Following one appearance in particular, where there had been a few hundred women and about 14 men, a man contacted Roxane on Twitter to express his concern over the gender disparity. The Bad Feminist author continued by explaining that her speaking dates are attended mostly by women with a few men added to the mix. “We need a year of man silence,” she said. Roxane’s experience is such that when a woman expresses an opinion in a public space, men are quick to chime in with their own thoughts. Many of the offending trolls are men to whom she swiftly responds and shuts down. She shared that expressing herself in that space opens her up to constant trolling. Roxane described how she deals with them on a continual basis, and how she still feels as though she has only 200 Twitter followers when, in fact, she has over 240,000. The work in this case is Roxane’s recently released book, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, and, bestselling author to bestselling author, the women were discussing how people have responded to it. The evening began with Ann Patchett, author and co-owner of Parnassus Books, asking about her guest’s love for HGTV and then saying, “You write because you want people to understand you, but nothing in the world will make you more misunderstood than writing.” Author, writer, and cultural critic Roxane Gay responded, “You have no control once you let the work out into the world.”
