprised, the

precedent for this can be traced back to slaverywhat we're seeing are american racism and xenophobia and misogyny on full display. voterscan deny reality all they want but with the vote for trump they consented to everythinghe stands for. they now how to live with the discomfort of facing themselves from who theyreally are or what they're willing to tolerate, what is reaped must now be sown. i have alsobeen thinking about the phrase "identity politics" which is always used to dismiss the concernsof lived experiences of marginalized people. it's used to derail conversations about howidentity affects the ways in which we move through the world. identity politics is anaccusation that implies that we can somehow separate ourselves from the very things thatcontribute to who we are. it implies that

we can't both acknowledge and embrace ouridentities and also be part of a broader community. we're going to be hearing that phrase a lotin the coming years as marginalized people vocalized why our trump presidency is terrifyingand those who don't get it try to look the other way or absolve themselves of how theyare complicit and everything that comes next. i am a black bisexual woman. i am haitianamerican. i am a libra. i grew up middle class and then upper middle class. i'm fat. i'ma very lapsed catholic. my identity is political because so much of who i am is part of thepublic discourse subject to legislation, subject to discrimination and disadvantage, clearlythis is not the entirety of my life or who i am, don't get me wrong i actually got itreally good, in fact the work i do is not

for myself really, it's for the people whodon't have the privileges i do who needs someone to stand and speak and fight for them andwith them. that is how i think of using my freedom to speak and that is how i think aboutsanctuary, every month especially during february and march i am invited to various events witha vague mandate to speak on diversity and yes that word becomes the empty containerthat people also fill with whatever bullshit that they want, basically i'm invited to talkto and teach white people about things that are largely easy to figure out. i, like manypeople of color, am asked for solutions that i had no problem. i am asked for solutionsto problems that i had no hand in creating. i will be honest, i am so very tired of talkingabout diversity, i am so tired of the assumption

that as a black woman i somehow have accessto some magical negro wisdom about how to make the world a better more inclusive place.i do not. the word diversity has of late become so overused as to be entirely meaningless.in a 2015 article for the new york times magazine, anna holmes wrote about the delusion of thisword attributing its' loss of meaning to a combination of over used imprecision, inertia,and self serving intentions. the word diversity is at its most imprecise uses of placeholderfor issues of inclusion, retention, recruitment, and representation. diversity is a problemseemingly without solutions, we talk about it and talk about it and talk about it, nothingmuch ever seems to change. this is another way in which we are careless with languageas if by simply saying the word diversity

we're somehow doing something or created actualchange. that's not at all how it works. change requires intent and effort and materials toport which in most cases is robust and long term financial commitment and always changerequires a little or a lot of imagination, a willingness to think differently, reactdifferently and act differently. and so i've also been thinking about allies, i think aboutquite a lot. i am done with allyship but particularly when the term ally is used as noun ratherthan a verb. i am done with allowing ourselves the comfortable distance provided by allyship.i will not allow myself that comfortable distance anymore, we can't afford it. the challengesthat marginalize people are facing today, tomorrow, and for the forseeable future haveto be taken on by all of us as personal. we

have to fight for and with each other. sincenovember people have asked me to make sense of what happened and have asked me about whatwe do next and i am still looking for those answers, but i am looking. i know that wehave to fight even if i don't know what that fight looks like, i know that we need sanctuarymore than ever. i know that we need to raise our voices and keep them raised so that weare heard. i still need time to hurt and rage but i recognize that we can't do nothing.i am thinking about the ways in which we as everyday citizens can participate in our localelections this year and the midterms next year and of course the 2020 presidential election.i am thinking about ways in which we can more effectively prioritize our social justiceand economic justice, i'm thinking about how

we must continue to protest. we cannot becomefatigued, we need to strengthen our communities by understanding where strength among us ismost needed. we need to run for office. we need to be disciplined and well-organizedand we need a whole lot of money. we need to protect ourselves and each other, whenwe use our words, we have to do so with care and intent. i have to believe that we willget through this and not only survive but thrive. it is a fragile hope but despite everythingi need to hold onto a little hope. i need to be able to breathe. i need to believe thatthere is grace beyond disgrace. thank you. so i love to do q & a's because i find thatthat's a way of generating really interesting conversations and so i am happy to take questionsfrom the microphones there oh this one's going

to go in the middle. and there's also oneover there and just make sure you have an actual question, no because sometimes peopleget up there and i'm like what you need is a blog. first of all thank you for being hereit's great to have you and thank you to the co-chairs and kim for making my black girldreams come true, so my question for you is if you've gotten a chance to listen to nickiminaj and remi maz current feminist discourse and i know people are laughing but i reallymean it seriously you know and my questions around you know how can we take seriouslyto black fem rappers and not laugh at them when it's mentioned in an academic space?you know how can we you know in thinking about the theme of access how can we take them seriouslyas to feminist engaging and really important

dialogue around representation and you knowremi's diss track use the instrumental of noz and so i think that made me think a lotabout access and yeah have you had a chance to listen to it? yeah i have, i listened tosheather oh what like 8 minutes of it and remi was like i am going to enunciate everysingle word and you are going to know exactly how i feel about miss nicki minaj, what? ohand i listened to part of the other one, the new one frauds, no frauds? and first of allnicki waited too long, it's too late, like the ship has sailed of like if you can't comeup, i mean you're a rapper this is your job you're supposed to be able to rejoinder immediatelyand she did not so you know but i think that we have the question is i mean we have totake them seriously because this is really

interesting to see women engaged in rap battling,which is something that has always been in the per view of men and not only are theyengaged in it but the level is good, it's high. i thought that sheather was incredible,i mean it went on too long it was like girl we get it you can cut this out but you knowi think that these kinds of things actually create more access because i think now morewomen artists are going to feel like yes i can get in the mix this way. what's interestingis that they're kind of like there are not a lot of women mc's right now on the gameand it's odd. what's also odd is that they are both still heavily backed by men, remima doesn't go anywhere without fat joe and doesn't do anything without like fat joe asif he's providing legitimacy for her and then

nicki had drake which whatever and i'm likethat's mistake one, how are you going to have a comeback with drake on it? and then shealso had lil wayne on their and so again she was sort of using male legitimacy in thisengagement with another woman and so i think that that was interesting so there's a lotthere but i think the it's we have to take it seriously and anyone who wouldn't takeit seriously doesn't really understand what's happening and doesn't understand context andis just not a good person. hi. hi. i'm kind of boring myself with this question, but whatdo you make of fake news especially as it nudges ordinary people sitting at home infront of their computers? yeah, this fake news thing is fucking exhausting, i just don'teven know. it's really interesting how quickly

our vernacular can change in this countrybecause last year fake news just started entering the vernacular and now everyone's using itas a punchline, they're using it to just fake news is now becoming synonymous with lies,it's just all very odd, you know but there is a danger to actual fake news and i thinkthere's a danger to how ubiquitous the term is becoming. you can't use the term fake newsfor anything that you disagree with or anything that's you know a lie. fake news is a veryspecific phenomenon of people creating false news stories to control the political narrativeand i think that we need to be very specific about fake news and how we refer to it, otherwiseit becomes diluted and the people at home who are not really literate who believe fakenews and who don't know that a fake news site

is a fake news site are increasingly or youknow they're every more susceptible to what's going on there and so i think we have to bea lot more careful with how we talk about fake news because right now it's just outof control. yes hi, hi. so i'm a pretty avid twitter follower of yours and i was watchingyour live tweets of the of the oscars and i wanted to get your live in person reactionsof the oscars this year, especially the craziness of the end. oh so you just want me to talkabout that? i mean it's not really a question, it's just so that like i mean i know you reallywanted moonlight to win and i know you really wanted denzel to win, but yeah no i can takeor leave denzel, denzel was i think denzel overacted in fences. i thought viola deservedbest actress and i was disappointed but she

agreed to be put up for best supporting actressbecause i think everyone in hollywood knew that emma stone was going to get best actressand if i were viola i wouldn't want to lose to emma stone. emma stone is she seems delightful,i like her but viola is on a whole other level of craft and so i would've just smacked somebodyso i get what viola did there. you know the oscars are interesting and i do enjoy watchingaward shows because a i want an oscar but i also enjoy spectacle and the pomp and circumstanceand so this year's oscar's is particularly interesting because it was a fairly good yearin terms of diversity if we think of diversity in an extremely narrow way, black and white,and i think hopefully what this year will do is open the conversation to where are themovies featuring latinos? and where are the

movies featuring asian people? and south asianpeople? and pacific islanders other than moana? we had like one. and we have to stop beingso narrow in our conversation but at the end what happened with moonlight that was justa travesty of such you know it's a travesty in terms of it's not like the world is comingto an end but it's also still a problem and i was just stunned and then the way in whichpeople were applying the white save your narrative to what the producer from la la land did whichi thought and i even said on twitter what i think was gracious and lovely but i don'tthink that we need to write entire news articles about it. i feel like 140 characters was sufficientthanks and the media did not agree and so that was interesting and so yeah the oscarsthis year were interesting but i love to live

tweet it's just fun and just to read everyoneelse's opinions and talk about the dresses and there were just some odd choices in termsof the dresses and damien chazelle his upper lip hair, i can't. i just wanted to just runon stage and just you know shave it a little bit, just a lot, just take it off. it doesn'tmake you look older, stop just you're going to look ten just deal with it. what's youquestion? oh, oh! i'm wondering what you think about the connection between academics andactivism, often times i feel like what's going on in reality and what's studied in academicsphere in an institution is different, but both are very valuable and if you ever thoughtof the role of academics, especially in the next few years? it depends on the academic,i think academics with the protection of tenure

need to be leading activist efforts, i thinkthat unfortunately like 60 percent of the profit is vulnerable and can't and so it'snot a simple question, at many institutions adjunct faculty are the majority, but theyare in a very precarious position where they're working on contracts if not from semesterto semester, they're working from here to here, and so it's challenging but i do thinkwe need to see more faculty who are in a position to be politically active become more politicallyactive. we don't see a lot of activism in academia, in certain fields we do see it inthe humanities i think, most of the humanities professors i've ever met have an activiststreak that runs deep and in the sciences not so much because they're all about youknow rationalism and facts and so on as if

we don't deal with these things in the humanitiesit's weird, i don't know what they think we do but you know it's a challenge though becausethere's a certain amount of privilege that comes with being in academia and i think oftentimes you forget that and people in academia you do what you do based on how you were trainedand so many of us were trained in a very specific canonical way that does not privilege activism,and i think that's why we see that split between what happens in the academy and what happensin activist circles, but you know and i when i look at my own teaching so i was originallyteaching my fiction workshop this semester as a novel writing workshop and then afterthe election on november 8th i was just sitting around or november 9th i guess i was justsitting around and i was like i can't just

teach a novel writing workshop and just likeread some sad novels about divorces, i can't do it and so i'm teaching writing the politicalnovel and making my students engage with politics because creative writers love to indulge inthe fantasy in that we can separate politics from art and i disabuse my students aboutthat everyday and so i think that there are ways in which we can start to do that, wherewe incorporate forms of activism in our curriculum. thank you. yes, my understanding of a lotof bad feminist the book you wrote in 2014 was about finding place to accept things thatare not necessarily feminist or don't jive with your political leanings but still enjoyingthem, you also wrote about how you used to date a lot of libertarians and my goal forstarting from november 8th was to never fuck

a republican and but the problem was thatalso goes to interpersonal relationships where there are people in my family that don't necessarilyagree with me politically and they also disagree with me politically in ways that erases partsof my identity so i was wondering if you had anything to say about that kinds of relationshipwhere its someone that you love and finding a space in your heart for someone that doesn'treally find space for who you are? yeah i wish i had an easy answer it's really hard,after the election i was just like it's time to cut them off, like we can't these are notpeople who think that we deserve to live as queer people, and how do you have a rationaldiscussion but it's easier said than done, it is easier said than done. i have an actuallyrepublican brother, he did not vote for trump

to be clear he's black, but he's a republicanwhich is weird because he's black and we actually we stopped talking for several months becausei can't i was just like how on earth could you be a republican and be conservative inthis world? he's socially liberal, but he's you know everything is not so much and soi had to really just remember that he is my brother and that is an indelible bond andso what we've been able to do is just try and really listen to each other, it's noteasy but we have conversations where i do try to hear him out on physical conservatismand it's nonsense but i try. i try very hard and i will say to his credit that he triesvery hard to listen to me, it really just comes to comes down to listening and beingwilling to listen and being open and also

recognizing that you might just have to agreeto disagree. the challenge is that so many of the issues we're dealing with we can'tagree to disagree, we cannot agree to disagree about equality and civil rights. we can'tlike this bathroom bill situation that we're seeing that is so rampant across the countrylike that's not a agree to disagree thing this is about human dignity and so that'sthe challenge and i think what we do in these cases is try and make it clear that we aretalking about matters of human dignity to the people who may not see us or accept usas we are and who are politically opposed but we still love them and just say like youbring it to this idea of dignity and just having the right to be human and so be safeand some people will hear that some people

won't and when people won't hear that, thenthey cannot be reached and that's when it comes to a place of having to make a verydifficult decision. you're welcome. hi. hi, so you obviously have like in some ways avery hard stance on people who not very hard line stance on people who are like disregardyour identity and stuff like that, but i was wondering on your opinion on non-violenceversus this violent protest because i just saw the documentary "i am not your negro"from the works of james baldwin and in it baldwin talks about martin luther king andhe talks about how martin luther king is like the white people's activist and it's whatactivists, the white people, want because he's non-violent and he doesn't like demandtheir respect technically that's kind of his

words and so i was wondering on your opinionon that? opinions on violence versus non-violence? yeah. in the current day and like differentmovements. yeah, i think james baldwin was, i think james baldwin is brilliant and i agreewith him on many things, but i also think that he fundamentally misunderstands martinluther king jr and misrepresents martin luther king jr to sort of support his own argument.martin luther king jr believed in non-violence but he did not believe in passivity and heis not the passive black man that white people have turned him into over the past 30 years,and so non-violence doesn't mean passivity, it means we're not going to take things toa place of doing physical harm to one another, but i think of what happened in berkeley recentlywhen milo yiannopoulos went to speak there,

which what? have you heard of berkeley? imean of all the schools just like berkeley, it was never going to happen my friend andthe students started protesting and throwing molotov cocktails and people were like reallyjust getting all freaked out like, "oh my god it's getting violent!" that's actuallythrough being destructive for a purpose and i think that's totally fine. i think that'snecessary. it got the job done, you know people have a really odd understanding of revolutionthat's this quaint and tiny thing, that's not how change happens. you have to get inpeople's faces and i think for me non-violence is that we're not going to physically harmone another but if a cvs get's hurt in the process well that's just fine because cvsis not a person and it does not have feelings,

so yeah i there are people that disagree andare certainly taking non-violence to another level and i respect that but i am not a buddhist.regarding your book, how to be heard, which made news when you dropped it and droppedthe book deal with simon and truster when they signed milo yiannopoulos. beyond creatinga separate platform for your voice what do you recommend to young people who are attemptingto combat this new strain of far right ideology? that's a great question. you know i thinkyou have to, i don't know how we combat it honestly because it's so attractive to somany young people and i think one of the key things is that we have, it's about entitlementand that we have to start having very frank conversations about entitlement in this countrybecause entitlement i think is also what lead

to donald trump being elected. a lot of peoplereally believe that they deserve the american dream without recognizing that if you're alivein america and you have a roof over your head, that is the american dream. and a lot of youngpeople that feel disenfranchised and are gravitating to these alt-right movements don't recognizethat it doesn't get better than this you're a white guy. like this is it, like and ifyou can't make that work. i just don't know like how do you and that's the thing theydon't want to hear that and so they gravitate to these people like milo and richard spencerwho make them feel like 'yes there's a promised land if we could all just go to idaho andhang out.' and idaho is a wonderful place, i have been there it's gorgeous but it's thereare parts of idaho where i would not go and

so i think we just have to have frank conversationsabout entitlement and you know what these people seem to really want is socialism withoutrecognizing it. like there are programs where everybody can have a lot and it's called socialismbut they don't want to hear that and so we just say it's really about addressing entitlement.hi, i'm a new writer and you mentioned that you teach in a class about the political novel,writing the political novel, i'm just wondering for the rest of us that can't take that class,you know what ways we can combine activism and writing right now because i'm not surehow to do that? yeah, you know a lot of times people think that to be political as a writermeans that you have to take on a very specific agenda and that like every word on every pagehas to be like ra ra ra damn the man, and

to write i think as a person of color, towrite as a woman, to write as a queer person, to write as a trans person, these are thingsthat are inherently political because literacy was denied to us for so long, and i also thinkthat people need to understand what political means and whenever you write about the stateof this world and when you write about culture and social issues, you are engaging in politicalfiction. and so what i'm trying to teach my students this semester is to broaden theirunderstanding of what it means to be political and to recognize that the artistic in thepolitical can coincide. that you can comment for example i have a student who is writinga novel about a soldier who comes back from afghanistan and he's really wanting to critiquethe military because he's a former soldier

and so we're talking about ways in which hecan do that critique by highlighting the realities of what it's like to come back to the unitedstates and rejoin society after being in a very rigid environment and a very disciplinedenvironment like the military and i have another student who's writing about identity and raceand what happens when you decide to issue labels and i'm just letting students understandthat it can be about really anything, it's just a question of prioritizing craft as muchas you prioritize the political, and make sure that you're saying something that hasn'tbeen said or that is offering some insight that perhaps our culture is in great needof and so we're also, we read as much as we write in my fiction workshops and so we'rereading "the sympathizer" by viet thanh nguyen

and "the handmaid's tale" by margaret atwood,"the americana" by chimamanda ngozi adichie and "disgrace" by j. m. coetzee, and theseare all i think beautiful, flawed, political novels, where they can look and see in whichwriters engage in politics and the social realm, but also art creating just masterfulworks of fiction, and so often times it's not that you have to have an agenda or a checklist,it's that you have to engage with the world and say something about the world that onlyyou can say. thank you. you're welcome. hi, i'm a black person. can you hear me? yeah,hi. i'm an artist at my local high school and i want to pursue a career in comics orbeing a cartoonist and i was wondering if you had any advice on integrating politicsinto fantasy in a way that pushes boundaries

and that's unapologetic but also doesn't discourageviewers from allowing people of all ages to interpret my message. yeah i think that ta‑nehisicoates's current run of black panther is an excellent example of blending politics andart in the comic book form and there's so much happening on every page it's really aboutrevolution and change and you know pretty much anything you do is going to be age appropriate.children are sophisticated and it's okay to engage children in politics and in thinkingabout social change and revolution. children know more than we give them credit for andso i wouldn't worry so much about age appropriateness. age appropriateness in the comic book industryis really about sex, that's what they're afraid of, they're not afraid of violence, they'renot afraid of tackling themes like for example

black lives matter, they're really just afraidof sex and so find the story that you want to tell and just tell it. thank you. hello,hi. i was wondering, you were talking about how during the election you didn't write asmuch because you didn't feel like you had the maybe i don't know the words to writeit yet. i'm sorry that microphone is really weird, it's not you. i'm really quiet i'msorry. no that microphone is really weird, the sound is distorted can you maybe use thatmicrophone because that one works. better? yes. i was wondering because you were talkingabout how during the election you didn't feel or you didn't write as much, partially i thinkit's because maybe you didn't have, didn't know the words to use or how to write it,and i was wondering as a writer how you kind

of coordinate wanting to write about politicalthings, but not knowing how to? and especially when it feels so pressing in the moment andwanting to be present and speaking in that moment but not knowing exactly how to. youknow it's challenging. i didn't write a lot about the election last year mostly becausei was exhausted and what i mean by that is when i write my columns for the new york times,the level of harassment i receive increases by a fact of 100, it's just, it's so frustratingand i knew that if i dared speak hillary's name, it was going to be all hell breaks loose.but when it comes to writing politically, i really wait until i feel the fire and wherei feel like i have to save something so after the charleston murders in south carolina anddylann roof, after i read a story about a

young girl in cleveland, texas that was gangraped, after something happens that just seems so horrific, jerry sandusky and what he didand how joe paterno enabled his abuse of young boys for so long, i get the fire, and that'swhen i know i have to say something. i also always ask myself what can i say that mattersand that no one else is saying? and i also ask myself would it be better for me to speakin this situation or would it be better for me to turn to others and learn? and i thinkthat's a really important question for anyone who wants to write about their opinions andwants to write non-fiction in the political realm needs to be able to ask and answer becauseyou shouldn't think yourself and expert on everything simply because you have an opinionand we see that all the time there's so much

work out there that is just so bad and it'sjust so you know someone who's desperately writing just to generate and so you have toreally care, you have to really feel, and you have to know that you have something tooffer to the conversation that nobody else can, and so that's for me really the measure.thank you. thank you. hi. hi. first of all thank you so much for differentiating asiansand south asians, that's just thank you. you're welcome. i mean you know. i'm an internationalstudent here so i'm from india, i'm indian, that's indian indian. my question was thatduring the whole election thing and even now as a person who is not a citizen but is stillliving in this country, i cannot vote, i do not understand enough of the political systemto say to much about it, and there are only

so many facebook statuses you can make, untilyou start feeling like you're screaming at a wall, half of which agrees with you, theother half is not listening, and i was wondering what can be done about that? or anything.yeah i mean i think that you're position is unique and there are many people in your positionright now wondering, "what do i do when i can't influence with the current politicalsitutation with my vote?" what you can do is volunteer, and i think that's one of thebest things any of us can do right now is volunteer with community organizations whetherit's registering people to vote, ironically enough, or helping people volunteering atcitizenship training organizations, volunteering at shelters, food banks, anywhere these areorganizations that are going to see a sharp

decrease in federal funding over the nextfour years and are going to need support and i think that's one of the best political statementsthat you can make, also i think it's important even though you're not a citizen just to payattention, to read, and to be engaged, you're allowed to have opinions, you're a citizenof the world and i think just staying informed, and you seem incredibly informed so you'rewell on the path, you're doing what you need to be doing, thank you so much, you're welcomeso much. hi, so i okay in this time right now i struggle a lot with binding a way tokind of validate my kind of own opinions and you know have opinions that i think are worthsharing so i was just wondering how you validate your own opinions and how you get the confidenceto send your message out there. yeah you know

the thing is a lot of, the number one emaili get is from people who say, "i would like to send you, or they don't even ask, theyjust send me their work" and say "am i good enough to make it?" and i can't answer, wella, i don't have enough time, but b i can't give you that validation. it's hard as a writer,i tend to be generally insecure and you still have to find a way to have a gut belief inyourself and your voice, while also being profoundly insecure, and so what i just tellmyself is, and i tell myself almost everyday when i'm writing non-fiction, nobody can narratethe world i can, and what that means is that i'm an individual, and i have a backgroundand a culture, and these things shape how i see the world. i have various identity markersthat shape how i see the world, and so i try

to think of what makes me unique? and i tryto take that a step further when i'm writing and make sure that what i'm putting on thepage doesn't sound like anything anyone else is doing and that's where i find the confidencewhere it may not be perfect, it may be very raw, but i know that nobody else can do whatroxane gay is doing and you have to find that way to believe that nobody else can do, youdon't need to validate your opinions, your opinions are your opinions and i see thisfrom young women quite a lot where they they feel like they need some sort of imprimaturon their opinions, but if you have an opinion it's valid, unless of course it's a reallyweird opinion like if you said " i don't like the fast and furious movies" i would justbe like that's an invalid opinion, get out.

other than that in general you know your opinionsare valid, what your challenge is as a writer is that you need to show the reader why youropinions are valid by supporting your argument well and thinking about what you audienceis going to need to get on board with you and so it's all in the work. you're welcome.hi. hi. over the past few months i've heard of a few different people say that while theytotally feel that people should express their gender in any way they like, whichever pronounsthat they like, they have a problem with the use of they, them because they're mind isvery grammar oriented and i like personally don't really think that's a real, the realreason for that but it's kind of hard to like have a conversation with them about such issuesif they're set on the idea that it's simply

because it's having to do with the grammar,its having to do with something that's like you know unrelated and i was just wonderinghow you think we should respond to these types of objections? you don't. i mean well no youdo have a response which is would you really deny someone they dignity and write to beidentified correctly because of grammar? like who the fuck are you? come on! i mean anothercommon question i get is like people wanting to know how do i reach someone who has a stupidopinion? you don't, you really don't and i think it's such as cop out that i've heardand i'm forty-two and i grew up in a very different time where there were two gendersand that was it, and my birth certificate was pink and my brother's birth certificateis blue, and it takes time to adjust but we

have to get on board, this is reality, thisis the world and people who are holding onto that's grammatically incorrect are the samepeople who don't understand that language is flexible, that language evolves, and thesame kinds of people who have denied multi-literacies and code switching and so you just put themin their place and make them read, thank you. i'm tall, hi. me too. hi. first, i want tosay thank you because i am feeling extremely grateful to be able to hear to speak and thatyou are in oregon and portland and yeah, thank you. you're welcome. so my question is aboutyour upcoming book, hunger, and i've immersed myself in essentially in fat politics in thelast year and one i'd love to hear whatever you have to tell us about the book comingout and also what what are your go to's in

taking care of yourself? as you navigate theworld? yes, my next book which comes out in june, which i am still finishing, it's sobad, it's so bad right now, it's bad, the book is written to be clear the book is donebut i'm revising right now and i my copy of microsoft word got corrupted and i lost allmy revisions, so that's what i'm doing tonight! that's what i've been working on all weekwhen i can and so my next book is called hunger and it's a memoir of my body and it's a bookabout trauma and obesity and when i was twelve i was gang raped and i was a good catholicgirl and i was a virgin and it was the most, i just was not prepared for something likethat i didn't even know that this was a thing that a human being could experience and soi gained a lot of weight and on purpose because

i was so small and i couldn't fight and soi was like well that's not going to happen again and it just felt safer to be big andthen thirty years later like woah shit what did i do? and so the book is about sort ofcoming to terms with that this was deliberate and why and what it's like to live in a worldthat is very inhospitable to overweight bodies, it's very very horrible world and it's a bookthat i think that many fat actvists are not going to love and that hurts very much becausethey've already, some people have already like started taking the book to task eventhough it's not done, which is odd but this is my story, it's a memoir, it's not a textbook,it's not a an indictment of anyone, it's just my life and it's been the most difficult bookthat i've ever had to write because when you

have an overweight body people have a lotof opinions about you and they share them constantly and so this is my way of takingcontrol of the narrative and saying you can put whatever you want on me but this is mytruth and it's hard to just put this out there and to just admit some of the things thati've held closely over a very long time, but i also think it may be some of my best writingso we'll see. thank you i'm looking forward to it. thank you and in terms of taking careof myself, i'm really horrible at it and i need to get better and i recently got, mypartner lives in la and i recently got an apartment there before we i don't know takeit up to the next level and so that's i go there to just reconnect and just be soothedand anyway it's wonderful she's my best friend

so. i know. also she's mega hot. hi, and thankyou so much for coming, my question also deals with self-care, i'm also from the great midwestand you spoke about this in your talk, kind of the constant anxiety of living in a veryred state and just seeing the people that you interact with on a daily basis and inyour community and thinking you're fundamentally opposed to everything i stand for, so i thisis something that we're all going through and trying to figure out how to navigate andi was wondering if you had any suggestions or how do you self-care in living in a redstate? yeah you know my, i don't recommend what i do for self-care in a red state whichis i don't interact with anyone where i live honestly, i got a really good cable packageand so i have all the channels like i even

had like the obscure channels and the weirdlike sports networks for every region and i do not watch sports and so i just made myapartment very comfortable so that i don't have to engage unless i absolutely have to.i have found indiana to be the most miserable place i've ever lived and i'm from nebraska.i love nebraska actually, nebraska's delightful, but i just it's hard and you know it's reallyhard but that's said for the most part the people where i live are very kind and i juststruggle because it's like you would deny me the right to live, you would deny me theright to marry my partner, you would deny me so much because of your opinions and yourreligious beliefs which i never want to denegrate or disrespect. it's just hard, and so it'shard to balance generally these are people

that are not evil, but they are not good enoughto see beyond themselves and to recognize that i deserve as much dignity as they doand so i have gotten to the point where i'm so burnt out from being in a rural americawhich i've been doing for twelve years now, that i've disengaged and i have found thatthat has made me very happy. thank you, your welcome, you've given me some hope for livingin kansas, you live in kansas? wichita, oh i'm sorry, yeah it's also miserable, wow asbad as indiana is i know that kansas is worse, damn. thank you, you're welcome. hi my questionhas to do with i guess i recently read the essay that you wrote about rape culture andthe way that it's portrayed in the media and like in soap operas and various media we treatit like a titillating topic and as a survivor

of sexual assault myself i feel like i'm strugglingto know when is the right time and place to share my experience with the world, with myfriends, with on facebook, without having it just dismissed as a kind of thing thatwe hear over and over, i mean it's such a i guess this is a messed up question, it'ssuch a hard topic and i feel like this rage that we're not speaking about it because it'staboo but i also don't want to share it in a like gossipy way, i was wondering if youhave like any input or advice on like how to be vulnerable, what feels right? when,like what your process was in going through that? thank you. yes, that's a big question,you know it's a very personal thing, there's just there is no unilateral answer for whenyou disclose, i think it just depends on context,

why? why do you want to share your story ina given situation? and if you are satisfied with the answer to that question that's whenyou disclose. it took a long time for me to start to talk about it and in fact when badfeminist came out, i don't, i'm not proud of this but i didn't tell my parents and theyfound out from times magazine, which don't do, but my mom, it actually helped, becauseit helped my parents understand me a whole lot more and my mom asks why are you writingabout this? why do you need to say this? and i told her because i've been keeping it insidefor so long and it was killing me, and i guess i just needed to be heard, i needed peopleto know like what can happen to a girl, and so you just that's when i knew it was theright time, like i just knew and i see there's

so much sexual violence in this world, andstill people have to explain that this happens, and that is has repercussions and that everyoneis different and that there is not a singular story of what it means to survive sexual violenceand as long as we have these skeptics and these people who need to be taught about therealities of it, we're going to need to tell our stories and so you know its really justa question of answering for yourself why and being satisfied with that answer. you're welcome.hello, hello. my question has to do with like relationships and the sexualization of femalebodies and like as i grew up i felt like my body was always sexualized when i was youngand i was told i wasn't allowed to wear certain things in school and like throughout highschool and even now i feel like sometimes

i'll get weird looks because i like showingoff my body and i'm currently in a relationship and i love my boyfriend a lot but i feel likesomething we disagree on sometimes and like i know he doesn't want to but like he feelsuncomfortable because he knows how people sexualize my body when i go out and i don'tknow how to communicate to him that like the way that i dress is me showing my personalitynot me trying to like show off or i don't know, i just if you have any advice on thattopic? oh, girl, i mean your boyfriend needs to grow up. i mean he seems nice but. he'sa great guy and he doesn't want to like disagree like and he's like "i don't wanna make youchange or anything like that" but i don't want to say like not share my opinion. yeahi understand, you know i, he's human but like

you don't have to expain yourself, you don'thave to justify like that you have to convince him like that's not how it works, that's justnot how it works. i mean that's how it works but that's not how it works. you just youshouldn't have to explain yourself, if you want to wear clothes that show off your killerbody then just show of your killer body and just be like "i'm going to do me." and youget to benefit and you can never control what other people are going to do, they're goingto sexualize you no matter what you're wearing, literally, people sexualize nuns, okay andi mean i get it, you know i look at that, i look at that habit and i'm like what ismary margaret doing under there? so you have to stop worrying about the outside world,i'm mean it's easier said then done because

we live in a society where women are punishedwhen we you know wear revealing clothing and so on, but yeah you just have to do you becauseyou're never going to get him on board and if he wants to be mr. caveman in this oneregard you can allow it it's a little sexy and he just has to get on board and if hedoesn't i trust you some other man will. thank you. thank you. alright, thank you so muchfor coming out tonight you guys have been a delightful and warm audience and it wasa pleasure to come to this lewis & clark gender symposium.

Tweet

Subscribe to receive free email updates: