Roxane Gay: Should We Quit Social Media?
November 21, 2023
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome to, We Can Do Hard Things. We’re going to jump right in today because we have with us the incredible Roxane Gay. Roxane Gay is the author of several incredible books, including Ayiti, and Untamed State, New York Times Bestseller’s Bad Feminist and Hunger, and the National Bestseller Difficult Women. Her writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Short Stories. She’s a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and you’ve probably read her opinion pieces, which have circulated the planet again and again and again. She also has a newsletter, the Audacity. Her latest book Opinions is available now. Hello, Roxane Gay. How the hell are you?
Roxane Gay:
I am pretty good. Glennon Doyle. Can’t complain. Or actually I can, but I won’t.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, you better.
Roxane Gay:
Because I recognize that my complaints are ridiculous.
Glennon Doyle:
I disagree.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m so glad you brought that up off the bat because I love your love of complaining. I find it liberatory.
Roxane Gay:
It’s so important. I got it from my mother, I come by it so honestly, and I think it’s healthy. When you keep it bottled up, then you eventually take out your frustrations on other people, but if within reason, you complain freely, it’s healthy, you keep the blood system flowing.
Glennon Doyle:
Let’s do that today. Let’s keep the blood system flowing. And also we’re airing this a couple days before Thanksgiving, so we feel like we could honor Thanksgiving by complaining a lot.
Roxane Gay:
I mean, it’s the season.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s the season, isn’t it? So Abby and I were laughing when we were thinking about this interview because do you remember when we all went out to dinner? You and me and-
Roxane Gay:
I do.
Glennon Doyle:
And Abby and Debbie, when we were deciding on a place to meet for our first double date in real life, and Abby and I just assumed we think of you and Debbie as very cool. So we thought that you lived in LA. Okay, like LA, LA. We don’t live in LA, LA because that is too much. It’s just to-
Abby Wambach:
It’s too cool.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s too in the midst. It makes me feel swallowed up. I can’t. So we live like 45 minutes to an hour outside of LA. You guys thought that we were cool and lived in LA. So-
Roxane Gay:
We sure did. I was like, “Surely they live in Silver Lake or Los Feliz.” And no, imagine my surprise.
Glennon Doyle:
So Pod Squad, we agreed to meet at a restaurant an hour away, all the way into LA and we got halfway through dinner before we realized we actually live seven minutes from each other and we had all traveled an hour.
Roxane Gay:
Yes. Which is such an LA story.
Glennon Doyle:
It really is.
Roxane Gay:
You get on the freeways without thinking and then you realize, oh wait, we actually all live in the same amazing place far, far from here.
Glennon Doyle:
I know.
Amanda Doyle:
It also feels like a metaphor for so much. We do so much effort to try to be like, “This is what the other person wants.” And we put all this effort in and we’re like, “Oh shit, we could have just showed up by ourselves where we actually live.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, we were neighbors. Okay, so I’m thinking about that. Do you feel like in order to be who you are in the world, which, so let me just real quick, I’ll tell you who you are in the world Roxane.
Roxane Gay:
Oh please. I’m excited. I’m going to take notes.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s just like you’re a person who observes culture and then tells us about it, not so that we can think like you, which I appreciate very much. It’s like, I don’t think you tell us what to think, but you do show us a path of how to think things through. Do you feel like you have, in order to be that kind of cultural critic, or prophetic type voice, that you do have to be a little bit on the outside? Have you felt like an outsider looking in? I have always felt that way, so I just wonder, does it take distance to see things clearly?
Roxane Gay:
Yes and no. I think sometimes it does take distance, and sometimes you need to be right up on something to see it clearly. But I’ve always felt like I was on the outside looking in, partly because I was, I’m from Omaha, Nebraska, and there are not a lot of people from Nebraska, and especially not a lot of Haitian Americans or Black women. I mean there’s a significant Black community in Omaha relative to the size of the state, but it’s not the first state that people think of when they think of a Mecca for Black people. And so I felt like I was always learning about, and reading about culture and cool things from a very removed distance. And then as an adult, I taught for most of my career in really rural places. And so again, I was on the outside looking in, and I think that gives you a certain perspective on the world. And that’s definitely, for the most part how I approach my cultural criticism. And when I’m closer to something, when I’m actively engaged with something that I want to critique, my approach is fairly similar, but I do try to acknowledge I’m actually all the way into this and my perspective is in fact different here.
Glennon Doyle:
So where do you feel into it? Where do you not feel distance but you feel like, “Oh, I am of this, I am of this group, I am in this thing?”
Roxane Gay:
I think mostly when I’m writing about fatness, also when I’m writing about books, because I’ve always found everything I could possibly need in books, and I write of course, and so I feel a kinship with book people and I feel like this is my community. And when I’m writing about fatness and just the challenges of living in a human body, the older I get and the wiser hopefully I get, the more I recognize that it’s just hard to be human, and it’s hard to live in a body. And if that body presents as female, the challenges increase. And to be able to connect with people on that level, and to have people say, “You know what? That book really resonated for me” is very meaningful.
Glennon Doyle:
Mm-hmm. So you are an early person on the interwebs, these interwebs that we live on now, and you found it as a place to make community and feel like your voice could be heard. And you found power, and connection, and community there, I’m assuming, right?
Roxane Gay:
I think so.
Glennon Doyle:
And when you started you felt like it was a good place?
Roxane Gay:
I did.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. What is it now?
Roxane Gay:
Now, it’s a hellscape. It’s terrible. I hate the internet. I don’t hate the internet, I should say. I hate certain social media platforms and how they’ve deteriorated. And I never thought I would say that, because I was on Twitter from very early on. I think I’ve been on Twitter for 17 or 18 years. And when I first joined, it was because I was going to graduate school in Houghton, Michigan, and I was living in a town adjacent that had 4,000 people in it. So where are you going to go to talk about things other than hockey and deer? And Twitter was that place for me. And it used to be wonderful, even when there were trolls, and there are always going to be trolls no matter where you are, you still could connect with people, and you could see people that you admire from a distance and you felt like you had some proximity to them. And I think for many of us, that was really appealing. And then I became one of those people to whom people would like proximity, and that was interesting and unanticipated.
Roxane Gay:
But now it doesn’t matter what you say or do, people love to police one another, and criticize, like, the level of expectation for moral purity is so unachievable. And I find that I make the most innocuous statements and am immediately criticized for hours, if not days or weeks, things that I think, “Oh, this is kind of obvious, this is table stake stuff.” And then people are like, “Oh my God, you’re representing oppression.” And it just always shocks the shit out of me. I’m just like, “Wow. Did not see that one coming. Okay. I take your critique. Thank you.” I don’t really take the critique, but.
Glennon Doyle:
I know you don’t. We know you don’t. But why do you think this? What is your analysis of why it’s gotten so much worse? It seems to be at a crescendo right now.
Roxane Gay:
Yes. I’m not sure. I’d be curious to hear what you guys think. I think part of it is control. And we live in a world with profound injustices, especially now, and we’re bearing witness to them on a daily basis. And we have so little control, we can’t do anything to stop it. We can agitate, we can call our senators and our congresspeople, we can donate money, we can donate our time and energy. We can sign letters and petitions, but we can’t save lives, necessarily, doing those things. But what we can do is look for those weaknesses in each other. And I think oftentimes, we would mistake exploiting those weaknesses for doing important work. And I don’t know when collectively we lost the plot, but we have lost the plot.
Glennon Doyle:
What are you going to do? I really feel like it’s not even maybe a good decision as a person who hosts… In some ways, I’m a host of a community online, and so, it almost feels lately like inviting people I love to a dangerous place to hang out.
Roxane Gay:
Yes, that’s what I’m struggling with. It’s, what kind of spaces do I want to curate? And frankly, the people who created these social media platforms should have thought about that. They were like, “I’m going to build a big beautiful garden, but I’m not going to weed it.” And we have responsibility for the communities that we convene, whether they’re intentional or unintentional, and I don’t really want to sort of have my presence on Twitter, for example, make people feel like that’s an endorsement of the space anymore. And so, I’m struggling with it because I really do, or I did love Twitter before it just became whatever it is now, but I’m not getting any sort of pleasure from it at all. When I go on there, I’m just bracing myself for what did I do wrong today and who did I piss off today? And that’s actually not at all what my day-to-day life is. I encounter all kinds of people all day every day, and never have any unpleasant interactions, even if there’s disagreement, and debate, and discussion, it’s totally normal. And then people get in front of a screen and everything changes.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. My therapist said something to me really recently that was about, you know when you said you’re always getting on to brace yourself for who’s mad at you for the new thing. I’m in recovery from eating disorders. And one of the things is this attempt to not be human. They call it being unimpeachable inside of anorexia or a lot of different eating disorders. This idea of I can just make myself unimpeachable and my therapist said, “Social media is the absolute worst place for you to be in a recovery from trying to become unimpeachable, because in order to be a public person on social media right now, that’s all you’re trying to do is be unimpeachable, just to be a robot.”
Roxane Gay:
And I’ve spent most of my adult life, for one reason or another, trying to be perfect, trying to make sure that I do everything so well and in ways that cannot be critiqued. Not because I can’t handle criticism, but because I just have always felt like I have to. I’m not good enough unless I’m perfect, unless I give people everything they could possibly want, unless I actually anticipate what they could want. And preempt by being extraordinarily generous, when it wasn’t called for. And so to now be in a position where it’s like, okay, I’m still trying to handle all of that, and work through it in therapy, which, shout out therapist, it’s really hard to also be on social media where that sort of armor you build around yourself to be perfect is being chipped away at all the time.
Roxane Gay:
And not in productive ways because it’s not that I want to live in an echo chamber and that I don’t want to receive critique. Once I get through my feelings, I absolutely do consider critiques that are offered in good faith and think, well, what can I take from this that maybe I’m not doing well or that I could do differently or I could do better. And I do try to shift, to change, to evolve, but when it’s just this barrage of bad faith engagement, it just undermines everything and then I’m completely crushed. And then my wife who is online but not capital O, Online is like, “Why are you still there? It makes you unhappy all the time.” And she’s right. And I’m starting to listen to her. I mean, I always listen to her.
Glennon Doyle:
Are you in that space where you’re imagining your life not online? Are you considering it?
Roxane Gay:
Uh-huh.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, me too.
Roxane Gay:
Oh, I’m more than considering it. I mean, I’ll be on Blue Sky, and Threads, because right now they’re in those nascent days where people don’t have yet the capacity to be just extraordinarily evil on them. But I’m not long for Twitter. Every single day, it’s just something else. And I just find myself constantly censoring myself. I’m not even being myself anymore on that platform. And I think, like many writers, we have this fear that if we’re not on social media, we won’t sell books. But the reality is that I haven’t sold any books through Twitter for my current book. There’s just no translation between social media followings and book sales. That’s not how any of it works.
Glennon Doyle:
I know.
Roxane Gay:
And I just have to trust that my career will survive not being on social media. Tanahashi seems to be doing fine, So I think if he can do it, I can do it.
Glennon Doyle:
Can we talk about something fun since we’re going to quit the internet? Okay. I don’t know if this is true, but I was listening to a podcast with you on it, and I think that it’s possible that you’re in the middle of writing an essay about something about which Abby and I have recently become obsessed. Is it possible that you’re interested in writing about Naked Attraction, the show, right now?
Roxane Gay:
Oh, that’s true.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Can we just talk about it for a few minutes?
Roxane Gay:
Oh my God. When did you first learn about Naked Attraction?
Glennon Doyle:
So my friend Shannon Watts comes back to her house, because her dog sitter had been at her house for three days. So she turns on Netflix and it says, “You recently watched.” So her dog sitter has been watching the show called Naked Attraction. So she turns it on, because why not? What the hell and her mind as you know what happens when you watch the show, so can you describe it for us, Roxane? Just tell us, set the stage. What is this show?
Roxane Gay:
Our friends across the pond in Great Britain are purveyors of all things good taste and class. And so my wife and I were in London about five or six months ago. I was on tour and it was like 11:00 at night, we had just gotten back from the Southbank Center and I was tired and I like to watch TV as I wind down, that’s my thing. And I turned on a show and it said, “Naked Attraction” and she had already fallen asleep just immediately. And I was watching it and I was like, “Wait a minute. It’s a dating show where people are naked in these little tubes and their body parts are revealed moment by moment?” And then the person who’s choosing, chooses who they want to date and then they also undress and it goes both ways, like, “Would you like to go on a date with this person?” And so it’s just a dating show that’s very, very dumb and there’s no depth to it and it’s awesome.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
And yet…
Glennon Doyle:
I think there’s depth to it.
Abby Wambach:
I actually do too, because the first time we watched it, we were like our jaws were on the ground because we couldn’t believe that this was allowed to be shown on TV, in some ways. And how it is a show of sheer objectification, they’re choosing this person completely by their body, their face.
Glennon Doyle:
Their penises,
Abby Wambach:
Their penises, their vulvas, the whole thing, their breasts. And yet it feels like the opposite of objectification.
Glennon Doyle:
How this possible? It does.
Abby Wambach:
In some weird universe.
Amanda Doyle:
Because it’s so transparent?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
Is that why?
Abby Wambach:
Something. I don’t know.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m going to tell you this, Roxane Gay, I know that this show is batshit crazy, but I believe that if I had seen that show when I was younger, my body issues would not have been as serious.
Abby Wambach:
She said that right away she goes, “My image of what a body is supposed to look like is completely now transformed.”
Glennon Doyle:
All I’ve seen on TV, my entire effing life has been this photo shot, like, one sort of body growing up, and now here are all of these bodies looking how bodies look, which I cannot believe, because it turns out I haven’t seen that many bodies.
Abby Wambach:
And it turns out, she’s much gayer than she originally thought.
Glennon Doyle:
I was like, “Those… Oh my God!”
Amanda Doyle:
I sense where you’re going with, had I seen it earlier can we go back to the tubes part? The naked people are in tubes?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, they’re in these pods.
Roxane Gay:
And then the sort of shielding rises up. So it starts with the lower half, and then the torso, and the breasts and then the face.
Amanda Doyle:
So you get the face last?
Roxane Gay:
Yes. And someone is eliminated with each reveal, until there are I think two or three people left. And then that’s when the person who’s making all these choices undresses, so that it can a little bit go both ways. And almost everyone who leaves the show during the confessional says that they feel so much more confident now.
Glennon Doyle:
They all do.
Roxane Gay:
And that always blows my mind because I cannot imagine a scenario where I would feel confident and naked. Yet these people are like-
Amanda Doyle:
Period. Full stop.
Roxane Gay:
Just walking.
Amanda Doyle:
No TV, no anything, just feel confident naked, period.
Roxane Gay:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Same.
Roxane Gay:
The range of bodies and those sort of body confidence that some of these people have and bodies that are perfectly fine. It’s just that we have these cultural ideas around bodies. And so when you see someone whose body defies those cultural attitudes, and they seem extraordinarily confident and are willing to be on this show, I’m just like, bottle that shit up right now.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s how I feel about it. I’m sure that people will write it and say how horrible it is and objectifying, but I’m telling you, I think there’s something good about it.
Abby Wambach:
It is. I feel like there was a part of me that thinks are people in Europe just more okay with their nakedness?
Glennon Doyle:
Well, they’re because, well, they’re obviously.
Amanda Doyle:
It can’t be less okay than we are. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
But I will tell you that we were on a little mini vacay with, it was Abby, me and our friend Alexandra Henderson, so three lesbians were staying in this place. We had an ant problem in our place. So this guy walks in to deal with the ants and naked attractions on and there’s just five penises on the TV, and I was like, “I bet they’re like, “Not what I was expecting.”
Abby Wambach:
It just was so cool.
Glennon Doyle:
You never know.
Abby Wambach:
Some of the people who were choosing, there’s five penises across and she’s just like, “I prefer this one.” And it was not personal. It was just her preference. It was just so cool.
Roxane Gay:
And I like the preference part too, because it really is a matter of taste. Because in one of the episodes I saw there was a very well-endowed fellow and the woman was like, “I can’t do all of that. I’m 5’2.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I think I saw that one.
Roxane Gay:
And, you know, the body is a finite space. So I thought that was hilarious because so many cultural memes around sex are about how women prefer size, which many do, but they are also probably taller. And I know oftentimes when my friends and I see someone who’s really well-endowed, we’re like, “Where is that going? Where is that going?”
Glennon Doyle:
That is truly just for show.
Abby Wambach:
They actually have these little snippets in between during the actual episodes that are more science-based and they’re like, “Most women’s vaginas are X deep and the parts that are really sensitive are in the more shallow places inside the vagina.” And so it’s like teaching you some stuff about bodies too throughout. It’s just-
Glennon Doyle:
You can learn-
Abby Wambach:
The whole show is really fascinating.
Glennon Doyle:
You’re a reality TV show person.
Roxane Gay:
I am. I am.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. What is your take on why you like reality TV show? adrienne maree brown just told me this thing that blew my mind. She was trying to make me feel better about it, and she said, “I think people who try really hard to be good all the time love reality TV because it’s just a bunch of people just not trying to be good.” It’s just freedom from being good.
Roxane Gay:
Yes. That’s part of the appeal, for sure. And also I just love the messiness of it all. People who always say what they want, exactly when they want. Now we know now of course it’s all edited and orchestrated, but whatever, give me my illusion. And it’s just pretty people behaving badly. Yes, give me more. Or if it’s competitions, yes, I want to see people race around the world and try to win $1 million or yes, put a bunch of fairly attractive people on a deserted island in the South Pacific and let’s see what happens. Hijinks ensue. I just love it. I love sort of feeling like I’m on the fly of a wall and I get to see all of these conversations I would not be ordinarily privy to. It’s really a lot of fun.
Glennon Doyle:
Good stuff.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m fascinated by all of the paradox that you contain, Roxane. I love this erudite critic writer, and you’re like, also give me the reality TV shows. I love how you talk about how you hold both this incredible level of confidence, and also struggle with self-esteem at the same time, holding both of those. Do these go together? Do you think most people have these things together? Because in my life, I’ve always been struggling, like, do I have an overly absurd grandiosity about myself or do I have very low self-worth? And I’m like, maybe the answer is, yes.
Roxane Gay:
You know, I think to be a writer, some part of you has to have a sense of self that is outsized, because it takes something to put work into the world, to make yourself vulnerable in front of an audience. It really does, because you have no control over what people are going to do as they receive your work. Sometimes it’s going to be great and you’re going to feel affirmed. Sometimes you’re going to be challenged in really interesting ways, and then there are people who are just evil. So to know that you have to contend with all that, it does require a sense of confidence. And at the same time, I’m a Libra, so I’m always balancing just crushingly low self-esteem, and it’s like, “Uh who am I? Why should anyone read what I have to say or care about whatever I care about?” Or whatever it is? And I just kind of carry them both at the same time. One is weighing me down and the other is lifting me up, and that gives me some kind of equilibrium to do the work that I do.
Glennon Doyle:
How do you decide what you’re going to opinionate about? And what in the world do we do about the whole demand that we speak about every single thing?
Roxane Gay:
Mm-hmm. These days, and really it’s been this way for the past few years. I’m only going to engage critically with something if I care about it, if I’m interested, if I feel qualified and if I feel like I have something unique to say about it. I’m not going to ever really be the only person saying something, because that’s just not the way it works. But I do think I articulate the world in a way that no one else can, and I believe that about everyone. And so, I just have to care. And it’s really hard to resist the call to opine on everything, and to weigh in on everything. And frankly, we’ve seen what happens when people make statements that are not sincere, that are simply responding to a demand of some kind, and that can actually do more harm than good. I’m not going to speak on things I’m not an expert about though. I’m not talking about caring about atrocity or things like that, but I am talking about not speaking inexpertly where expertise is absolutely required.
Roxane Gay:
And also if you’re speaking up on everything, then are you really saying anything at all? I just don’t think you are. And I always ask people when they ask me, “Why haven’t you said something about X, Y or Z?” I actually ask, “Why do you want me to? What do you need from me specifically about this topic that compels you to reach out to me and ask me? What are you looking for?” And a lot of times, people are looking for validation that they are thinking the right things, that their opinions are valid. And I get that. And I think that is one of the reasons that we read cultural criticism. But sometimes you have to make those decisions for yourself. You have to figure out where you stand, and then maybe you look to others to see, “Is there something I haven’t considered? Is there something I have to add to the conversation?” But this idea that we’re just here to tell people how to think, I’m actually not really telling you how or what to think. I’m just telling you what I think. And how I arrived at that conclusion and what you might take from all of that for yourself.
Amanda Doyle:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. One of your pieces that I loved so much, “Why are people so awful online” where you talk about how what you believe drives so much of the antagonism and anger online is helplessness offline. It feels like that’s another one of these paradoxes where it’s like, the more we’re losing any efficacy offline, is the more we feel like we need to double down and that we are actually doing a thing when we say something online. And you talk about the perfectionism, we are demanding, if we say the perfect words, if we make everyone else say the perfect words and we police the shit out of them, if they don’t, then somehow we’re healing something in the world. How do we get back to a lack of helplessness offline? And is our engagement online coming at the opportunity cost of actually doing real things in the real world? Because sometimes I think we have this, “Everything is a dumpster fire. I hate it. I have to do something. So I say something and now I’m done.” Are we ever going to get back to the real world?
Roxane Gay:
That’s a good question. And I think, absolutely. And I think most of us are in the real world most of the time, even when we’re online. And one of the things I always try to make clear is that the internet isn’t some virtual space only. It is a virtual space, but it is populated by all of us, who are very real. And the reality is that when you do something hurtful online, the repercussions absolutely will bleed into our day-to-day lives.
Roxane Gay:
And so, when I think about the helplessness that we often feel in our real lives and how powerful you can feel online, for one reason or another, I always wonder how can we bring more of that online feeling to our day-to-day lives while leaving behind the things that don’t do any of us any good? And it’s not that we need to live lives without negativity. Negativity is part of life, but there’s negativity and there’s toxicity. And unfortunately, social media is increasingly becoming toxic. And I think that it infects all of us if we stay there too long. Just like if you stay in a gas leak too long, you’re going to die. It’s not necessarily that you’re going to die via social media, but I do think you’ll be changed.
Amanda Doyle:
Mm-hmm.
Glennon Doyle:
It feels to me like watching you, and your work, and all the different places that you do it, you’ve said about the internet, it’s like one place we can get justice, or why you love shows like Law and Order. It’s like one place we can see the bad person do something and then at the end of the show, we’re going to get justice. Or in writing, you’re the master of your own destiny on the page. And you’re a teacher, right? I mean, I used to be a teacher and the thing I loved the most about being a teacher was that it was a little world, where I got to make the rules, and we were going to be kind and we were in this little world. I could make it just and safe. And do you feel like that is a lot of what you’re doing, is trying to make worlds that are safe? And is this so disappointing with the internet, because it was one of those worlds for you for a while and now it’s not?
Roxane Gay:
Well, I don’t think I ever thought the internet was safe. I will say that. I just thought there was connection to be found in circumstances where I was extraordinarily lonely. And in my writing, it’s not that I’m trying to create spaces that are safe, but I am trying to create spaces where people can be themselves, and hopefully there is safety in that. And if you are feeling unsafe, that it’s okay to feel unsafe because no one’s going to harm you. And so, that’s what makes all of this so frustrating that that space is being taken away by bad actors. And sometimes we’re the bad actors, and then you have to sit with that and think, “What am I doing here if I’m behaving in this very way that I just can’t stand being on the receiving end of?” And that’s a hard conversation to have with yourself, when you realize that the space that you’re trying to curate, or maintain, that sometimes you’re the bad actor in that space. And having to take responsibility for that is very challenging.
Roxane Gay:
And unfortunately, we also don’t afford one another enough grace to do that work of taking accountability and responsibility. And one of the things that I found so challenging is that, even when you do try to hold yourself accountable and be responsible, there are always some people who are, “Back in 1997, you did this one thing. Here’s a screenshot.” Okay. Thanks. I was 25. So it’s challenging, and I’ve been thinking a lot about this in my writing, like, how do we allow space for redemption for one another in all of these communities that we’re a part of? And I don’t know that anyone has good answers yet, and when we talk about justice in online spaces, I think it’s because we get to all be part of the court of public opinion, but then we don’t know what happens after we’ve rendered that verdict. And we do need to figure out some of those answers pretty quickly here.
Amanda Doyle:
Is this part of your, I’ve heard you talk about recently, a creative block. Is all that you’re navigating here as you kind of mourn, and grieve, navigate what’s ahead for you online, do you think what you’re experiencing there is related to your creative block?
Roxane Gay:
Partly, in that as you develop an audience, like in general, for me to put my work in the world, I tell myself, “Oh girl, don’t worry. No one’s going to read it.” And I give myself that delusion so that I can-
Amanda Doyle:
You’re still buying that from yourself after all this time?
Roxane Gay:
I am still, absolutely.
Amanda Doyle:
You still buy it? Okay, that’s good.
Roxane Gay:
Nobody can lie to me better than me, but of course it’s harder and harder to maintain that delusion when you are faced with incontrovertible evidence that you do indeed have an audience. And so, there’s a lot of pressure, and I can handle pressure, it’s just that I start to get too in my own head thinking, “Oh man, when I publish this book, people are going to say, “You forgot this and you forgot that and you forgot this other thing. You didn’t account for the whole of human experience with this one book or this one essay.” So then I just decide, well, what’s the point? Because it’s just being dismantled before I even finish building the thing. And that makes me just creatively completely at a standstill.
Roxane Gay:
And I’ve clearly written a lot over the past several years, but it’s not coming the way it’s supposed to, the way it normally does. And it is not that my writing process has changed, it’s just there’s this overwhelming sense of foreboding that no matter what it is, it’s not going to be good enough, and this is going to be the last book I ever write. I’m trying to unravel it all and just learn to quiet some of that. But it’s a process.
Amanda Doyle:
Is the question then, whether it’s worth it to you? Are you counting costs to be like, “If I do X, I know that Y will happen. Is it worth it to me to do X?”
Roxane Gay:
Sometimes, but not for writing itself. I would write if there was no one ever. I love writing, I’ve always loved it and I would do it whether or not there was an audience or interest in my work, for sure. But there are times when I think, like I’ve held back two essays in the past two weeks where I just have decided it’s not worth it. Because it doesn’t matter what I do, it doesn’t matter what I say, it’s going to be wrong. And knowing that, it’s just like that’s where the costs outweigh the benefits. And I’ve only done that once one other time in my career. And so, it’s weird and I don’t like it. But at the same time, I know that once in a while we do have to protect ourselves from ourselves. And sometimes I just, I’m like, “Yeah, no, no, thank you.”
Glennon Doyle:
And there are times when we’re in better mental strength times than others. I feel like that’s something that is lost often, is you’re not always ready to go into battle. There are times in the year where I’m like, “All right, I’ve done, I don’t know, I’m just in a good place in my cycle or I don’t know what, but I’m ready to go.” But there are times you don’t have the strength to go in.
Abby Wambach:
And with the internet and all of social media, it feels like it is a constant. You’re in a constant battle. So it feels like we’re always in fight or flight. Every time I go to all the apps, I’m just like, I can sense that my blood pressure, I can sense something, I’m waiting to find something. And that is not good. It’s not good for our psychological beings, it’s not good for our physical beings.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And it’s so funny because as people who we’ve joked about needing an app where somebody just dings me every once in a while that says, “No one’s mad at you, Glennon. No one’s mad at you.” I have this idea that everyone’s mad at me, but then I go to Twitter and I realize it’s true, everyone’s mad at me.
Roxane Gay:
Absolutely. Absolutely. You tell yourself everything is fine and then you go online and you’re like, “No.” It’s funny. Earlier today someone was critiquing me online about something that they absolutely did misread. And what they interpreted from my very innocuous, very sort of table stakes statement, they read it completely differently. And I was like, “That’s not what my intention was.” And they were like, “Well, can you provide some examples? And I was like, I could, but why would you assume the worst of me in this circumstance where I’ve never done anything like that in the entirety of my career?” But the truth is, I was in an airport, and I was walking through the terminal, and so I actually didn’t have time to provide a thesis on one single tweet.
Roxane Gay:
And people just forget that we are human. We are living our lives away from the thing. I’m not actually sitting here glued to my phone, engaged in a debate, I’m doing things, and then looking at my phone and then going back to doing those things. And the level of expectation sometimes that your tweet is going to be as rigorous as a book is, again, it’s so disingenuous. You can’t be serious right now. When people do that, I just tend to think, “Be for real. Just be for real.” This cannot be real.
Glennon Doyle:
And then we ask ourselves the question of, I can only have the mental health to be accountable to four people. Truly. I only want to be accountable for the people in my house. That takes all of my time and energy. So we’ve created this system where we allow ourselves to feel accountable to… Somebody said to you on Twitter, “Show me examples.” There’s only four people in my life who can say the words to me, “Show me examples.” That level of accountability to the Universe, to everyone, is what we’ve set up.
Roxane Gay:
Yeah. This is something I’m actively working on in therapy because my therapist who’s also not online, it’s like, “So what? So what, this person you will never, ever meet who you do not know, who you don’t owe anything to, so what that they want you to create a bibliography for… Why are you doing this?” And Debbie is also very good about just asking me that question, like, “So what? Just let them, you don’t owe these people anything other than what you’d put on the page.” And I think women, people of color, trans people, anyone who’s marginalized and lives in a visibly marginalized body is often expected to cater to everyone, to sort of be like the mother, the wife, the friend, the confidante, the therapist, whatever people want on demand is what we’re supposed to give them. And when we don’t, we have failed and we open ourselves up to all kinds of criticism.
Roxane Gay:
And it’s even more frustrating when it is other marginalized people who place these expectations on you and it’s like, “Wait, we should all know better. What are you doing here?” It’s challenging and I struggle with disappointing people with, not just because someone asks me to do something with thinking I have to do it. And so, hopefully someday I’ll get there.
Amanda Doyle:
So what do you think your signals your body is sending to you that say, “Well, I have to write that person back, or else I am,” what? Or to feel even the conflict of, like, “I’m pissed at that person for asking, but also should I write?” What is that about?
Roxane Gay:
It’s about feeling like I’ll be accused of not being good enough, of not living my principles if I don’t acknowledge every piece of criticism. And it’s a struggle, but I’m trying to just recognize that, “Okay, so even if they’re disappointed, even if they do think that about you, it doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make them right.” But it’s so hard to believe that they’re wrong because I’m always wrong. I’m always the problem. I’m always the one who’s fucking up and that’s how I see myself. And so if I’m the problem, then of course I defer to everyone else as authority, because I know that inherently it must be me who did something wrong, who wasn’t articulate enough, who didn’t… And again, didn’t account for sort of every reality that might contradict a simple statement that was, again, like 140 characters. It’s kind of unreal.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Mine’s always like, “Oh, this is when everyone finds out that I’m just a fraud.”
Roxane Gay:
Yeah, exactly. “This is it. The gig is up.”
Glennon Doyle:
What do I think I did? I’ve already written about everything. You would think that I have murdered a bunch of people in my past and I’m afraid people are going to find out. That is the level of fear I get when-
Roxane Gay:
Mm-hmm.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, but don’t you think that that’s almost every public person’s big fear? Because, like, how is it possible that me, this person has any kind of public platform? It feels like that’s the whole setup, and all of us who are in a public forum online, wherever, we have a responsibility. I’m trying to figure out, because so much of this stuff is out of our control, what people say back to us, but we are the ones that created the space. It is our name. Now that doesn’t mean we take all the responsibility of what people say, but we can decide whether we want to be there or not and we get to decide how we want to be there. And by the way, science is now brain-fucking us. The technology here is making us all lose our minds and we’re all addicted to this thing. We’re all addicted to this thing. And I don’t know, I’m more eager to think of a life post-social media.
Roxane Gay:
There are things I’m going to miss, but increasingly, like you said, Abby, when I open the app, I can feel my blood pressure rising, my chest tightening, and I’m like, if I’m having a physiological response that’s unpleasant just by opening an app, it’s time to walk away. There’s nothing good is going to happen there.
Abby Wambach:
Same exact response when I would crack my first beer. It feels to me like the same physiological responses; I’m getting the shot of dopamine, I’m also getting a shot of shame. The same thing is happening, because I know that I’m out of control with this thing.
Roxane Gay:
Interesting. That’s really interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
I think this is really related, but I’m just realizing it is. I have started becoming really interested in, this is so random, in painting. I know. I can’t paint. I’m not an artist, I can’t draw anything. But I think it’s because, and she was asking me a lot of questions about it the other night and I was like, I think it’s because I can’t get it wrong. It’s a thing I can do that feels creative, and feels expressive that I can give a friend or give someone, but nobody can look at it and be like, “That’s wrong.” It’ll be bad, but it can’t prove I’m bad.
Roxane Gay:
So I need to take up a hobby with low stakes.
Glennon Doyle:
Like your puzzles, you do your puzzles, right?
Roxane Gay:
Yes, I do. I live for a puzzle. And also, I will say cooking is that way for me, I must say Glennon. It’s absolutely the thing that I can do where it’s not always going to work out, truly. I’m a pretty good cook, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out. I make a mistake in the recipe, or what I thought would work together does not work together and it’s fine. Nobody cares. And on those nights, Debbie’s like, “Babe,” because I’ll get really frustrated with myself like, “Oh, I can’t believe I ruined this dish.” And she’s like, “It’s called takeout. We’re fine.” And so, to also have that reassurance that even when you make a mistake with something like low stakes, it’s great because the world continues to turn.
Glennon Doyle:
And that’s your little world, right? Where people aren’t mad at you all the time, and where you don’t have to always nail it, and where if you make a mistake, there’s grace. Just talk to us a little bit about Debbie, and your puppy and your little world there.
Roxane Gay:
Yeah. I met Debbie five years ago, a little more than five years ago. I was in another relationship, but I was allowed to see other people, and she had been pursuing me for more than a year and I didn’t recognize that’s what it was because I’m just not bright in terms of, my emotional IQ with romance is not great. And when we finally started dating, it was just like, wow, how on earth did I meet this person at 44 years old? I had sort of given up. I was just like, “This is as good as it gets,” and that was very mediocre. And so here comes this woman who’s a Scorpio, amazing, super hot, and super smart, and super kind-
Amanda Doyle:
So smart.
Roxane Gay:
Just the best. And she actively wants to be with me every single day. Every morning I wake up, I’m just like, “Huh, still here. Okay, this is interesting.” But we have a really great life together. We split our time between New York and LA because she’s a New Yorker, and I’m based in LA and we have a puppy, well, he’s not a puppy anymore, he’s three, but he’s always going to be our puppy. His name is Max. Max and he’s adorable and I don’t like animals, but she is an animal lover. She will not kill a fly, she will take it outside. And we have two cats as well, Theo and Lou, and they stay in New York full time, and we don’t leave them alone. Once I said that on an interview and someone was like, “You leave your cats alone for months at a time?” And it’s like, “Yes, that’s exactly what we do.” Come on.
Amanda Doyle:
I wish you would’ve just posted on Twitter. “Yes.” Period. Impeach that.
Roxane Gay:
And the thing is, if we traveled with the cats, they would be like, “Cats don’t like to travel.”
Amanda Doyle:
Of course.
Roxane Gay:
I don’t know. As much as people are critical of public figures on social media, they are even worse when it comes to parenting advice and pet parenting advice.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Amanda Doyle:
We don’t say a word.
Roxane Gay:
I have learned not to post anything but cute pictures. And that, I learned in one day, which was a very good lesson, but to have this safe space where I can be myself, where I can make mistakes, where I can have reassurance and support, and where I can provide those things as well is just, it’s incredible. And every single day feels amazing and people are like, “The honeymoon’s not over yet?” No, it is not. Thank you. It’s awesome. I love it. She’s amazing.
Glennon Doyle:
You said sometimes you feel bad even talking about your relationship because there’s this vibe of you’re supposed to be bitching about your partner, but you said that, “The problem is I actually like my wife.”
Roxane Gay:
I do. I genuinely enjoy her. Multiple times a week she’ll do something, she’s quirky, and she’ll do something and I’m like, “You know what? Don’t ever change. Everything about you is perfect.” It’s like the Higher Power, whoever she is went into a lab and was like, “Who is the perfect person for Roxane?” And she made it. And I like her. I just do, in addition to loving her very much. And so when I wrote that particular essay, I was thinking about all of the rhetoric we hear about marriage and how hard it is, and everything can be challenging on certain days, but for the most part it doesn’t feel all that hard. And I’m like, “When do we get to the hard part of marriage just so I can prepare myself?”
Amanda Doyle:
You’re bracing yourself like Twitter, like, “Is it coming?”
Roxane Gay:
Yes. Just like, “Is it coming? Is it today?” I mean, of course we’ve had arguments and challenges, but I think partly because we met later in life, we kind of have been through all of our dumb relationships and we both are actively in therapy, which I think is a miraculous thing because we know how to, in general talk things through once the sort of heat of the moment passes, it’s not even that we’re using therapy speak, but we’re able to sort of say, “Here’s what I heard and here’s what I was feeling in that moment, just so you understand.” And then I respond. And also learning not to fix everything. Because I’m a fixer. When she articulates a problem, I’m like, “I have four solutions for you.” Two days ago she was like, “My laptop’s dying.” So yesterday I went and got her a new one, and then she came home and she was like, “Be serious.” And I said, “I am deadly serious. Problem solved.” And so learning that I don’t always have to do that is just awesome too.
Glennon Doyle:
She’s such a love. My favorite part of that essay is when you told us that, every time Debbie sees a dog, she says, “Doggy.” And every time she sees a bird she says, “Birdie.”
Roxane Gay:
Because she always wears all black, and she’s very chic, and she’s New York fast, so she walks 100 miles an hour, and so to see someone like that, who doesn’t ever veer from the course, see a dog and lose all sort of all coolness and just be like, “Doggy,” I’m like the first time she did it, I was like, “I haven’t met this version of you yet. This is funny.” Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
You guys are so special. We just love it. Oh, thank you. Okay, I’m just thinking about this whole past 45 minutes or 50 minutes. Do you guys feel the shift in energy from when we stopped talking about the internet and we start talking about the little world? It’s like you can-
Roxane Gay:
Yeah, the whole room lightens up.
Glennon Doyle:
You can feel it. What if we just lived in our worlds where we were meant to live?
Roxane Gay:
Exactly. Imagine.
Glennon Doyle:
We might feel this way all the time.
Roxane Gay:
Imagine.
Amanda Doyle:
May I just ask where you are with, because this is something I’m personally always struggling with, is you said that you’re working on developing your sense of satisfaction, the idea that you have done enough for this day, this week, this life. Where are you there?
Roxane Gay:
I’m still at the beginning of that journey. I am. I think, partly it’s just the child of immigrants, and that sort of striving ethos that we were raised with. When you look at my siblings, and my cousins, and I we’re all really intense about work, and someone interviewed me the other day and was like, “So, you, your cousin, this, your other cousin?” I’m like, “Yes, yes. We were raised by siblings, okay? That’s the common denominator here. Our parents are all really intense.” So I’m just trying to recognize that what I do is not a reflection of my self-worth, and that is a hard lesson to learn when you have been very ambitious your whole life and you have sort of substituted self-esteem for ambition.
Roxane Gay:
So I’m just trying to recognize that it’s enough. It’s just enough. And I never just rest. I win an award, and literally five minutes later after I’m notified, I’m on to the next thing. I have not enjoyed it. I haven’t acknowledged it. It’s just like a blip in my day. And once I started noticing that, I was like, “Oh no, we’re going to have to work on this.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I get that. It’s connected too. I think leaving these places is connected to enoughness for me. Because it’s like, it might be where I’m losing my mind and getting it, but it’s also where I’m important.
Roxane Gay:
Yeah, absolutely.
Glennon Doyle:
If I let that go, what, I’m just going to be like a regular old Joe here on the street. Will I say that’s enough? That’s what I want.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, but your family believes and thinks that you are so important to all of us.
Glennon Doyle:
Right? But that’s the kind of enoughness that I want is like,
Abby Wambach:
You want to feel that that’s enough.
Glennon Doyle:
From the people in my real world.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Roxane, you’re the best.
Roxane Gay:
Thank you. You’re the best right back.
Glennon Doyle:
We just love you.
Roxane Gay:
I really like you guys, and appreciate everything you do and the energy you put into the world.
Abby Wambach:
Same with you.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you so much. We’ll do dinner again soon and we’ll-
Amanda Doyle:
Max, and Debbie-
Glennon Doyle:
Maybe we’ll celebrate. Yes, give Max and Debbie squeezes.
Roxane Gay:
I will.
Glennon Doyle:
All right. Thank you. Pod Squad, see you next time.
If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us, if you’d be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things first, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things. Following the pod helps you because you’ll never miss an episode and it helps us because you’ll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things. Show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on, “Follow.” This is the most important thing for the pod. While you’re there, if you’d be willing to give us a five star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios.