Home > Work > We Should All Be Feminists
101 " had not even occurred to me to be worried, because a man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the kind of man I would have no interest in. "
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie , We Should All Be Feminists
102 " I was once talking about gender and a man said to me, “Why does it have to be you as a woman? Why not you as a human being?” This type of question is a way of silencing a person’s specific experiences. "
103 " 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. "
104 " So, no, this conversation is about gender. Some people will say, "Oh, but women have the real power: bottom power." (This is a Nigerian expression for a woman who uses her sexuality to get things from men.) But bottom power is not power at all, because the woman with bottom power is actually not powerful; she just has a good route to tap another person's power. And then what happens if the man is in a bad mood or sick or temporarily impotent? "
105 " bristling with half-baked knowledge from the books we had read. "
106 " 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. "
107 " Hay gente que pregunta: "¿Por qué usar la palabra "feminista"? ¿Por qué no decir simplemente que crees en los derechos humanos o algo parecido?". Pues porque no sería honesto. Está claro que el feminismo forma parte de los derechos humanos en general, pero elegir usar la expresión genérica "derechos humanos" supone negar el problema específico y particular del género. Es una forma de fingir que no han sido las mujeres quienes se han visto excluidas durante siglos. Es una forma de negar que el problema del género pone a las mujeres en el punto de mira. "
108 " I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femininity. And I want to be respected in all my femaleness. Because I deserve to be. I like politics and history and am happiest when having a good argument about ideas. I am girly. I am happily girly. I like high heels and trying on lipsticks. "
109 " I know that they don't intend harm, but it is one thing to know something intellectually and quite another to feel it. "
110 " We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him. But "
111 " In secondary school, a boy and a girl go out, both of them teenagers with meager pocket money. Yet the boy is expected to pay the bills, always, to prove his masculinity. "
112 " Why should a woman’s success be a threat to a man? What if we decide to simply dispose of that word—and I don’t know if there is an English word I dislike more than this—emasculation. "
113 " Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry. "
114 " We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likable. "
115 " they have been raised to expect so little of men that the idea of men as savage beings with no self-control is somehow acceptable. We "
116 " O problema da questão de gêneros é que ela prescreve como devemos ser em vez de reconhecer como somos. Seríamos bem mais felizes, mais livres para sermos quem realmente somos, se não tivéssemos o peso das expectativas do gênero. "
117 " He told me that people were saying my novel was feminist, and his advice to me—he was shaking his head sadly as he spoke—was that I should never call myself a feminist since feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands. So I decided to call myself a Happy Feminist. "
118 " 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. "
119 " She didn’t want to speak up because she didn’t want to seem aggressive. She let her resentments simmer. What struck me—with her and with many other female American friends I have—is how invested they are in being “liked.” How they have been raised to believe that their being likable is very important and that this “likable” trait is a specific thing. And that specific thing does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly. We "
120 " 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. "