now.

"Some people will say that a woman being subordinate to a man is a “part of our culture”… So what is the point of culture… culture is really about preservation and continuity of people… culture does not make people; people make culture. So if it is in fact true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we MUST make it our culture"

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"

“We do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of men. We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls: ‘You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, you have to pretend that you’re not, especially in public otherwise you will ‘emasculate’ him.’

But what if we questioned the premise itself— why should a woman’s success be a threat to a man? What if we decide to simply dispose of that word? And I don’t think there’s an English word I despise more than ‘emasculation.’”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"We teach females that in relationships, compromise is what women do. We raise girls to see each other as competitors, not for jobs or for accomplishments— which I think can be a good thing— but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. If we have sons, we don’t mind knowing about our sons’ girlfriends, but our daughters boyfriends? ‘God forbid!’ But of course when the time is right, we expect those girls to bring back the perfect man to be their husband. We police girls, we praise girls for virginity, but we don’t praise boys for virginity. And it’s always made me wonder how exactly this is supposed to work out because *laughs* the loss of virginity is usually a process that involves *laughs*…
We teach girls shame. ‘Close your legs!’ ‘Cover yourself!’ We make them feel as though by being born female, they are already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up—and this is the worst thing we do to girls—they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an artform."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

"‘My female boss is mean to me at work’ is not the same thing as centuries of institutionalized, systemic discrimination. If beautiful women can get whatever they want, then why haven’t we elected one president yet? ‘Sexism against both genders is wrong’ betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what sexism is. Any individual of any gender can be prejudiced or discriminate on a face-to-face level, but only one gender faces the glass ceiling, the ongoing, legalized regulation of their bodies, the significant wage gap for doing the same type of work, the deeply-engrained and consistently reinforced stereotypes about their being less aggressive, less capable and less intelligent, and countless other obstacles."

Kyle Tran Myhre