Roxane Gay's 'Confessions of a bad feminist' TED talk.

The world can't get enough of Roxane Gay, who rocketed into our lives last year with her collection of essays Bad Feminist.

And it was only a matter of time before someone pursuaded her to share her endless wisdom in a TED talk.

The 11 minute "confession" filmed in May is now online for you to soak up.

Here are some of our favourite take-aways.


Even Roxane Gay came to feminism reluctantly as a young woman.

"When I was younger, mostly in my teens and 20s, I had strange ideas about feminists as hairy, angry, man-hating, sex-hating women -- as if those are bad things. (Laughter) These days, I look at how women are treated the world over, and anger, in particular, seems like a perfectly reasonable response."

"You don't want to be that rebel woman, until you realise that you very much are that woman, and cannot imagine being anyone else."

She argues feminism needs to be inclusive to be truly effective

"When we talk about the needs of women, we have to consider the other identities we inhabit. We are not just women. We are people with different bodies, gender expressions, faiths, sexualities, class backgrounds, abilities, and so much more. We need to take into account these differences and how they affect us, as much as we account for what we have in common. Without this kind of inclusion, our feminism is nothing."

"I reject the mainstream feminism that has historically ignored or deflected the needs of women of color, working-class women, queer women and transgender women, in favor of supporting white, middle- and upper-class straight women. Listen, if that's good feminism, I am a very bad feminist."

She is guilty of listening to misogynistic rap music

"Even though the lyrics are degrading to women - these lyrics offend me to my core - the classic Yin Yang Twins song "Salt Shaker", it is amazing. 'Make it work with your wet t-shirt. Bitch, you gotta shake it 'til your camel starts to hurt!' Think about it. Poetry, right? I am utterly mortified by my music choices."

She doesn't want to give up the idea of "man work"

"I firmly believe in man work, which is anything I don't want to do, including all domestic tasks, but also: bug killing, trash removal, lawn care and vehicle maintenance. I want no part of any of that. Pink is my favorite color. I enjoy fashion magazines and pretty things. I watch The Bachelor and romantic comedies, and I have absurd fantasies about fairy tales coming true."

She believes we need to fix the system rather than judge individuals for their choices

"If a woman wants to take her husband's name, that is her choice, and it is not my place to judge. If a woman chooses to stay home to raise her children, I embrace that choice, too. The problem is not that she makes herself economically vulnerable in that choice; the problem is that our society is set up to make women economically vulnerable when they choose. Let's deal with that."

She really does not want you to worship her

"As a feminist, I feel a lot of pressure. We have this tendency to put visible feminists on a pedestal. We expect them to pose perfectly. When they disappoint us, we gleefully knock them from the very pedestal we put them on. Like I said, I am a mess, consider me knocked off that pedestal before you ever try to put me up there."

"We demand perfection from feminists, because we are still fighting for so much, we want so much, we need so damn much."

"We go far beyond reasonable, constructive criticism, to dissecting any given woman's feminism, tearing it apart until there's nothing left. We do not need to do that. Bad feminism - or really, more inclusive feminism - is a starting point."

She encourages feminists to be brave and "walk the walk"

"We can all make better choices. We can change the channel when a television show treats sexual violence against women like sport, Game of Thrones. We can change the radio station when we hear songs that treat women as nothing. We can spend our box office dollars elsewhere when movies don't treat women as anything more than decorative objects. We can stop supporting professional sportswhere the athletes treat their partners like punching bags."