This Is The Kind Of World Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Dreams Of
In recognition of her achievements as an author and public intellectual, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been awarded an honorary degree at the University of Edinburgh In her acceptance speech, she speaks of the kind of world she dreams of.
She said,
I dream of a world in which we all collectively start to deconstruct masculinity. I dream of a world where we tell little boys that it’s okay to cry, that they should cry, that vulnerability is a wonderful thing. That we give little boys the language to talk about emotions.
I dream of a world where women are no longer perceived to be a specie of angels. I think that often, in the conversation about gender, there is the assumption that women are somehow morally better than men and so, which is why there is actually a new series on netflix which is called ‘Killer Women,’ which I find ridiculous because in some ways, its making a fetish of the idea of evil manifesting itself in female form, it shouldn’t be. It should be normal.
Female evil should just be as normal as male evil. We shouldn’t have higher standards for women. We shouldn’t assume that because a person is born a woman, that person is just one step lower than angel. I find it quite dehumanising for women because what it means, is that women cannot be judged on the same terms as men.
I rememeber once, a politician in Nigeria who was a woman, had stolen money, which is an exercise that most Nigerian politicians are very adept at and I remember a journalist saying, “and she’s a woman,” and somehow, the assumption was it would be better if it was a man because we wouldn’t judge her so harshly because we expect men to steal.
So, I think the idea of women being another specie of angels is bad for both women and for men because it makes the standard uneven. So I dream of a world in which women as see as human, a world where women are allowed to be many things, a world where women can be something and another thing rather than something or another thing.
