Bad Feminist: Essays

by Roxane Gay

  There is no standard for trigger warnings, no universal guidelines. Once you start, where do you stop? Does the mention of the word “rape” require a trigger warning, or is the threshold an account of a rape? How graphic does an account of abuse need to be before meriting a warning? Are trigger warnings required anytime matters of difference are broached? What is graphic? Who makes these determinations?

  It all seems so futile, so impotent and, at times, belittling. When I see trigger warnings, I think, How dare you presume what I need to be protected from?

  Trigger warnings also, when used in excess, start to feel like censorship. They suggest that there are experiences or perspectives too inappropriate, too explicit, too bare to be voiced publicly. As a writer, I bristle when people say, “This should have had a trigger warning.”

  I do not understand the unspoken rules of trigger warnings. I cannot write the way I want to write and consider using trigger warnings. I would second-guess myself, temper the intensity of what I have to say. I don’t want to do that. I don’t intend to ever do that.

  Writers cannot protect their readers from themselves, nor should they be expected to.

  There is also this thought: maybe trigger warnings allow people to avoid learning how to deal with triggers and getting help. I say this with the understanding that having access to professional resources for getting help is a privilege. I say this with the understanding that sometimes there is not enough help in the world. That said, there is value in learning, where possible, how to deal with and respond to the triggers that cut you open, the triggers that put you back in terrible places, that remind you of painful history.

  It is untenable to go through life as an exposed wound. No matter how well intended, trigger warnings will not stanch the bleeding; trigger warnings will not harden into scabs over your wounds.

  I don’t believe in safety. I wish I did. I am not brave. I simply know what to be scared of; I know to be scared of everything. There is freedom in that fear. That freedom makes it easier to appear fearless—to say and do what I want. I have been broken, so I am prepared should that happen again. I have, at times, put myself in dangerous situations. I have thought, You have no idea what I can take. This idea of unknown depths of endurance is a refrain in most of my writing. Human endurance fascinates me, probably too much because more often than not, I think of life in terms of enduring instead of living.

  Intellectually, I understand why trigger warnings are necessary. I understand that painful experiences are all too often threatening to break the skin. Seeing or feeling yourself come apart is terrifying.

  This is the truth of my trouble with trigger warnings: there is nothing words on the screen can do that has not already been done. A visceral reaction to a trigger is nothing compared to the actual experience that created the trigger.

  I don’t know how to see beyond this belief to truly get why trigger warnings are necessary. When I see trigger warnings, I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel protected. Instead, I am surprised there are still people who believe in safety and protection despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

  This is my failing.

  But.

  I do recognize that in some spaces, we have to err on the side of safety or the illusion thereof. Trigger warnings aren’t meant for those of us who don’t believe in them, just like the Bible wasn’t written for atheists. Trigger warnings are designed for the people who need and believe in that safety.

  Those of us who do not believe should have little say in the matter. We can neither presume nor judge what others might feel the need to be protected from.

  But still.

  There will always be a finger on the trigger. No matter how hard we try, there’s no way to step out of the line of fire.

  The Spectacle of Broken Men

  Though I’ve lived all over the country, I have spent many years, off and on, living in Nebraska, both as a child and as an adult. Nebraska is Husker country. There is God and there are the Huskers, and sometimes their order of importance is, well, unclear. On game day, Memorial Stadium is the third-largest city in Nebraska. Even though he has long since retired as coach, a position he held for twenty-five years, there is Tom Osborne, seated at the right hand of the Holy Father. He is the current athletic director at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He handily won his congressional district and served in Congress for six years. At the height of Nebraska football, during the 1990s, Nebraska won the national championships in 1994 and 1995, and captured part of the championship in 1997. Osborne ascended somewhere above God. To Nebraskans, Tom Osborne is much like Joe Paterno is to the people of Penn State. Amen.

  In the 1990s, the unnecessary roughness of many Nebraska players was well known. Lawrence Phillips was probably the hottest mess on that team, always getting in trouble for one thing or another. His crimes, more than once, involved violence against women, but he was such a fine running back and that mattered more than the woman’s face he threatened to break. In those years, Nebraska players were getting arrested so much it was as if criminality had become a second letter sport for the players. The media would halfheartedly question Osborne about these “thugs,” and he’d talk about how he was able to see the good in flawed men. More often than not, these players were forgiven for drug and alcohol infractions and assault and rape allegations because they could move the football down the field. They could fill Memorial Stadium week after week. They could take our team to the championship game, over and over. They could take us to church. Amen.

  Nebraska certainly was not and is not unique. Neither is Penn State. College and professional athletes get away with all kinds of criminal behavior, and we must be comfortable with that criminal behavior because week in and week out we tune in to the football games and baseball games and basketball games and hockey games that showcase broken men carrying the hopes of millions on their backs. We cheer and buy jerseys and make rich men or soon-to-be rich men richer. When the truth about Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State football program was revealed, we were outraged, and rightly so, but there’s plenty more to be outraged about where athletes, coaches, criminality, and silence are concerned. We live in a culture where athletes are revered, and overlooking terrible, criminal behavior is the price we are seemingly willing to pay for our reverence. Amen.

  We’re supposed to give accused criminals the benefit of the doubt. We are supposed to at least consider the possibility that someone accused of a crime is, actually, innocent. It’s hard to do what we’re supposed to do sometimes.

  In high-profile cases such as the Sandusky case, it is very difficult to give the accused the benefit of the doubt. Being tried in the court of public opinion is the price highly visible figures must pay when they are accused of wrongdoing. Their penance begins well before they ever enter the courtroom.

  I was marginally willing to give Jerry Sandusky the benefit of the doubt before I watched his interview with Bob Costas on Rock Center at the end of 2011. I was willing to do so because I don’t want to believe a man is capable of sexually assaulting several children, for more than a decade. I don’t want to believe that same man is capable of getting away with such heinous crimes because of the prestige and power of his position. I don’t want to believe a coach who positioned himself as a paragon of moral virtue in a football program widely lauded for having a moral compass enabled such criminal and corrupt behavior. I certainly don’t want to believe a grown man watched a young boy getting raped and, instead of trying to stop the rape or notifying the authorities, called his father and then called his boss and did nothing more. I don’t want to believe a university would work to cover up this crime for years and years.

  There’s a certain crassness to an alleged pedophile being allowed to defend himself on national television. While our justice system is predicated upon the notion of the presumption of innocence until the establishment of guilt, there should be limits to what a highly visible figure can do to establish that innocence outside of the court of law.
There aren’t, though, not really.

  Like most people, I gather what legal knowledge I have from a little show called Law & Order. My grasp on most legal concepts is tenuous at best. On Law & Order, most defense attorneys strongly discourage their clients from taking the stand in their own defense. They also discourage clients from talking to the media. Innocent or guilty, it is too easy for accused criminals to incriminate themselves when their words are not managed and mediated by someone else. With the hellstorm that surrounded Jerry Sandusky, you have to wonder what kind of attorney would let that man speak to the media.

  I watched the Rock Center interview between Bob Costas and Jerry Sandusky. Beyond my general disgust for the proceedings, I realized Sandusky sounded like a broken, broken man. If he is guilty of the crimes he has been accused of—and yes, I surely do believe he is guilty, as does a court of law—Sandusky has been a broken man for a very long time. In that interview, he chose to reveal the ways in which he is broken, laid himself bare, however unintentionally.

  Or, perhaps, he sounded so desperately broken because he got caught, because he no longer has unfettered access to young boys and an elite athletic program. After more than fifteen years, the loss of that lifestyle must have been quite a blow. You never can tell what it takes to break a man down.

  If you ever want to know what guilt sounds like, listen to Sandusky try to explain his untoward actions with young boys over the years. His voice is haunting—weakened, I hope, by the gravity of his crimes. He talks of showering with the boys and roughhousing and touching them as if such behavior is normal. When asked, “Are you sexually attracted to young boys?,” Sandusky repeats the question. Instead of simply saying, “No,” which is what most people would say whether they were guilty or innocent, he says, “Am I sexually attracted to young boys? I enjoy young people. I love to be around them. But no, I’m not sexually attracted to young boys.” The denial is an afterthought.

  I give the victim the benefit of the doubt when it comes to allegations of rape and sexual abuse. I choose to err on that side of caution. This does not mean I am unsympathetic to the wrongly accused, but if there are sides to be chosen, I am on the side of the victim. I am glad such decisions are not left up to me because I don’t know how to be impartial. It’s all too close.

  There is no easy way out of this situation for anyone involved. Either Sandusky sexually abused young men or he didn’t, and the damage in either case is irreparable and runs deep. There are Sandusky and those surrounding him, a constellation of broken men—the victims and the men who enabled him, the men who looked the other way, year after year, men who would have to be broken to commit such inexplicable acts of silence and collusion.

  After the interview aired, more victims stepped forward and accused Sandusky of sexual abuse. Sandusky and his legal team continued to cast aspersions upon the victims while offering a hollow defense. They chose the age-old “blame the victim” strategy, which is, all too often, how broken men respond to these situations, making it seem as if the damage lies elsewhere even though their own fractures are plain to see.

  During Sandusky’s trial, we saw just how broken he really is and how he has, in turn, broken far too many others. The details that came out of that Pennsylvania courtroom are as repulsive as they are heartbreaking. There might be some small measure of justice for the victims—it’s too soon to tell. We can hope. The damage, though, has been done and it cannot be undone. The trial ended. Penn State will rebuild itself. A new football season will always start in Happy Valley and in Lincoln and in college towns all across the country, casting a wholesome veneer over ugly truths. Young men will break their bodies against one another while we cheer them on. Off the field, who knows what those young men will do. We will forget about Jerry Sandusky and his victims, even if we don’t mean to. This is how it goes. There’s always some new fracture in humanity to focus on.

  On Saturday, June 9, 2013, a father in central Texas found a man sexually abusing his daughter. The father beat that man to death, broke him so badly there was no coming back from it. There won’t be a trial. Justice, in this case, was swift and applied brutally. Many are calling this father a hero. Many of us would do the same thing, would get caught in a moment of blind fury in the face of such a violation. That father was remorseful. He wasn’t trying to kill a man. He was trying to save his daughter and he did, or at least, he saved what he could. He was not charged. Mostly, this story shows us how broken men are everywhere—on ranches in central Texas, in elite football programs, both on the field and on the sidelines. And alongside these broken men are the women who all too often become broken too. It’s a spectacle in every way.

  A Tale of Three Coming Out Stories

  We are still in that time in our history when public figures come out of invisible closets largely built by a public insatiable in its desire to know all the intimate details of the private lives of very public people.

  We want to know everything. In this information age, we are inundated with information, so now we feel entitled. We also like taxonomy, classification, definition. Are you a man or a woman? Are you a Democrat or a Republican? Are you married or single? Are you gay or straight? We don’t know what to do when we don’t know the answers to these questions or, worse, when the answers to these questions do not fall neatly into a category.

  When public figures don’t provide outward evidence of their sexuality, our desire to classify intensifies. Any number of celebrities are dogged by “gay rumors” because we cannot quite place them into a given category. We act like placing these people in categories will have some impact on our lives, or that creating these categories is our responsibility, when, most of the time, such taxonomy won’t change anything at all. For example, there is nothing in my life that is impacted by knowing Ricky Martin is gay. The only thing satisfied by that information is my curiosity.

  Sometimes, this zeal to classify has resulted in public figures being outed against their will. In particular, politicians who have gone on record for legislation that suppresses civil rights have found themselves in the glare of the spotlight. Congressman Edward Schrock was outed in 2004 because he voted for the Marriage Protection Act. There have been many others. When people have been forcibly outed, those doing the outing have said they were acting for the greater good or working to reveal hypocrisy, as if the right to privacy and the right to determine if and when to come out is only afforded to those who are infallible.

  This is, in part, a matter of privacy. What information do we have the right to keep to ourselves? What boundaries are we allowed to maintain in our personal lives? What do we have a right to know about the lives of others? When do we have a right to breach the boundaries others have set for themselves?

  People with high public profiles are allowed very few boundaries. In exchange for the erosion of privacy, they receive fame and/or fortune and/or power. Is this a fair price? Are famous people aware of how they are sacrificing privacy when they ascend to a position of cultural prominence?

  There are many ways we have surrendered privacy in the information age. We willingly disclose what we’ve eaten for breakfast, where we spent last night and with whom, and all manner of trivial information. We submit personal information when registering for social media accounts and when making purchases online. We often surrender this information without question or reflection. These disclosures come so freely because we’ve long been conditioned to share too much with too many.

  In his book Privacy, Garret Keizer explores privacy through a series of essays that consider privacy legally, from the feminist perspective, through the lens of class, and more. He demonstrates a real concern for how little privacy we have, how cavalier we can be with our privacy, and how unthinkingly we might infringe on the privacy of others. He says,

  We speak of privacy as a right but we might also think of it as a test, as a canary in the mine of our civilization. It lives or dies to the extent that we remain willing to believe that the human person, body
and soul—our blood relative in his or her flesh, and beyond reduction in his or her grandeur and nobility—is sacred, endowed with inalienable rights, and a microcosm of us all.

  We tend to forget that culturally prominent figures are as sacred to those they love as the people closest to us. We tend to forget that they are flesh and blood. We assume that as they rise to prominence, they shed their inalienable rights. We do this without question.

  One of the most striking arguments Keizer makes is that privacy and class are intrinsically bound together. He asserts that people with privilege have more access to privacy than people who don’t. Keizer notes, “Social class is defined in large part by the degree of freedom one has to move from private space to public space, and by the amount of time one spends in relative privacy.”

  This relationship between privacy and privilege extends to race, gender, and sexuality. When a woman is pregnant, for example, there’s increasingly less privacy because, as she reaches full term, her condition becomes more and more visible. Keizer remarks, with regard to pregnant women, that

  her condition is an unequivocally public statement of a very private experience, begun in circumstances of intimacy and continued within the sanctum of her own body—yet there is no hiding it for her, nor any denying the feeling we have that somehow she belongs to us, that she embodies our collective future and represents our individual pasts.

  Any time your body represents some kind of difference, your privacy is compromised to some degree. A surfeit of privacy is just one more benefit the privileged class enjoys and often takes for granted.

  Heterosexuals take the privacy of their sexuality for granted. They can date, marry, and love whom they choose without needing to disclose much of anything. If they do choose to disclose, there are rarely negative consequences.