Aubrey Hirsch’s essay describes how she only has fragments of memories left from a disturbing and intensely destabilising event that looks suspiciously like a date rape while she was passed out at a college party. The first thing NTB does is dispel a number of commonly held assumptions. Beginning as an inquiry into the frequently used phrase ‘rape culture’, a phrase that is little understood, Gay hopes that Not That Bad will inspire a movement, because naming and shaming powerful perpetrators like Harvey Weinstein is not in itself enough to ensure lasting change.
This anthology of personal essays asks one of the harder questions about rape: ‘What is it like to live in a culture where it often seems it is a question of when, not if, a woman will encounter some kind of sexual violence?’ A survivor of a gang rape who spent most of her life telling herself the experience wasn’t that bad – she survived, didn’t she? – Roxane Gay knows all about the self-harm women do when they minimise their experiences of the sexual violence that permeates our culture, society and law. Tags: Ally Sheedy/ Aubrey Hirsch/ Claire Schwartz/ Elissa Bassist/ Happy Valley/ Jill Christman/ Roxane Gay/ Sarah Wainwright/ VL Seekįeminist Roxane Gay brings together dispatches from the front lines of rape culture. ROXANE GAY (Editor) Not That Bad: Dispatches from rape culture.