It’s more than everyday slights, but there’s a commonality in the narrative voices that shows the reader: this is any woman. Rape culture is a giant umbrella, and this book of essays shows its size. The power of them comes not from lengthy diatribes and disturbing details, but from the number of women (and others) willing to speak up about experiences of all sorts. They talk about coping in the aftermath, about being too afraid or optimistic or shocked to say no or fight back, about being objectified in a hundred ways that are related to rape but aren’t necessarily rape. Many of the writers don’t go into detail about their assaults, if there were any assaults. This book is about rape, but it’s not only about rape. It wasn’t until reading Not That Bad that I saw another aspect to rape culture– the part that my fear fit into, even if fear is the worst that I ever encounter. Once I was reading more feminism and learning the depths of the gender problem, there were a lot of things I started getting angry about, but I still felt outside of it. The fear of being raped was just something that I lived with, without really thinking about. It wasn’t until I started getting serious about feminist lit as recently as in the last couple of years that I began to realize what I was doing, that I was not alone in taking those steps for safety, and that I shouldn’t have to do that. I’ve changed my routes for this fear, I’ve changed my habits, decided what to wear or carry, oriented myself near exits, pretended to talk on the phone when I had to walk alone at night and couldn’t place a real call. But I’ve been afraid of it for as long as I can remember. As far as I know, no one among my close acquaintances has been anywhere close to being raped. “Sexual violence is a global epidemic that is all around us, yet it is nowhere, precisely because it permeates every facet of our presence in the world, echoing throughout our political and popular cultures, ricocheting off the cement walls that define our boundaries.” Some essays talk about rape directly others cover different violations, harrassments, and fears relating to sex. The pieces themselves utilize several different forms, including drawings, lists, footnotes, fragments, poems, and more. The essays vary widely, but are all tied together by dissatisfaction with rape culture in all its various forms– the ways it is dismissed, allowed, and perpetualized by men, authority figures, media, or others. I had to continually pause my other books to read more of this one, which I had not planned to read but couldn’t quit.Ībout the book: Gay brings together thirty authors– from diverse races, genders, and backgrounds– who reflect on the ways they have personally been affected by rape culture.
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I started reading it the day it arrived in my mailbox. I ordered it the same day I first heard of it. The first time I saw anything posted about Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture, a collection of essays edited by Roxane Gay, I knew it was a book I had to read. I did not know this book existed, even though I’d read Roxane Gay’s memoir, Hunger, earlier this year and liked it enough to look up more of her works.