We Should All Be Feminists

Feminism: the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. It seems like a rather simple word, yet is riddled with negative connotations and misunderstanding. From the stereotype of bra-burning, man-hating lesbians to the idea of the “feminazi,” people often don’t know what being a feminist means or mischaracterize feminists and lump them into a single stereotype. This, of course, isn’t something that only happens to feminists, but the image we are often shown of feminists is skewed at best and downright harmful at worst. The question is, where do these stereotypes come from? When did it become okay to demonize feminists? The answer goes back as early as the women’s suffrage movement and extends to the third-wave feminism we see today.

The essence of feminism isn’t hard to understand, but even with celebrities like Beyoncé and Emma Watson proclaiming the word to the world, people bring their preconceived notions to the table and disregard its importance in American society.

In her famous TED Talk, Nigerian author and speaker Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about her childhood and how she was always a feminist but didn’t always have a word to describe it. She says “Okuloma was a person I could argue with, laugh with, and truly talk to. He was also the first person to call me a feminist.” After Okuloma called her a feminist, she became interested in the term and decided to learn more about it. As she got older, she started to call herself a feminist and would often receive advice from people, like “I should never call myself a feminist because feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands.” She then gets to the heart of the matter, acknowledging the tired stereotype of feminists by proclaiming “at some point I was a happy African feminist who does not hate men and who likes lip gloss and who wears high-heels for herself but not for men. Of course a lot of these was tongue-in-cheek, but that word feminist is so heavy with baggage, negative baggage. You hate men, you hate bras, you hate African culture, that sort of thing.”

She goes on to recount stories from her life and then tells the audience “My own definition of feminist is: a feminist is a man or a woman who says – a feminist is a man or a woman who says “Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it. We must do better.” So now the question has to be asked: why should we all be feminists? Well hopefully that’s an easy question to answer now. We should all be feminists because feminism is the belief that everyone is equal, regardless of gender. It’s as simple as that.

#Feminism #ChimamandaNgozieAdichie