When actress Emma Watson spoke before the United Nations last fall introducing her “He for She” campaign for gender equality, she attributed the lack of feminist progress in the world to the negative connotations the word “feminist” has attracted.
Men have not been made to feel welcome by feminists, she explained; we have not adequately shown men how feminism can benefit them. “I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation,” she told the audience of elder statesmen, to a round of applause.
Fawning headlines proclaiming “men need more feminists like Emma Watson” didn’t sit right with me and many fellow feminists of the more ornery stripe, particularly those of us who have heard too many times that “feminists have to stop hating men.”
All this is why Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is so downright inspiring. Beyoncé is rightly credited for bringing the word “feminist” new cultural capital with the song “Flawless,” but it wouldn’t be such a powerful musical moment if the words being sampled weren’t so elegantly simple:
“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much.”
The lines are from Adichie’s 2012 Ted Talk, which has since been expanded into the pocket-sized book of the same title, We Should All Be Feminists. It is the perfect size to keep for easy reference or to hand to anyone who seems unconvinced.
Adichie has that great gift of distilling concepts that could otherwise be too academic, too heady, into what feels like a line your wise older sister just uttered while fixing her hair.
Ifemelu, her character in the 2013 novel Americanah, is a young Nigerian immigrant to the United States who turns her musings on racial politics in America into a successful blog.
In one post, she sums up white Americans’ unwillingness to talk about race: “Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism. Otherwise you get no sympathy. This applies only for white liberals, by the way. Don’t even bother telling a white conservative about anything racist that happened to you. Because the conservative will tell you that YOU are the real racist and your mouth will hang open in confusion.”
In Feminists, you get the sense Adichie is responding to a thousand ignorant commenters with her every disarming aside.
Recalling the first time she was called a feminist, Adichie describes her adoration for the male friend who said the word—and her confusion when she realized it was not a compliment. “I could tell from his tone—the same tone with which a person would say, ‘You’re a supporter of terrorism,’ ” she recalls.
Adichie’s memories of attempting to reconcile this negative baggage with wanting to be unabashedly female and feminine will be familiar to many. When a male journalist tells her she should avoid the word feminist because “feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands,” she adopts the moniker Happy Feminist. When a Nigerian woman insists that feminism is Western and incompatible with African culture, she begins to call herself a Happy African Feminist. “At some point,” she recalls, “I was a Happy African Feminist Who Does Not Hate Men And Who Likes To Wear Lip Gloss And High Heels For Herself And Not For Men.”
On the theory Watson perpetuated that feminists are too “militant,” Adichie recalls being told something she wrote was too angry. “Of course, it was angry. Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change.” Adichie briefly mentions that she’s also full of hope for humanity’s ability to better itself, before adding, “But back to the anger.”
She writes of an American female friend with a high-paying job who felt slighted in a meeting, when a boss gave a male colleague credit for her work. “She wanted to speak up, to challenge her boss,” writes Adichie. “But she didn’t. Instead, after the meeting, she went to the bathroom and cried, then called me to vent about it. She didn’t want to speak up because she didn’t want to seem aggressive.”
Adichie muses about the source of this all-too-common fear.
“What struck me—with her and with many older female American friends I have—is how invested they are in being ‘liked.’ How they have been raised to believe that their being likeable is very important and that this ‘likeable’ trait is a specific thing. And that specific thing does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly.”
On making sacrifices to preserve peace in a marriage, Adichie notes, “When men say it, it is usually about something they should not be doing anyway,” while when women say the same, “it is usually because they have given up a job, a career goal, a dream.”
On “playing the gender card,” Adichie is at her most quotable:
“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 . . . that the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human.”
As for the rabbit hole of men who wish to derail conversations about feminism by pointing out that they, too, can be oppressed, Adichie nimbly steps around it: “Some people will say, ‘Well poor men also have a hard time.’ And they do. But that is not what this conversation is about.”
Though many of Adichie’s stories take place in Nigeria, the experiences are to some extent universal—and often cringe-worthily so. Speaking of her friend Louis, who is kind and compassionate but simply couldn’t believe that sexism existed until he saw it for himself, she writes, “I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else.”
Louis is intelligent and progressive, but like many men he believes that sexism is a thing of the past (just as many white people are quick to characterize the United States as “post-racial” and dismiss evidence to the contrary). One night out in Lagos, Adichie recalls, a parking attendant went to great lengths and theatrics to locate for her and Louis a suitable parking spot (those who have visited Nigeria will be familiar with this custom). When she gave him a tip, the attendant took the money, but thanked Louis instead. “‘Louis looked at me, surprised, and asked, ‘Why is he thanking me? I didn’t give him the money.’ Then I saw realization dawn on Louis’s face. The man believed that whatever money I had ultimately came from Louis. Because Louis is a man.”
Adichie has no patience for the “I’m not a feminist, but” crowd. Just call yourself a damn feminist. Anything less is not enough. If taking a gentler approach were a successful strategy for social change, women’s social, political, and economic oppression would have attracted more attention by now.
To citizens of the world who haven’t embraced feminism: consider this book your formal invitation. ω
Julia Burke is The Progressive’s web editor.