In its early years, feminism (originally known as the suffragette movement) was vilified as an evil, demonic movement threatening to disrupt all that was good and holy within the world. While there is still plenty of opposition to the movement, feminism (now in its third wave) has come back into the public eye, in large part due to social media. A trademark of third-wave (or liberal) feminism is its desire to appeal to all. A popular mindset is that feminism is not just for women, but all people. This inclusiveness is demonstrated in speeches like Emma Watson's gender equality speech to the UN and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TEDxTalk, "We Should All Be Feminists."* An unofficial transcript of Adichie's talk can be found here.
Adichie is welcomed on stage to much applause and commands the podium with ease. This is because she holds automatic ethos; the audience already knows who she is and trusts what she has to say. At the time she gave this talk, Adichie was already a lauded author and named in the 2012 edition of TIME's 100 Most Influential People in the World. Nevertheless, Adichie understood she had to do more to win over her entire audience. The purpose of Adichie's talk was not only to explain feminism (and clear up misconceptions) to an audience seeking innovation and discussion of ideas, but to convince her audience members to actively fight against everyday sexism.
To close her talk, Adichie says, "The best feminist I know is my brother Kenny. He is also a kind, good-looking, lovely man, and he is very masculine." Adichie wants her audience to leave with the idea that men can be feminists as well. She includes anecdotes that specifically target the men in the audience. Early in her talk, Adichie says that there are many men who mean well, but simply do not believe that women face sexism anymore. To disprove this idea, she tells stories about life in Nigeria, where she is often ignored because she is a woman. This is Adichie's way of incorporating pathos into her talk. The stories are lighthearted, but the audience understands the serious implications of her experiences. She often uses humor to tease the audience for being a little sexist themselves, so as to criticize without hurting them. Most poignantly, she says about being ignored, "I feel invisible. I feel upset." Two simple sentences can convey how much sexism hurts on an individual level, let alone nationally or globally.
Adichie motivates the men in the audience to become feminists by using logos as well. She talks about toxic masculinity, a construct of the patriarchy that forces men to behave in certain ways that is harmful to themselves and others but that also reinforces how "masculine" they are. Adichie talks about the concept of "hard man" in her own culture: "We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity becomes this hard small cage and we put boys inside the cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear. We teach boys to be afraid of weakness, of vulnerability." Adichie points out that socialization, just as it can hurt girls, can also hurt boys. Furthermore, the methods that will liberate girls from harmful socialization will also liberate boys. This is a logical argument that also uses pathos (the struggle with vulnerability) to appeal to men.
In spite of her idealistic purpose, Adichie also establishes ethos by reminding the audience that neither she, nor all feminists, are perfect. She explores her own struggle to overcome internalized sexism. She acknowledges that "gender is not an easy conversation to have." When she mentions her discussion with a black man, she points out the failure of feminism to be intersectional and include all oppressed groups (not just white women). By including these weaknesses, she strengthens her overall argument by allowing her audience room to fail while transforming themselves into better people.
*The discourse and ideas included in these speeches may not be representative of my personal views of feminism, but that's a discussion for another day.
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