In a world where information can spread as quickly as people can tap their fingers on screens of technological devices, it is hard for data to be verified at the speed it is being posted and spread. In A Field Guide to Lies written by Daniel J. Levitin: a neuroscientist, cognitive psychologist, and bestselling author, it addresses ways people can identify whether the information presented is reliable or not. A Field Guide to Lies is separated into three categories: Evaluating Numbers, Evaluating Words, and Evaluating the World. In Bad Feminist, the author Roxane Gay avoids lying. This can be seen when using one of the three categories, Evaluating Words in the chapter, “Overlooked, Undervalued, Alternative Explanations” for an evaluation.
For example, in A Field Guide to Lies, it says, “there are always alternative explanations” (152). Gay shows divergent perspectives on the topics written in the book. Although she is strong about expressing her opinions on the matter, she also explained from a different perspective on why things are done. She once read an article from the New York Times about an eleven-year-old girl gang-raped by eighteen men in Cleveland, Texas. She was disturbed by how the author addressed this event. The author of this article spent a few words on the girl, a child. Furthermore, he was more worried about the effects it might bring to the men who raped her and to the town than about the girl’s mental and physical health.
Gay believes that “it was an eleven-year-old girl’s life that was ripped apart, not the lives of the men who raped her.” (129). She finds it difficult to understand why people couldn’t make sense of that. She then looks at the situation from another perspective. She understands that rape is so often seen and discussed, that people take it so lightly. Also, many people “are inundated, in different ways, by the idea that male aggression and violence toward women is acceptable and often inevitable.” (129) Which is why it’s not hard to imagine the author of the article was more concerned about the eighteen men than the girl. Similarly, in many of her other stories, while discussing various topics, she makes sure to give another explanation of what happened and why it happened. By doing so, she is able to give her readers multiple perspectives to look at, thus avoiding lying. When the reader is not giving points of views, the author is hiding crucial information that the reader may need to get a better understanding of the situation.
