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A review by shorshewitch
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5.0
An unbridled 5/5
This is the most definitive answer to people who say "Women WERE an oppressed gender and not anymore" or "Why not Humanist? Why feminist?" or "Why such man-hating?". I especially had almost started referring myself as a humanist rather than anything else because I faced a lot of flak for speaking against stereotypes. People thought I was a confused feminist and this confused me further. And then I realised that they said this because they wanted to run away from the issue that I had pointed out. They didn't have a counter-argument. So I stopped referring to myself as a humanist. And no I don't hate men or their jokes. I hate ludicrous attention-seeking, dripping- with-prejudice jokes.
Adichie is on my read-list since I read her Half of a Yellow Sun. One sentence especially caught my attention - "You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?” Aunty Ifeka said. “Your life belongs to you and you alone.” It is so interesting to see that an uneducated Aunt Ifeka knew this so strongly and she made sure the point was passed on to her niece exactly at the time she needed it. Of course she could not break the shackles of an adulterated relationship herself due to societal hypocrisy but nonetheless the statement she made was so impactful. I vowed to read all of Adichie's after that. This is the 2nd one.
A brilliant take of what "feminism" really means. About how misunderstood the word has become. Adichie has quoted several convincing instances that she has faced as a Nigerian woman, in a hotel, in a parking lot, during her interviews. She has also deliberated over why it is dangerous to keep giving any particular task to one specific gender. Because one starts getting used to it and before we realize it, it becomes a norm, a generalization, when today every individual, a man or a woman, comes with different sets of abilities and physical capabilities. She has also quoted an American research study where it was found that men were paid higher than women for doing the same job just because they were "men". It is all about equal opportunities and appreciation. It is about basic respect that both genders should exercise for each other.
Why must EVERYONE read this essay?
1) Because anger is just the beginning of a change.
2) Because there is no denying the fact that it is the need of the day.
3) Because Adichie very cleverly shatters all the negative perceptions and connotations of the word.
4) Because every single passage of this essay is quotable and full of real life scenarios.
I have read it five times now and I can read it even more number of times. It is important to know and enlighten ourselves about things before we start interpreting and challenging. Half knowledge is an extremely harmful thing.
Recommended very strongly to every man and woman and even children, for it is the children who are going to shape up the coming world.
I'd like to highlight some passages here:
"Men and women are different. We have different hormones and different sexual organs and different biological abilities – women can have babies, men cannot. Men have more testosterone and are, in general, physically stronger than women. There are slightly more women than men in the world – 52 per cent of the world’s population is female but most of the positions of power and prestige are occupied by men. The late Kenyan Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai put it simply and well when she said, ‘The higher you go, the fewer women there are.’ In the recent US elections, we kept hearing of the Lilly Ledbetter law, and if we go beyond that nicely alliterative name, it was really about this: in the US, a man and a woman are doing the same job, with the same qualifications, and the man is paid more because he is a man. So in a literal way, men rule the world. This made sense – a thousand years ago. Because human beings lived then in a world in which physical strength was the most important attribute for survival; the physically stronger person was more likely to lead. And men in general are physically stronger. There of course are many exceptions. Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much."
"We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak, a hard man."
"Some people ask, ‘Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?’ Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general – but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem should acknowledge that. Some men feel threatened by the idea of feminism. This comes, I think, from the insecurity triggered by how boys are brought up, how their sense of self-worth is diminished if they are not ‘naturally’ in charge as men."
She also brilliantly counters the argument of evolution -
"Some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how female apes bow to male apes – that sort of thing. But the point is this: we are not apes. Apes also live in trees and eat earthworms. We do not."
Finally she chooses to share the ACTUAL definition of Feminism. No it is not about man-hating. It is about mutual love and respect.
"And when, all those years ago, I looked the word up in the dictionary, it said: Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes."
This is the most definitive answer to people who say "Women WERE an oppressed gender and not anymore" or "Why not Humanist? Why feminist?" or "Why such man-hating?". I especially had almost started referring myself as a humanist rather than anything else because I faced a lot of flak for speaking against stereotypes. People thought I was a confused feminist and this confused me further. And then I realised that they said this because they wanted to run away from the issue that I had pointed out. They didn't have a counter-argument. So I stopped referring to myself as a humanist. And no I don't hate men or their jokes. I hate ludicrous attention-seeking, dripping- with-prejudice jokes.
Adichie is on my read-list since I read her Half of a Yellow Sun. One sentence especially caught my attention - "You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?” Aunty Ifeka said. “Your life belongs to you and you alone.” It is so interesting to see that an uneducated Aunt Ifeka knew this so strongly and she made sure the point was passed on to her niece exactly at the time she needed it. Of course she could not break the shackles of an adulterated relationship herself due to societal hypocrisy but nonetheless the statement she made was so impactful. I vowed to read all of Adichie's after that. This is the 2nd one.
A brilliant take of what "feminism" really means. About how misunderstood the word has become. Adichie has quoted several convincing instances that she has faced as a Nigerian woman, in a hotel, in a parking lot, during her interviews. She has also deliberated over why it is dangerous to keep giving any particular task to one specific gender. Because one starts getting used to it and before we realize it, it becomes a norm, a generalization, when today every individual, a man or a woman, comes with different sets of abilities and physical capabilities. She has also quoted an American research study where it was found that men were paid higher than women for doing the same job just because they were "men". It is all about equal opportunities and appreciation. It is about basic respect that both genders should exercise for each other.
Why must EVERYONE read this essay?
1) Because anger is just the beginning of a change.
2) Because there is no denying the fact that it is the need of the day.
3) Because Adichie very cleverly shatters all the negative perceptions and connotations of the word.
4) Because every single passage of this essay is quotable and full of real life scenarios.
I have read it five times now and I can read it even more number of times. It is important to know and enlighten ourselves about things before we start interpreting and challenging. Half knowledge is an extremely harmful thing.
Recommended very strongly to every man and woman and even children, for it is the children who are going to shape up the coming world.
I'd like to highlight some passages here:
"Men and women are different. We have different hormones and different sexual organs and different biological abilities – women can have babies, men cannot. Men have more testosterone and are, in general, physically stronger than women. There are slightly more women than men in the world – 52 per cent of the world’s population is female but most of the positions of power and prestige are occupied by men. The late Kenyan Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai put it simply and well when she said, ‘The higher you go, the fewer women there are.’ In the recent US elections, we kept hearing of the Lilly Ledbetter law, and if we go beyond that nicely alliterative name, it was really about this: in the US, a man and a woman are doing the same job, with the same qualifications, and the man is paid more because he is a man. So in a literal way, men rule the world. This made sense – a thousand years ago. Because human beings lived then in a world in which physical strength was the most important attribute for survival; the physically stronger person was more likely to lead. And men in general are physically stronger. There of course are many exceptions. Today, we live in a vastly different world. The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much."
"We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak, a hard man."
"Some people ask, ‘Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?’ Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general – but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem should acknowledge that. Some men feel threatened by the idea of feminism. This comes, I think, from the insecurity triggered by how boys are brought up, how their sense of self-worth is diminished if they are not ‘naturally’ in charge as men."
She also brilliantly counters the argument of evolution -
"Some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how female apes bow to male apes – that sort of thing. But the point is this: we are not apes. Apes also live in trees and eat earthworms. We do not."
Finally she chooses to share the ACTUAL definition of Feminism. No it is not about man-hating. It is about mutual love and respect.
"And when, all those years ago, I looked the word up in the dictionary, it said: Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes."