“It’s been very meta,” said Bourne, who ultimately had to set her Twitter account to private to ward off abuse and threats. “Publicity is often the hardest part for me as an author anyway, and because this book’s about feminism, and because feminism is such an inflammatory word and issue, it’s been a lot harder. And it wasn’t just me, it was everybody on my timeline – all my colleagues, friends, readers. It was like all of us were suddenly experiencing the arc of the book. That’s never happened to me with a book before.”
Speaking about the activist burnout that Lottie goes through in the book, and perhaps a bit about her own recent experience with online trolling, Bourne defends the importance of respecting your limits. “I think self-care is so important for anybody who fights for what they believe in. You can’t save the world every day. You’ll exhaust yourself.
“What’s a Girl Gotta Do? also explores Bourne’s desire for feminism to be more inclusive. She wants young people to know it’s OK not to have it all figured out, and that anyone and everyone is allowed to be a feminist. “One of the concerns I have about feminism at the moment is the idea that you have to pass a certain litmus test to be allowed to qualify as a feminist, and if you have one single aspect of your history, or your personality, or interests where you’re not the perfect example of what a feminist is, you’re attacked and therefore unqualified to talk. I think that silences a lot of people. In the book, I wanted to make it really clear that we’re always going to have double standards, you’re always going to slip up, and that’s OK. You’re still allowed a voice. You’re still allowed to fight.”
More than anything, Bourne hopes that her work – and Lottie’s – in being vocal about the institutional sexism she’s experienced will help precipitate bigger change and encourage others to speak out about their own experiences with sexism, no matter how small. “I think, a lot of the time, when feminists call out minor things, they are sometimes attacked and told, ‘Well that’s just silly,’ or ‘You should be focusing on this big thing.’ “But these teeny tiny things do lay the foundation for medium things, and those medium things lay the foundation for the big things, which lay the foundation for the horrendous things – so we should never feel bad for calling out something we think is damaging, even if it’s tiny.”
It’s this idea she hopes her book passes on to her young readers: “Your experience matters, your anger matters, your voice matters,” she says, echoing the rallying afterword she’s attached to What’s a Girl Gotta Do? “You have a right to talk, a right to fight, and you should just start owning that. We’re not going to do this alone. I want young people, boys as well as girls, to understand how powerful they really are. So these books aren’t just about feminism, it’s about getting young people to see you guys can really change the world.”
