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 successfull, but not too successfull,
otherwise you would threaten the man”.

If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man,
you have to pretend that you’re not,
especially in public, otherwise
you will emasculate it him.

But what if we question the premise itself,
why should a woman’s success be a threat to a man?

What if we decide to simply dispose of that word,
and I don’t think there’s an English word I dislike more than “emasculation”.

A Nigerian acquaintance once asked me if I was worried that men would be intimidated by me.
I was not worried at all.
In fact it had not occured to me to be worried because,
a man who would be intimidated by me,
is exactly the kind of man I would have no interest in.

da We should all be feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, TEDx Talk, 12 aprile 2013