To me, equality is not a controversial topic, nor a complicated one. Why should I be complicit in my own dehumanisation?  

As highlighted in a recent assembly at Newstead Wood School about feminism, many of us spend much of our time in a bubble.

I attend an all-girls school in an area described as the ‘second happiest place to live in London’, according to Rightmove in 2017. My school takes pride in empowering every student that attends it. But this environment of privilege and a lack of obstacles stemming from the discrimination against the female gender has made some people around me satisfied with the world the way it is. 

We forget about the injustices. We tell ourselves that maybe it isn’t so bad. We watch us those in positions of power belittle our protests, laughing and commenting as we complain about ‘mansplaining’ or ‘man-size tissues’, but staying eerily silent as they choose to ignore our raised voices about the 200 million women and children alive in the world today who have had to endure female genital mutilation.  

Around the world there are girls still unable to receive an education, there is a prevalent stigma around vulnerability in men, and the gender pay gap looms over us universally. 

In Russia, it is estimated that one woman dies every forty minutes at the hands of domestic abuse. 

In Sudan, guardians are allowed to marry off girls as young as ten years old. 

In India, marital rape is not a crime. 

These statements are deafening, but some people are choosing not to hear. 

By saying you don’t believe in feminism, you take away a voice from the people who are desperate for one. In saying you aren’t a feminist, you are perpetuating a society which will remain stagnant for centuries in the dirty formulation of misogyny and misandry that litters our world today.  

“I don’t need feminism.” 

You might think you don’t, but you are among the billions of people who do.