(Bad) Feminism with Roxane Gay, Femke Halsema, Tatjana Almuli and Eliza Anyangwe

‘I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all’, has been the adage Roxane Gay has upheld for more than ten years. In conversation with Roxane Gay about feminism not as a dogma, but as a practice, rooted in asking the right questions rather than finding perfect answers.

Ten years ago, Roxane Gay’s essay collection Bad Feminist became a landmark for a generation that chafed against the idea of being the right kind of feminist. Her following book Hunger was an emphatic exploration of what it means to be fat in modern day society. As a cultural critic Gay covers a wide range of topics: from abortion rights to Chris Brown.

In a time where the feminist movement is at times divided over what to fight for, who to fight for, Roxane Gay remains an influential freethinker. Stepping away from dogma’s, rigid ideological packages and pretensions of moral purity, Gay encourages her audience to ask a more urgent question: what kind of change are you willing to fight for?

In her recent anthology, The Portable Feminist Reader (2025), Gay brings together a chorus of voices – from Henricus Cornelius Agrippa to Sara Ahmed – that reflect the complexities and contradictions of feminism. Tonight we’ll explore those questions further with, alongside Gay, Dutch writer Tatjana Almuli and Cameroonian journalist Eliza Anyangwe.

About Vrijdenkersfestival During the sixth edition of Vrijdenkersfestival, we will honor, question, and continue the Amsterdam tradition of liberal-mindedness. With online echo chambers growing louder and public debate is increasingly about choosing sides, we offer the stage to contemporary free thinkers who prefer doubt over certainty. Who would rather ask good questions than give the right answers. Who dare to assume they might be wrong. And in doing so, chart their own course—free from dogma, labels, and authority. Or, as Annie M.G. Schmidt perhaps captured the spirit of free thinking best: ‘Never do as your mother said, and all will turn out fine instead.’

Programme editor and moderator: Rosalie Dielesen

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