We raise girls to cater to the fragile egos of men. We teach girls do shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We tell…

We raise girls to cater to the fragile egos of men. We teach girls do shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We tell girls ‘You can have ambition, but not too much’. ‘You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man’. (…) We teach girls shame – ‘Close your legs, cover yourself!’. We make them feel as though by being born female, they’re already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot see they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up – and this is the worst thing we do to girls – to be women who turn pretense into an art form.

(Adaptado da palestra “We should all be feminists”, 15/07/2009. Disponível em https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc&t=797s. Acessado em 14/05/2018.)

O texto anterior reproduz trechos de uma palestra proferida pela escritora nigeriana Chimamanda Adichie em 2009. Segundo a autora, o fato de serem criadas para agradar aos homens faz com que as mulheres