Dear Chimamanda Adichie,
I hope this letter finds you in good spirits. I’m Lili, and recently, I had the opportunity to watch your TED Talk “We Should All Be Feminists”, and I want to express how it changed my perspective of what feminism is. Your speech about your personal experiences with feminism and the challenges you’ve faced with gender inequality helped me gain a better understanding of whether or not we should embrace feminism in today’s society.
First and foremost, I would like to express my agreement with your speech about why we should all be feminists. Whether it’s women or men, whether we have experienced gender inequality or not, we should all strive for a better solution, fighting and finding ways to defeat this patriarchal culture we live in. The emphasis you put on the fact that we should ALL be feminists is what stuck with me. Society should change its cultural norms constantly. We should fight for what we believe is wrong or right regardless of gender and all the social norms we’ve been instructed to follow and believe. We all must contribute to a better world; it does not affect women only, but every single person in the world.
Your sharing of personal experiences and situations that have men as the main characters in society is what makes us reflect and understand that unless we’re willing to make a change, prejudice and sexism against women are something we will always encounter each day in our lives. I somehow relate to it, since my family has been a little sexist when it comes to daily activities and their speech when it comes to women and men in the family. Those times, I have thought, “Why only women? Why aren’t men doing something too?”, but wouldn’t say much about it and just went about my day.
I must admit, that I haven’t been supporting or advocating for feminism as I should and could. Your TED Talk has reminded me of why we should all strive for a better society, by challenging all gender inequality happening in daily life, and the importance of why we should all contribute to the world. It got me thinking of ways we could make a positive change, even with the simplest actions, such as questioning stereotypes, making our voices heard, and being aware of these situations.
When talking about ways to improve today’s society, we can focus on spreading awareness and educating those who don’t have access to this type of information as we do. We are also learning, and we could always teach others what we know, promoting comprehension and confronting those situations where gender inequality happens, to create a fairer, equal, and more suitable world for all of us. Your TED Talk certainly gives a different insight into how we should proceed and think about feminism; I see it as a starter for conversations and discussions on those social issues we encounter each day.
Ultimately, I’d like to thank you for giving such an amazing speech, that left an impression on me and has pushed me to reflect on my actions for a more suitable world for everyone.
Best wishes and sincerely,
Lili.
3 thoughts on “Letter to Adichie – Lili Mei”
Hi Lili! I really enjoyed your letter and the points you chose to put in it. The main part for me is when you mentioned how you are not advocating for feminism as you could/should, and the speech was a reminder for you – I totally agree with that! With all the situations that happen every day involving gender discrimination is so easy to lose hope and start to think that this is just the way things are and we can’t do anything about it. But we can! This speech was a reminder for me too.
Hi, Lili! I really enjoyed how well you described feminism and gender equality. Your analysis was both impressive and well articulated. I fully support your emphasis on spreading awareness and educating those who may not be familiar with this important information. Also, your dedication to support individuals who may face discrimination matches my beliefs in creating a world where we, regardless of gender, have equal rights, opportunities, freedoms and respect each other.
Hi Lili,
I appreciate your honesty in admitting that you haven’t always been as active in supporting feminism as you could have been, and so as I. It’s inspiring to see your commitment to challenging the patriarchal norms and advocating for a more better society. Your emphasis that gender inequality affects not only women but everyone truly underlines the urgency as a society to collectively seek efforts for a positive change. Overall your letter was impactful and really thought provoking, great job!