emma watson and all her glory

I would like to note, that unfortunately I did not take this photograph, I found it on Google.

Last Sunday, the famous Harry Potter actress, Emma Watson, spoke about normative gender roles and feminism, at the United Nations. As a recognizable face, and an idol to many young women (myself included) it was thought provoking. Advocating for her new campaign "He for She" she has called upon men and boys to take an active role in minimizing the gender equality gap.  

As inspiring as her speech was, the question that many are asking is, will her campaign actually do something; and as the United Nations is notorious for having motivational speeches that fail to motivate people, many believe that it will not. But, I'm not here to say wether her campaign will or will not be successful. I'm here to address the issues that seems to be continuously addressed, with no resolution. 

While Emma defines feminism as the "belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities," and the "theory of political, economic and social equality of the sexes," many define it as "anti-men" and male haters. To paraphrase Watson here, it isn't the word that really matters, it is the idea, and the concept. That women and men should be equal. It's an issue that we have had for hundreds of years, yet for some reason it seems particularly difficult to resolve. 

There are millions upon millions of cases where women have been brutally murdered, raped, assaulted and abused. We know this, but we don't really know this. It's different hearing stories in the news about someone in Syria being stoned to death or executed and facing it as an every day event. I am unable to comprehend the emotions, because I am privileged. When I wake up in the morning I am not in fear of my life, and I don't fret over the fact that I am a women because of these privileges.  The quote "to be free one must be chained" seems quite fitting here. I have never been chained, at least, not in the sense that others have been; and because of that I am unable to relate to the horrors that these women face daily, but that doesn't mean that they should be ignored. 

Edmund Burke once said, "All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing." 

But what do we do from here? Say we do something, we don't ignore it, we retweet, we blog, and maybe we even throw in a hashtag here or there, but how does that really help? It makes that something that we are doing questionable, because what is it that I can really do to help? I am only but one person, and a nameless one at that. 

However Emma already thought of this, and in her conclusion she has determined that "if not me, who? If not now, when?"

And she's got a point. We will never make any progress if we are constantly worried about whether we would be able to make an impact or not, because it will always keep us from acting. But if we act, because we ought to act. Then a trend could follow, not a hashtag, but a paradigm shift, one towards the minimization of the gender equality gap that could spur a revolution. All it took was one man, to stand up to a tank to make a statement. 

I would like to believe that this revolution has already begun, over the summer, a Syrian women was stoned to death for being an alleged adulterer. Yet, when faced with the sentence the locals refused to stone her and it was the jihadi fighters, who finally took it upon themselves to kill her. 

I am unable to actively effect what happens to the women in Syria, and throughout other places in the middle east, but what we can change is how women are viewed here in our own county, whatever country that may be. Before you criticize a campaign to fight for rights, capitalizing on the fact that it probably won't do anything, ask yourself what your are doing for it, because we are nothing if we are not together. Everyday we have a choice, so I am asking you, to be conscious of that choice. 

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If you want to watch Emma give here speech click here. I highly recommend it. (You'll have to scroll down a bit to get to the video)