Fun fact! The Beyonce hit Flawless features a reading from this book, it is from the audiobook read by the author.

The overall premise is that Gender as it functions today is an injustice.

 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie asks the question, What if we focus on ability or interest instead of gender? There are many reasonable examples of this in the book. 

Adichie elaborates on her usage of the word “feminist” vs saying human rights activist. 

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In short, human rights is more of an umbrella term while feminist is more specific. Choosing to use the vague description of human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would deny that for centuries, womxn have been excluded and oppressed because of the division set up by the patriarchy.

 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says that all genders can be feminists. The definition of a feminist provided by the author is:  a man or womxn who says yes, there is a problem with gender as it exists today, and we must fix it, we must do better. 

Many times, our traumatic experiences make it hard to have reasonable or logical answers to questions that should be simple. She provides many examples of gender oppression from her own experiences and then breaks down how those experiences show oppression. 

The author lays out the ways in which boys and girls are undeniably biologically different AND that socialization exaggerates the differences. Chimamanda Adichie also shares her experience with womxn being raised to be competitive with one another and that might even be healthy if it were for jobs or accomplishments and not for the attention of men.

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. How much happier we would be, how much freer to just be our true selves. If we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.

This book is only 64 pages long! You can do it, get to reading, it’s totally worth it! Let us know what you think, is Adichie’s argument sound on the usage of the term feminist over human rights activist? Or are there some pieces of the puzzle missing here?