Recently, I had the pleasure of reading We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Add it to Goodreads), a modified text version of a talk Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie did at TEDxEuston in 2012. I was struck by so many things that she spoke on and wanted to share the 15 lines that I relate to, believe, and move me the most as a black woman living in a cis white male world. Of course, for full context, be sure to read the entire essay, which you can do on your lunch break, it’s that quick of a read.

Alright, here we go…

1. I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is just as obvious to everyone else.
2. The late Kenyan Nobel peace laureate Wangari Maathai put it simply and well when she said, the higher you go, the fewer women there are.
3. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.
4. (Why, by the way, do those hotels not focus on the demand for sex workers instead of on the ostensible supply?)
5. These are little things, but sometimes it is the little things that sting the most.
6. Gender as it functions today is a grave injustice. I am angry. We should all be angry. Anger has a long history of bringing about positive change. In addition to anger, I am also hopeful, because I believe deeply in the ability of human beings to remake themselves for the better.
7. What struck me-with her and with many other female American friends I have–is how invested they are in being “liked.” How they have been raised to believe that their being likable is very important and that this “likable” trait is a specific thing. And that specific thing does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly. We spend too much time teaching girls to worry about what boys think of them. But the reverse is not the case. We don’t teach boys to care about being likable. We spend too much tim tellings girls that they cannot be angry or aggressive or tough, which is bad enough, but then we turn around and either praise or excuse men for the same reasons.
8. We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys.
9. But by far the worst thing we do to males–by making them feel they have to be hard– is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is. And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males. 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, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him.
10. We use the word respect for something a woman shows a man but often not for something a man shows a woman.
11. We teach females that in relationships, compromise is what a woman is more likely to do.
12. And they have been raised to expect so little of men that the idea of men as savage beings with no self-control is somehow acceptable. 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. Who silence themselves. Who cannot say what they truly think. Who have turned pretence into an art form.
13. Cooking, by the way, is a useful and practical life skill for a boy to have–I’ve never thought it made much sense to leave such a crucial thing–the ability to nourish oneself–in the hands of others.
14. Because thinking of changing the status quo is always uncomfortable.
15. Culture does not make people. People make culture.

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is available now.