No matter what issues I have with feminism, I am a feminist. I cannot and will not deny the importance and absolute necessity of feminism. Like most … - Roxane Gay

I buried the girl I had been because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. She is still small and scared and ashamed, an

In my high school yearbook there is a note from a girl who wrote, 'I like you even though you are very mean.' I do not remember the girl who wrote this note. I do not remember being mean to her, or to anyone, for that matter. I do remember that I was feral in high school, socially awkward, emotionally closed off, completely lost.
Or maybe I don't want to remember being mean because I've changed in the twenty years between then and now. Around my junior year, I went from being quiet and withdrawn to being mean, where mean was saying exactly what I thought and making sarcastic comments relentlessly. Sincerity was dead to me.

This is what is so rarely said about unlikable women in fiction – that they aren't pretending, that they won't or can't pretend to be someone they are not. They have neither the energy for it nor the desire.