Somewhere in the Midwest, college students who enter a certain classroom aren’t sure what to make of their professor. She’s tall, black, fat and covered in tattoos.

That’s OK. Their professor, Roxane Gay, daughter of Haitian immigrants and an east-coaster to her core, doesn’t know what to make of all the cornfields.

You can read her opinions in her book of essays, Bad Feminist. This is eat-your-vegetables reading or, since we’re talking Haiti, eat-your-avocados.

In her essays, Gay laments the dearth of black characters in novels and movies; or, when they are included, the tired old tropes they play out. You will not want to miss what she thinks of The Help or Orange Is the New Black or Lean In.

I was far less eager to read about feminism.  Feminists have been brats lately.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s one kind of feminism where we talk to each other and say, This happened to me. Oh, it happened to you too? Wow, they’ve really been putting one over on us. Let’s band together and not let them get away with it anymore. That’s a feminism to which I’m profoundly grateful. Then there’s another kind of feminism, one that doesn’t feel alive unless it’s protesting something. This kind of feminism ceaselessly bangs its head against reality. It tells itself, Bang harder, and reality will budge.

When a decent writer like Gay spends a couple thousand words on this kind of feminism, it’s unreadable twaddle.

She redeems herself elsewhere, though.

But back to feminism vs. reality. The diehards won’t rest until boardrooms, Congress, etc. all have 50% women. When I was young, we watched The Jetsons on TV. Backed up by our school lessons, we really thought that one day we’d be living in space needles and riding around in hover-crafts. It hasn’t happened, and probably for some very good reasons. That 50% things probably isn’t going to happen, either, and for some very good reasons. Why don’t we get out of the way of the women that want to be there, and call it a win.

One essay is Gay’s advice to teenage girls, telling them essentially, No, you don’t want that boy. He doesn’t care one bit about you. I was halfway through before I recognized the maternal tone of it. How much different was this from my mother’s advice? Well, a lot actually. Gay’s counsel is post-sexual-revolution, instructing the girls how to have their cake and eat it too.

My word to all feminists is: You had a sexual revolution. It’s causing you new problems. Just admit it.

Gay thinks she’s a bad feminist, anyway. Sometimes she likes to dress up, or re-read the book series she loved as a tween.

If I have to read an author who sees the world from a completely different angle than I do, Roxane Gay is a fair choice.

But I still don’t like avocados.

Photo credit: Wolfram Burner on Visualhunt / CC BY-NC