A feminist is someone who believes in equal rights of the sexes, no matter what they identify as. People also get the meaning of feminist mixed up. We can also advocate for women in other countries who cannot speak up in fear of being literally beaten to death or having female circumcision. While the US does have many more rights for women than a lot of countries, we can still improve.

Adichie’s speech shows that oppression from the patriarchy is everywhere, and we shouldn’t stop caring about women’s rights just because in the US “everything seems fine”. The latter is usually the man’s line of thinking. I’ve talked to many people, women included, saying they aren’t feminists because they’re not “lesbians” or “man-haters”, or they just think women are treated completely equally. This is one of my favorite TED Talks because I think that it highlights the fact that, no, women do not have equal rights everywhere, and, yes, feminism does matter. Adichie eventually embraced her feminist values, upset that she would come in second to boys, be regarded as a sex-worker because she wanted her own hotel room in a nice hotel in Nigeria, and be ridiculed by people she knew. Nigeria is vastly male-centered, and being a feminist was someone who was “unhappy and hated men”. She goes on to tell her story about her connection to feminism and how being a feminist was growing up. Adichie starts out by explaining what it was like growing up in Nigeria and how when she was a young kid, she was called a feminist as an insult. I first saw it a couple of years ago, but I thought it was a really important TED talk. One of my favorite TED Talks is this one by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

We should all be feminists ted