To me, feminism is reducing gender inequality, and lets us have equal opportunities to pursue our life. Both men and women have their respective advantages biologically, and regardless of gender, we can all be feminists. I also looked up the word in the dictionary and it means “women should have the same rights and opportunities as men,” which is a goal for everyone.
Women began to gain the right to vote over a hundred years ago. We all make equal contributions and equal benefits from the world. I realized this issue very early, but at that time I didn’t know what it was; in elementary school, my desk mate, a girl, expressed a desire to be a boy. I simply think she wants to experience another life. However, in high school, another desk mate, also a girl, she told me that she spends a lot of her time serving her brother and housework, as Adichie mentioned, “women in general are more likely to do the house work than men, the cooking and cleaning” (8). It is not because they are good at it but because they have an unreasonable cultural requirement. Some cultures are also unfair to men.
Adichie explain that “Feminist, a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes” (10). She argues that feminism is crucial for creating a more just and inclusive society where everyone, regardless of gender, has equal opportunities and rights. She believes that both men and women can be feminists, and that feminism is not only concerned with women’s issues.
One thought on “Ziping Chen – Conversation 4”
Ziping, I wholeheartedly agree with you when you express that feminism isn’t just a women’s issue. Drawing from your personal experience of a girl confiding in you, saying she wanted to be a boy—while there could be other factors behind that—it may suggest that she has already faced challenges simply because she’s a girl. Similarly, your other experience, when a classmate told you she bore the responsibility of doing housework for her brother, highlights gendered expectations. If we were to address these issues, we could live in a world where we each take responsibility for ourselves and don’t pass them down to others based on their gender. Who wouldn’t want to live in such a self-sufficient world?