Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2: We should all be feminists

                             

TED 2017
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2: We should all be feminists (transcript)

Summary

In the dictionary, "feminist" means a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.

In this TED talk, the speaker explained it using her own definition.

"Feminist" is a man or a woman who says that there’s a problem with gender there, he/she thinks that it must be fixed, and better.

So gender is not only a problem for women. This is the problem for both men and women.

However, gender is not an easy conversation to have. For both men and women, to bring up gender is sometimes to encounter resistance. Even some women think that this is exaggerating and some of the men think that this is interesting, but they don't think so.

This is part of the problem that many men do not actively think about gender or that they do not even notice gender but they think that everything is fine now and they will do nothing to change it.

In fact, we have taught it as same as men and women have different hormones for a long time.

In the school, the teacher said that the monitor had to be a boy but girls can have ambition, but not too much, even a woman got the highest score on the test. She teaches girls to shrink themselves and to make themselves smaller. She and societies teach girls to aspire to marriage, to be unmarried as a failure. The word "respect" means that a woman shows a man.

They teach females to do something for peace is giving up a job, a dream, and career. In relationships, compromise is what women do.  

However, they don't teach boys the same,  and in the societies, most of the position of power and prestige are occupied by men.

Although it takes a lot of time, we have to start raising children equally. Boys and girls are undeniably different biologically.

Threatening is not successful for men and women. Having a worldwide conversation about feminism. We can see a different world which is a fairer and happier for men and women who are truer to themselves.

The speaker is a Nigerian woman, thus this time, she focuses on Nigeria and on Africa in gender, I think that there are a lot of same situations in Japan, though.

This is not the problem for only Nigerian men.

We should all be feminists.

Words in this story

emasculate / make (a person, idea, or piece of legislation) weaker or less effective.

masculine / having qualities or appearance traditionally associated with men, especially strength and aggressiveness. virile, macho, manly, muscular, muscly, strong
intimidate / threaten, menace