You might look at that subtitle and think, 'There is no way I’m reading that.' Which is exactly the reason why it’s important to do it anyway. Not all of the essays are about rape, but all of them examine the culture that allows and encourages men and boys to take what they want from women (and girls and boys) regardless of what the other person wants or how that other person feels. It is also about a culture that makes victims believe that whatever awful thing happened to them was their fault ... There is a lot of darkness in this book, but there is also the bright light of #MeToo wisdom.
It is a difficult, almost unbearable look at what perpetrators are capable of. The details, devastation and sheer number of men helping themselves to the bodies of women, girls and boys deaden the reader. It is a critical work that makes this much clear: The violations #MeToo rages against can and do damage people for a lifetime ... They are a diverse group of women and men: famous and never published before, young and old, straight, queer and transgender. Among them are an army wife, a biochemist, an exterminator, a lawyer, a cartoonist, an eighties film icon and an author researching mental illness in the suburbs. Their stories make clear that the reverberations of sexual predation live on inside all kinds of people. Not That Bad peers into the psychology of victimhood, mining elements of sexual violence we don’t understand very well yet.
In their underacknowledged anguish, the contributors gave the book...'a place for people to give voice to their experiences,' to describe their wounds and attempt to fortify others with similar injuries. Almost all the entries are confessional, restless with frustration and pain. And the anger of Not That Bad’s contributors...is hardly confined to their assailants. The greater betrayal comes from complicit parents, callous peers, thoughtless doctors ... The problem lies with families, the friends that families keep, the church congregations to which families belong, and the professionals to whom families turn. At sixteen, after her father tries again [to assault her], Tracey writes letters to every adult she knows, begging for assistance leaving home. She receives no replies.
Not That Bad is the title of the anthology ... This logic is inflicted on survivors in many ways, and Gay writes it was a way for her to cope ... Her latest project includes a refreshingly diverse range of writers ... And the contributions are just as diverse — from gut-wrenching stories of assault to sharp analysis of all the ways our culture chooses to ignore the actions of perpetrators in favour of victim-blaming ...Through these essays, Gay and this all-star group of writers prove the point that rape culture is deeply embedded in the way we live, work, date and raise our kids — and it’s not just bad, it’s downright horrifying.
Roxane Gay’s Not That Bad is an important book, but it’s also one I wish didn’t have to exist ... And the storytelling is very good – observationally sharp, the writing often as vivid as bruises ... But the strength, and problematic horror, of this book is that, in the bluntest meaning, we’ve heard it all before ... But it is true that everybody in this book and all those who have experienced rape deserve a voice and the voices here are clear and compelling and crushing.
The pieces she’s chosen for this collection are extremely well constructed. They vary widely in tone, structure, and voice, yet all underscore the same themes: sexual violence can happen to anyone, and when it does, no one can ever forget what happened ... The vast majority of the essays are first-person accounts of harassment, assault, and rape at the hands of friends, strangers, boyfriends, girlfriends, and family members ... This is a book for the #MeToo and #TimesUp era, an era in which the scales are slowly tipping against rape culture ... everyone should read it, because admitting there’s a problem is always the first step toward recovery. No one is untouched by the attitudes and norms of rape culture.
While the tone is overwhelmingly confessional, bar Michelle Chen’s essay which provides an overview of sexual violence committed against migrants and refugees, many of the writers understandably steer away from detailed accounts of traumatic events, preferring to focus on the act of telling a story, often after many years, and moving beyond the common rationalizations 'well it wasn’t that bad' or 'others had it worse' ... Yet for all the book’s timeliness, and though many of the accounts are moving, there is a sense of uncertainty that hangs over it. By treating 'rape culture' in its broadest sense, perhaps something is lost. When Aubrey Hirsch writes that 'if rape culture had a downtown, it would smell like Axe body spray and that perfume they put on tampons to make your vagina smell like laundry detergent.' it is not altogether clear where 'rape culture' begins and ends and where consumer capitalism begins. But perhaps this is the point.
Gay’s got no time for wimpy words and soggy sentiment. In her own work, she slices deep to the core of difficult topics—rape, gender, weight. And so do the essay writers of the Gay-edited Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture ... From street scenes to a daughter’s rape by her father, the writers describe the aftermath of verbal and physical attacks. Together these women’s stories make up more than the sum of their unsettling parts. The title comes from something at least one of the victims was told: that her rape was 'not that bad' because, after all, she survived. Fresh from reading this compelling collection, I would argue that’s the diminution women have received over and over in all sorts of ways.
