Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay is a powerful and profoundly impactful anthology that explores the pervasive and insidious nature of rape culture through a collection of deeply personal essays. Curated and edited by Roxane Gay, the book brings together voices from a diverse group of writers, each of whom shares their own experiences and reflections on sexual violence, harassment, and the societal attitudes that allow these behaviors to persist.

The title, Not That Bad, is a phrase often used to dismiss or downplay the experiences of survivors, and the essays in this collection confront this mentality head-on. The book challenges the reader to acknowledge the full spectrum of harm caused by rape culture, from seemingly "small" transgressions to life-altering trauma. Gay’s introduction sets the tone for the anthology, providing a thoughtful and unflinching look at her own experiences and the broader implications of living in a society where sexual violence is normalized and, too often, minimized.

The essays in Not That Bad are varied in style and perspective, reflecting the complexity and universality of the issue. Some contributors, like Gabrielle Union and Ally Sheedy, are well-known figures, while others are emerging writers or activists. Each piece, however, is equally raw, honest, and compelling. The diversity of voices—across race, gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic backgrounds—highlights how rape culture touches everyone, albeit in different ways, and how the intersections of identity can shape one's experience with and response to sexual violence.

What makes Not That Bad particularly powerful is its unflinching honesty. The essays do not shy away from the painful, uncomfortable realities of sexual violence. Instead, they confront them directly, forcing readers to grapple with the often-overlooked consequences of rape culture. The contributors share stories of survival, but also of anger, confusion, shame, and the long-lasting effects of trauma. These narratives are not only about the acts of violence themselves but also about the aftermath—how survivors are treated by society, the judicial system, and even by those closest to them.

The collection also examines the ways in which language and societal norms contribute to the perpetuation of rape culture. Many of the essays explore how survivors are silenced, disbelieved, or pressured to minimize their experiences. The contributors expose the harmful myths and stereotypes that surround sexual violence, challenging readers to rethink the ways in which they understand and discuss these issues.

Despite the heavy subject matter, Not That Bad is also a book about resilience and the power of storytelling. By sharing their experiences, the contributors reclaim their narratives and assert their right to be heard. This act of speaking out is itself a form of resistance against a culture that often seeks to silence and marginalize survivors. The essays collectively call for a broader cultural shift—one that moves beyond mere awareness to meaningful action and change.

Roxane Gay’s careful curation of the essays ensures that the collection is both cohesive and wide-ranging. Each essay builds on the themes introduced by the others, creating a tapestry of voices that is both diverse and unified in its message. Gay’s own contributions, including her introduction and her essay "What We Hunger For," provide a strong anchor for the anthology, grounding it in her own experiences and in her broader work on feminism and social justice.

One of the strengths of Not That Bad is its ability to evoke a wide range of emotions in the reader. The essays are heartbreaking, infuriating, and, at times, deeply moving. They challenge the reader to confront the realities of rape culture in a way that is both personal and universal. The collection does not offer easy answers or solutions, but it does provide a space for survivors to be heard and for readers to bear witness to their stories.

In conclusion, Not That Bad by Roxane Gay is an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of rape culture and the experiences of those who live with its consequences. It is a book that demands to be read, discussed, and acted upon. The voices within these pages are powerful and necessary, offering not only a critique of the world as it is but also a vision of how it might be transformed. Not That Bad is a courageous and necessary contribution to the ongoing conversation about sexual violence, justice, and the fight for a more equitable and compassionate world.

A collection of essays that have been edited by the author which explore how it would be if women were exploited, belittled and generally treated badly.
It was ok but struggled to get through it.
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for an opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

Advanced Reader copy - Enjoyed this book, really opened my eyes and made me seek out other similar books to read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ I’m a bit later to the party with this one but given recent events it promoted me to go back and finish it.

I started this book a long time ago but honestly felt it was too much to read so paused it. It was a difficult read, a collection of experiences.

Well worth a read but in small chunks over time.

I think that the students in our school library need to hear lots of diverse voices and read stories and lives of many different kinds of people and experiences. When I inherited the library it was an incredibly sanitised space with only 'school readers' and project books on 'the railways' etc. Buying in books that will appeal to the whole range of our readers with diverse voices, eclectic and fascinating subject matter, and topics that will intrigue and fascinate them was incredibly important to me.
This is a book that I think our senior readers will enjoy very much indeed - not just because it's well written with an arresting voice that will really keep them reading and about a fascinating topic - but it's also a book that doesn't feel worthy or improving, it doesn't scream 'school library and treats them like young reading adults who have the right to explore a range of modern diverse reads that will grip and intrigue them and ensure that reading isn't something that they are just forced to do for their English project - this was a solid ten out of ten for me and I'm hoping that our students are as gripped and caught up in it as I was. It was one that I stayed up far too late reading and one that I'll be recommending to the staff as well as our senior students - thank you so much for the chance to read and review; I really loved it and can't wait to discuss it wth some of our seniors once they've read it too!

Read September 2020

This is a hard book to rate. It is also kind of a hard book to read as well. Requesting this so long ago I kind of went in blind, having forgotten what it was. I went by title alone.

"Not That Bad" is a compilation of essays by people who have been through rape and sexual assault. I appreciated that there was a wide demographic of authors, male and female, cis and trans, straight and not. Also a wide variety of stories, some very detailed, others less so. There were a couple of "famous" names in Ally Sheedy and Gabrielle Union but it transpired in the end credit list that the vast majority - if not all (I don't know if the numbers matched) - were published writers in one way or another. Was there an assumption that average "Jane/Joe" off the street wouldn't write well enough or were these essays already written and just pulled together for this book?

Regardless of how this book came to be and who should or shouldn't be included it is almost a must read - although take care if you have personal experiences and stay safe. The pervasiveness of rape, assault and harassment in society must be stopped. It is not something I have personally experience - yet, I'm only 30! - and that sadly is a rarity. Too many women have some kind of story. Men in particular: read this book, absorb it and do better. Affirmitive consent. No hooking up with drunk girls, no "harmless" groping. Just no means no.

Not That Bad is an anthology of essays exploring rape culture in modern society curated by Roxane Gay. There is a wide range of diverse voices sharing their experiences. This book was incredibly difficult to read, and at times I dreaded reading this book. Some of the stories are intensely graphic and they can be triggering, and at times I felt sick to my stomach. I also felt that some of the essays felt unfinished which meant that the anthology didn't feel fully cohesive.

A sometimes harrowing study of sexual violence and atttiudes towards it. Not an easy read, but an important one.

A collection of personal stories which deal with a difficult subject: the sexual abuse and rape of women and children. It is extraordinarily brave of survivors to talk publicly about their experiences knowing how society as a whole views and treats them. Yes, we mouth the words of support but there is an unconscious bias that pervades.

There are such a range of reactions that people have when faced with these situations, it is impossible to cover them all. I was a little disappointed, however, as I expected the collection to examine the term 'rape culture' in more depth. There were glimpses of it in individual accounts but I feel that anyone wanting to know what 'rape culture' actually means would come away from reading this as confused as at the start. It was a difficult read but this subject needs to be discussed, it's just a shame that this particular book missed the mark for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and publishers, Atlantic Books/Allen & Unwin, for the opportunity to read an ARC. (Unfortunately due to a technical error on my part, I was unable to access the ARC so I bought a copy after release date - this review is from the purchased version).

It's really important that this book exists and that the world is told about the rape culture that lies beneath so many institutions, ways of life and days in our lives. It's vital that people get to tell their stories, as this book allows them to do. However, I did find it pretty unremittingly grim and upsetting and it was a hard book to read: as, of course, it should be.

I really didn't like this book. It was hard going, and the essays were so badly edited. It felt like it was holding a mirror up to society and then going yeah so this is where we are, but it didn't look at how we got here or where we should go next. It was so disappointing because ultimately, the book itself just feels like a opportunistic money grab while the topic is gathering attention.

A deeply emotional and often disturbing book I put this down feeling sick and guilty and yet weirdly hopeful. My teenage years were in the nineties when a drunk girl was just "taken advantage of", and she was universally accepted to be at fault if she didn't want it, and the whole ladette culture was that if she didn't there was something wrong with her. Now I'm in my forties and I've worried constantly about how to empower my daughter with the self esteem I've always lacked and that I still see lacking in women I grew up with. How can we teach them to love and trust themselves when we don't know how? How do we broach this subject even, when do we? At seven not now but when? Ten? Twelve....when is too late? Anyway at the end of this book I made a decision. I'll be buying a copy for her when I feel the time is right and be encouraging my friends to do the same for their daughters and sons. A book like this should be available in high schools, even on the national curriculum. Because it is that bad.

Not That Bad is an impossible book to rate; each of the stories in this anthology are personal and painful experiences that are important and raw for the writer. Each one is in a completely different style, or about a different part of an experience – some focus on the act itself, some on the aftermath, some on the backstory of how it happened. There are poem-like stories, angry essays, retellings of events, graphic comic style drawings and even a few ‘statistic’ like chapters. The variety and backgrounds of the writers are wide – a mix of ages, experiences, backgrounds, races and orientations which show the scope and scale of the problem in our society today.

Not That Bad is approximately 350 pages – a length of book which would normally take me around a day to read, but instead this book has been on my ‘currently reading’ for months. It isn’t a book you can simply devour in one sitting – I read a few stories at a time in between other books and only when in the right frame of mind for it.

Not That Bad is an immensely powerful book and one that should be read by everyone, especially those who find themselves victim-blaming others. It is poignant, hard-hitting and painful to read. Thank you to NetGalley and Atlantic Books – Allen & Unwin for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a difficult, almost unbearable look at what perpetrators are capable of. Edited by Roxane Gay, this collection of personal accounts of sexual violence is important, exhausting and should not have to exist. It is a critical work that makes this much clear: The violations #MeToo rages against can and do damage people for a lifetime.

The contributors are varied. There is a male voice, there is trans representation and the intersection also of mental illness and the effect of sexual violence, in which some women try to cut the pain from their bodies. Their stories make clear that the reverberations of sexual predation live on inside all kinds of people.

Through these essays, Gay and this 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.

These essays are a must for the time. Both hard to read, and emotional.. Would be good for anyone who interested in learning more about what the victims go through.

Each chapter of this book contains a personal narrative about surviving rape, sexual abuse, and incest.

This was a difficult book to read. Many of the authors were telling their story for the first time. The trauma was still raw and debilitating. Some authors were telling their story for the first time to an audience who will believe them.

I was reading this book as the Brett Kavanagh Supreme Court Justice hearings began. I recommend he reads this book.

Thank you NetGalley for an advance copy in return for a review.

Just finished - Not that Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, edited by Roxanne Gay .
Synopsis : A collection of first-person essays about rape, assault and harassment.
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Review : These essays were very raw, powerful and thought-provoking. It took me a while to get through this as each essay weighed heavy on my heart. Each story was extremely well written and I couldn’t include a rating here because, who am I to rate these peoples experience, trauma and pain? Obviously trigger warnings abound. Pick this up if you can, these are stories that need to be heard.

Difficult to read but definitely a must read. Makes you relive many different situations and brings you easily to tears

This is a powerful and empowering read. It’s not easy, and may trigger some readers, but it’s a book that needs to be out there and hopefully will help other survivors feel less alone.
The book is compiled with respect and care; law, sociology and psychology students will find it an informative read.

I find it very difficult to review books that are this powerful. Roxane Gay brings together a collection of essays all different in content and style and a mixture of powerful, sad, depressingly true and anger inducing.
It's taken me a while to read as I wanted to take in each story properly and do it justice.
Highly recommended