Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture

by Roxane Gay

I don’t know when this changed, when I began realizing that all the encounters people have with sexual violence are, indeed, that bad.

If rape culture had its own cuisine, it would be all this shit you have to swallow.

A relationship is not your reward for being a nice guy, no matter what the movies tell you.

Spectating isn’t free.

What is it about secrets that endows them with so much power?

We don’t exist without other people; therefore, our pain isn’t real until somebody else looks at it and goes: “Damn, that looks like it hurt.”

Like all the writers I read, I’m writing to prove that I exist.

The faith I grew up with demands forgiveness for abusers, but angry women? They must be silent.

Anger is the privilege of the truly broken, and yet, I’ve never met a woman who was broken enough that she allowed herself to be angry.

Still, you felt claustrophobic in the town that bred crop after crop of good girls only to surrender their innocence as payment for its fantasies.

Because stifling trauma is just good manners.