If you call yourself a feminist, read this book. If you have friends who are feminists, have them read this book. If you know people who don't call themselves feminist, point them in the direction of this brief but well written and well argued book. It will probably change their mind.
Overall I thought this was fantastic and must-needed. Just one thing, one little tiny thing that Adichie says set me off. Here's the quote:
"Men and women are different. We have different hormones and different sexual organs and different biological abilities- women can have babies, men cannot" (16).
My beef with this quote is:
1. There is such a thing as intersex, when a person has anatomy that doesn't fall neatly into male or female. http://www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex
2. Biological sex and gender identity don't always match up! When Adichie says "women can have babies, men cannot", that assumes everyone is cisgender. And not everyone is. There are trans and genderqueer people. https://www.genderspectrum.org/quick-links/understanding-gender/
So, let's be more trans-inclusive, okay?
But other than that, I really liked this. Feminism is something I feel SUPER strongly about, so perhaps I'm a tad biased, but nevertheless, I highly recommend this book.
I'll leave you with this:
"Some people ask, why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that? Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general- but to choose to use the vague expression 'human rights' is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human" (41).
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