An Ode to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
If you've never heard of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - she is my most mega girl crush in all the world.
'Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice'
Chimamanda wrote and spoke a TedTalk entitled 'We Should All Be Feminists' - where she describes her experience of feminism as a concept and discusses various issues surrounding it. She's so entertaining but brings up some interesting arguments - as well as addressing her intersectionality as a feminist throughout. Urgh. What a woman.
She talks about how the release of her first novel ('Purple Hibiscus' - I also really rate Adichie as a novelist) was labelled 'feminist' by journalists - and how she was advised not to describe herself in such a way as "feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands". Again - such a common misconception of feminists - that they are unmarried spinsters that have grown bitter towards men, or lesbians that are somehow bitter towards the very existence of men. I know I'm going to write this all over the blog but here it comes once more - feminists are people (not just women - PEOPLE) who believe in and campaign for the equality of the sexes.
But what really peaked my interest with Adichie and her discussions - her cultural insights. What it is to be a Nigerian feminist, a Nigerian woman. She discusses how she is ignored and assumed to be the inferior in Nigeria. How when entering a nice hotel alone she is assumed to be a sex worker because she is unaccompanied by a man. How an academic Nigerian woman tells her that feminism is not a part of African culture, that she has been 'corrupted by Western books'. She talks about how people told her she couldn't be a feminist for so many reasons that she came to describe herself as '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'. Which just sums up all those misconceptions so beautifully.
What I love about her is - the honesty. She admits 'Yes women and men are different' - biologically, physically - they are counterparts. But why should one be better than the other? She describes how, yes, many thousands of years ago living was dependent on physical strength - and that's why the men ruled that world. But now? Why are women still kept from power and prestige when they are just as capable and have all the same capacities and qualities needed to succeed?
Perhaps my favourite subject she writes about, is toxic masculinity, something I've written about before with reference to her. She writes in 'We Should All Be Feminists':
'We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability'. '
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 becomes this hard, small cage and we put boys inside the cage.'
You can read We Should All Be Feminists here - https://www.amazon.co.uk/We-Should-All-Be-Feminists/dp/0008115273
Or if reading isn't your thing (thx for reading this junk then) - you can hear her TedTalk here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ufvYWTqQ0
'Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice'
Chimamanda wrote and spoke a TedTalk entitled 'We Should All Be Feminists' - where she describes her experience of feminism as a concept and discusses various issues surrounding it. She's so entertaining but brings up some interesting arguments - as well as addressing her intersectionality as a feminist throughout. Urgh. What a woman.
She talks about how the release of her first novel ('Purple Hibiscus' - I also really rate Adichie as a novelist) was labelled 'feminist' by journalists - and how she was advised not to describe herself in such a way as "feminists are women who are unhappy because they cannot find husbands". Again - such a common misconception of feminists - that they are unmarried spinsters that have grown bitter towards men, or lesbians that are somehow bitter towards the very existence of men. I know I'm going to write this all over the blog but here it comes once more - feminists are people (not just women - PEOPLE) who believe in and campaign for the equality of the sexes.
But what really peaked my interest with Adichie and her discussions - her cultural insights. What it is to be a Nigerian feminist, a Nigerian woman. She discusses how she is ignored and assumed to be the inferior in Nigeria. How when entering a nice hotel alone she is assumed to be a sex worker because she is unaccompanied by a man. How an academic Nigerian woman tells her that feminism is not a part of African culture, that she has been 'corrupted by Western books'. She talks about how people told her she couldn't be a feminist for so many reasons that she came to describe herself as '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'. Which just sums up all those misconceptions so beautifully.
What I love about her is - the honesty. She admits 'Yes women and men are different' - biologically, physically - they are counterparts. But why should one be better than the other? She describes how, yes, many thousands of years ago living was dependent on physical strength - and that's why the men ruled that world. But now? Why are women still kept from power and prestige when they are just as capable and have all the same capacities and qualities needed to succeed?
Perhaps my favourite subject she writes about, is toxic masculinity, something I've written about before with reference to her. She writes in 'We Should All Be Feminists':
'We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability'. '
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 becomes this hard, small cage and we put boys inside the cage.'
You can read We Should All Be Feminists here - https://www.amazon.co.uk/We-Should-All-Be-Feminists/dp/0008115273
Or if reading isn't your thing (thx for reading this junk then) - you can hear her TedTalk here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ufvYWTqQ0
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