this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour, as newsday continues straight after hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. finding your voice as a writer, cutting through the cacophony of noise in 21st century culture is not easy. it helps if you have a talent for writing. it also helps if you have something to say which is powerful, authentic, and confronts tough questions about the human condition. my guest, american writer

and academic roxane gay, has most definitely cut through with her books, which include unflinching testimony on the impact of being raped, on fatness and the meaning of feminism. how scary is this level of self—exposure? roxane gay, welcome to hardtalk. stephen, thank you for having me. well, it's a great pleasure to have you here. you've written with extraordinary candour about your own life. i have. and it strikes me that writing about it —

presumably a solitary occupation — is one thing, but then speaking about it in public is quite another. it is, it is. over the years, has the speaking about it become easier? it has. i'm actually afraid of public speaking, and that's why i'm a writer. and i never anticipated in my career that i would be speaking about anything in public. but the more you do something, the more habituated you get, and it does get easier. and, you know, i tend to speak in front of very receptive crowds and so that also makes it a lot easier. and i stand by everything i've ever written, so that helps. i've talked about self—exposure being scary. mm—hm. does it feel scary, even now? it's always, always terrifying. i have very firm boundaries, even though people seem to think i don't, but i have very firm boundaries. you know what i am willing for you to know. but when you have to make

yourself vulnerable on the page and you can't control what people are going to do with that information, it's terrifying because people have a lot of... ..very specific ideas about bodies, about women, about sexuality. and so, it's a risk every time and it's terrifying. and from the beginning of my career, i've always just told myself, "don't worry, girl, no—one's going to read it." which patently is not true. it's not true. but i'm still very good at telling myself that lie. and so i try to just forget that there's an audience at the other end of it, and i try to say what needs to be said for the good of the piece. i think many people see you as very brave, courageous. mmm. are those words that mean anything to you? i respect why people think that, but i'm terrified. i simply do it and have found the ability to tolerate fear and to tolerate discomfort. so, no, i'm not brave. you know, like, brave people are actually brave and i'm just a writer.

and i think it's really important to have just a scale of understanding, like, what courage actually is. you are a writer and you've written all sorts of books. you've written fiction and nonfiction, you've written memoir, you've even contributed to a comic book series. mm—hm. you do a podcast. i mean, you are very creative and very busy, but it would be fair to say, would it not, that one book, if one wants to understand roxane gay, one book is at the heart of it and that's hunger? would you agree with that? i think either hunger or bad feminist, but i think mostly hunger because it's my most personal book, it's my memoir. and in it, i write about my life and it's about living in a fat body in a world that is fairly inhospitable to fat bodies. and you will have a fair understanding of who i am and how i came to be the person that i am today. and it wasn't the first

time you went public, very public, with the fact that you had been raped... no... ..i mean, gang—raped as a 12—year—old girl. yes. but it was in that book that you essentially told yourself and the world that this experience was "absolutely the defining moment of my life." there was a "before the rape" and there was an "after the rape". and the girl that existed before was gone and the person who came out of that was fundamentally very different. yes. you know, i was a very lucky child in my early childhood, and i was very sheltered. i have two amazing parents who have been married for 50 years. i have two — or i had two — brothers. and we were very close. we are very close, my surviving brother. and so when this thing happened, i didn't have any context for it, i didn't know anything like that could happen to a person. and because i wasjust

so wildly unprepared, it just shattered me. it did. and it took me many, many years to begin to try and put the pieces of myself back together. in the book, you write about it in a very spare but deeply affecting way. and i don't want to go into the detail now, except to say that one important factor was that the boy who led the gang of youths who did this to you was a boy you knew well. absolutely. in fact, you kind of regarded him as your boyfriend. idid. i mean, i was very naive and i was very shy. we moved around a lot and so i didn't have a lot of friends. and i thought, "oh, he likes me." and he would tell me, "oh, we're boyfriend and girlfriend." and i would... you know, we're not very smart at 12! i believed him. and he took advantage of that in the worst possible way. and he and his friends did this terrible thing, and then, of course, had a very different narrative about what happened.

it's very hard for me to imagine how that girl came out of that experience and survived and made a life. but a key fact is that you were unable to share this total traumatic experience with your family, with your parents — you just couldn't. yeah, i couldn't. my parents, who are wonderful and who have since told me i should've told them — and they're right, i should have told them. but i was terrified. and we were raised catholic, and i thought that what had happened was a sin and that i would go to hell. and soi... you know, i didn't know that it wasn't sex. and so ijust thought, "i've had premarital sex, "and in such a really just grotesque way." mmm. "i can't tell anyone. " and so i kept it to myself. and i, actually, to this day, i'm like, "how did i keep that to myself?"

but by doing that... but i didn't tell anyone. i mean, the damage within you was exacerbated... it was. ..because you internalised everything. absolutely. because when you keep a secret like that and you...you know, especially when i was 12, 13, 14, 15, you try to figure out, why did this happen? what did i do wrong? what is fundamentally wrong with me, that they saw me and thought they could do this to me and treat me like less than garbage? and so then i started to treat myself like less than garbage, because i just thought, "well, this must be what i am. this must be who i am." and because no—one knew, there was no—one to give me a counternarrative. and i think that when you keep a secret, you start to become very attached to that secret over time. and the older i got, the more attached i became to the secret, and the more convinced i became that i couldn't tell anyone. which also brings us to the damage you did to your body through food, through overeating, over a long period, which, of course, led to the other thing

you write about with such frankness, the extreme obesity. well, fatness, yes. erm... i turned to food as comfort, especially in those early years. and food was there and it was easy to access, because, thank god, i didn't have access to drugs or alcohol. that would have been a different kind of disaster. and so, you know, when food is abundant and it's comforting and you are in grave need of comfort, it'sjust a slippery slope. and, of course, year after year, the pounds pile on and you start to think, "well, there's nothing i can do," and you sort ofjust surrender to it. and there are obviously different impulses there, connected with that transformative trauma, which you describe in different ways. at times you say, you know, "i wanted to be invisible," particularly invisible to the male gaze... absolutely. ..because that was so scary.

and you also have at times described your desire to create a body that was a fortress... yeah. ..that would be sort of impenetrable to the outside world. mm—hm. and i guess they're different impulses, but they're both there. they're both there and in some ways they're both compatible because, you know, i have definitely found that, even though you are highly visible as a fat person, people tend to look right through you. and at the same time, really, i wanted to feel safe. i wanted to feel solid. i wanted to make sure something like this could never happen to me again. and i mistakenly thought that there would be some sort of set point where i would no longer... ..have to deal with men. and then, of course, you get older and wiser and things like that. but, you know, food offered a lot of safety at the time. and, you know, looking back, i wish i had chosen a different coping mechanism, but i survived and that's good enough.

let me ask you about that word, fat and fatness, cos ijust used the word obesity. and i notice you said, actually, you know, fat is the word. yes. and it's very interesting, in hunger and lots of other writing you've done, you've insisted on using this word fat, which some other, particularly women who are overweight, they don't like the word fat. and they also talk about something which i don't think you really do talk about, which is body positivity and embracing their fatness, their...their curves, you know. you've never really been of that sort of approach, have you? i haven't. you know, i don't like the term obesity because i think it unnecessarily medicalises the fat body. and, you know, when you say suffering, i don't particularly think i'm suffering at all. i think that fat people manage to live full and active lives, and people tend to disbelieve that. but here we are living

our lives nonetheless. you know, but with body positivity, which i think is a wonderful movement and a wonderful corrective to a lot of the anti—fat bias that we deal with, i also think it's a struggle to feel necessarily positive about your body sometimes, especially when you receive so many messages that tell you that your body is repulsive and that you are a drain on the health care system, and... as if everyone isn't a drain on a health care system. and that you are going to have this disease or that disease, and when you say, "no, i don't have any of these things," people just disbelieve you. and so it can be really frustrating. and soi... increasingly, i believe in body positivity, fat positivity. but also, i think body neutrality might be a great way forward, and that's something that i've been reading a lot about in recent months and, like, really, iguess, the past year, where you just acknowledge that, "i have a body, and it gets me through the day and "i don't feel positive or negative about it." i'm asking you candid

questions cos i think you're allowing me to, by the way you write... yes. ..and the way you speak about these things. so the next candid question is, how does your decision to have major stomach surgery to reduce the size of your stomach, how does that fit with fat positivity and trying to be at peace with the way you are? i think it doesn't, necessarily. i mean, i think that, for me, as i've gotten older, i've realised, what kind of life do i want and how active do i want that life to be? and...i think that you can feel reasonably positive about yourself and also want to lose weight. and ijust hit a point where i realised... ..this is not going to happen without intervention, because i had tried every single diet possible. i've done it all. i have a personal trainer who's amazing. her name is sarah. hi, sarah. stephen chuckles and, you know, weight—loss surgery is a challenging thing. it's extraordinarily expensive. it changes your life forever.

in good ways always? good and bad ways. i think that there are some side—effects that are challenging. but would i do it again? 1,000%. i have no regrets. no regrets whatsoever. you force all of us who read your books and talk to you to think very hard about how we view and treat fat people. mm—hm. and you have so many powerful stories about the judgmentalism and sometimes the contempt that you have faced from ordinary people in ordinary life. yes. is it changing at all? it's not changing yet. it really isn't. people really do view fat as this repulsive thing that they should treat with the ultimate disdain. it's the first insult. you know, one of the most frustrating things in my career has been no matter how much i achieve, no matter how high i rise, there's always some fred over there who reminds me, "oh, you're fat."

and that, in his mind, of course, negates everything i've accomplished. that's incredibly frustrating. but i do think we're having better conversations about it. i do think people are starting to recognise that we shouldn't demonise fatness. i think there's a long way to go, but progress is always incremental and progress certainly in regards to fat acceptance is incremental. but i recognise that. and you still talk about it because you do want to change attitudes. i do. 1,000%. no matter how much weight i lose — and i'm on an ongoing journey, obviously — i still think it's important that people should be treated with respect and dignity at any size. what i was then going to add was that you don'tjust talk about this, though. i mean, you have an extremely wide range of cultural interests and you are not easy to pigeonhole. for example, you know,

the other bestselling book you wrote was your reflections on feminism, but you very deliberately gave it a very controversial title. you called it bad feminism. mm—hm. do you still see yourself as a bad feminist? what does it even mean? well, when i titled the book bad feminist, it was after one of the essays in the book, and it was partlyjust tongue—in—cheek, like, "ha—ha, i'm a bad feminist." also, i mean, let's be honest, it's a great book title! but i was also thinking about how mainstream feminism has had a lot of failures in terms of inclusion and making sure to represent all women, where they are in their lives and looking at the intersections of identity. and so, if that's good feminism, i am avowedly a bad feminist. i mean, you seem to think — and again, correct me if i'm wrong — you seem to think that a lot of sort of the mainstream feminism that you read when you were growing up was essentially very white and middle class.

it was. and that feminism has done a lot of important work. and i recognise that, which is why i call myself a feminist. but i think we can look at what feminism has done and we can also look at the ways that feminism has fallen short and continues to fall short. but i will say at least, forfeminism, we do have these frank and often difficult conversations about who we are, who we should be and what we should prioritise as a community. you wrote, "i'm a woman who loves pink and likes to get "freaky and sometimes dances her ass off to music "she knows, she knows is terrible for women "and who sometimes plays dumb with the repairman because it's "just easier to let that guy feel macho and do the job." you're kind of being playful. i mean, do you think feminism has become too stern, too po—faced, not enough humour, not enough relaxed approach to the subject? that's a good question. when you look at what women are dealing with around the world, i think it's understandable that certain feminists are not going to be as funny and fun—loving

as you might want, because we're dealing with very serious issues of bodily autonomy and freedom and equal pay and equal treatment, equity in our culture. but i think that many feminists have, over the years, gotten the reputation of being humourless. and i am not humourless. and so, especially in bad feminist, itried to incorporate humour, because i think you can use humour and still talk about important and serious things. but for all of your appeal to sort of nuance and a broad church within feminism, there are certain red lines you draw. one is you are quite clear — you say you cannot be anti—abortion or, as americans would often say, pro—life, and a feminist. i mean, many american women would disagree with you. there are american women who are adamantly anti—abortion and proudly, in their own view, feminist. yes. but as a feminist,

as someone who believes that women are equal to men, that we should respect everyone across the gender spectrum, i don't know how you can be a feminist and also say that women's bodies should be legislated. i simplyjust don't see how you make that connection work. so i firmly believe that for us to be feminists and for us to be united, we do have to be on the same page. now, if you don't want an abortion, then you should not get one. and i think it's every woman's personal choice, and i think that it's so important to focus on, that you don't have to have one if you don't want one. but... what does it say about — sorry to interrupt — about america today that as of last summer, roe v wade has been overturned in the supreme court and i think a dozen states or more have, in effect, made abortion illegal? i think it tells us that we have so much work yet to do and that we have lost

so much ground. and it's incredibly frustrating. i think second—wave feminists in particular are profoundly concerned because i don't know that anyone thought that roe v wade would be overturned, except there were plenty of feminists who were ringing this bell for many years and who were looking at the writing on the wall — especially, a lot of times you can start to see what's happening in state legislatures with attempts to ban abortion and recognise that this is part of, actually, a national movement. so the writing was there on the wall, we knew this was coming, but it still shows that we have not covered nearly as much ground as i think we would have liked to and that feminism still is a hard sell forfar too many people. feminism isn't very divided on the abortion issue. i think it's fair to say the clear majority of feminists are pro—abortion, pro—choice, as they would put it. yes, the clear majority of americans are pro—choice, which is fortunate. but let's just get into one

area briefly where there is a clear divide within feminism, and that is on the issue of transgender rights. it's territory that you've stepped into several times, but, in essence, there is a significant body of feminist opinion which says that biology really does matter and that when it comes to certain issues like the creation of safe spaces for abused women, maybe in women's prisons, maybe on the sports field for women's sports, biology actually should and must trump gender self—identification. do you agree with them? i do not. i do not at all. i think that trans women are women and... ..this obsession with biology... i just... first of all, i think that we're spending a disproportionate amount of time on things that aren't necessarily even happening. and all of the dangerous people i've ever known,

like the men that i've known that have been dangerous, they don't dress up as women to be dangerous. theyjust do it in plain sight as men. and obviously, that's controversial in itself. and i don't want to get stuck on stats about how many people have committed crimes when they have been self—identifying as the gender they were not born with. let's not go there, butjust let's think about feminism and the impact of this debate. is it important to build bridges between the two sides within the movement? because you've described those you disagree with, i think, at one point recently, in an interview as gender fascists. and i'm just wondering whether that's helpful or not. well, i don't know if it's helpful. i think it's accurate. do you really? i do, i do. i think any time you try to control gender unilaterally and dictate what gender is, there's a problem. and i don't see why there's a problem with inclusion. i really don't. and i always think, of course we should try to build

bridges with people with whom we disagree, otherwise progress is going to be even more challenging and more elusive. but how do you build bridges when we have this fundamental disagreement, where one side is saying we want to be inclusive, we want to err on the side of generosity and empathy, and another side is saying that we are trying to eradicate womanhood, which is certainly not what's happening. yours is actually an influential voice now in this debate and many others. you're one of america's sort of most prominent cultural commentators in a way, and you have done so much and achieved so much despite everything that you've written about in terms of the traumas and the damage done to you when you were very young. have you reached a place of happiness, contentment? i am the happiest i've ever been. i never thought happiness was possible for me, but i have reached a place of happiness and contentment. i think part of it is getting married, married to an incredible woman, and that was incredibly unexpected.

i did not foresee finding love later in life, but i did. and i think that... i'm a8, and the older you get, the more you recognise, "this is who i am, so i'd better start "to get on board with it!" but is contentment going to stop you writing? never, never. it's funny, my parents ask me that all the time. no, i write every day, i read every day. i still have so much work to do. i am not nearly done with offering opinions on everything. i have several books forthcoming. contentment actually just gives me more to work for, now i have a family. so, yeah, no, the work isjust beginning. it goes on. roxane gay, it's been a real pleasure to have you on hardtalk. likewise, stephen. thank you very much indeed. thank you.

hello. this week, we've got some very big swings in temperatures from one day to the next. yesterday, widely, we had temperatures double figures, whereas today, it's been about 9 celsius colder than that. for example, boulmer, 14 yesterday, just five this afternoon — now, that's a drop. temperatures has brought with it much colder air, and in turn, we've seen some snowfall over the staffordshire moors again here and here at low levels in the carlisle area. so, across parts of northern ireland, southern scotland, northern england, we have seen some snow getting down to quite low elevations, risk of a few showers pushing across the midlands, east anglia, south east england, but clearing later in the night with clear skies, then following. well, we are looking at a widespread and sharp frost in our towns and cities. temperatures widely

between —2 and —6 celsius, and where we've seen those showers, there is a risk of some icy stretches to start the day on wednesday. otherwise, it should be a fine start with lots of sunshine. now, in the west, we'll see cloud quickly thicken in northern ireland, outbreaks of rain spreading in here. you might even see a little bit of snow just on the forward edge of this weather system. but ultimately, the air is turning milder in northern ireland, so any snow will be transient, it will turn back to rain. however, during wednesday evening time, we could well see some more troublesome snowjust for a time across parts of northern england and scotland. the snow potentially could come down to quite low elevations, but it's across the hills and particularly to the north of the central belt, where we'll probably see the snow lasting longest. but as we go through wednesday night, again, we are going to see milder air push in from the southwest, so by the end of the night, most places will have temperatures above freezing. now, for thursday, friday and the weekend beyond, this area of low pressure is going to be in charge,

the weather unsettled, and with those south—westerly winds feeding in, it will be turning a lot milder. that milder air will be arriving for most parts of the united kingdom on thursday, although it will be accompanied by brisk winds and some heavy outbreaks of rain. temperatures will be climbing to around 12—14 degrees pretty widely, so very mild for the time of year. but the cold air hasn't quite left our shores — lerwick, just three celsius. through friday, generally it is going to be on the mild side with outbreaks of rain at times, but the cold air never far away across the north of scotland, and there are signs it could start moving southwards again early next week.

welcome to newsday, reporting live from singapore, i'm karishma vaswani. the headlines: america says a russian fighter jet has forced one of its surveillance drones to crash into the black sea using tactics that have been condemned by officials. several times before the collision, the su—27 has dumped fuel on and flew in front of the mq—9 in a reckless and unprofessional manner. tropical storm freddie has killed more than 200 people in malawi and mozambique after striking for a second time. tougher background checks announced on gun buying in america, as president biden tries to stop mass shootings. and the uk's biggest horse racing festival is kicking off

with stricter rules around jockeys whipping horses.