By Roberta Edu
One of the quickest ways to expose a shallow understanding of social issues is when someone mocks feminists for getting married or building happy homes. The moment I hear someone say, “Look at that feminist, she still married,” I immediately know I am not dealing with a serious thinker. What that statement reveals is not wit or insight—it reveals confusion.
It is astonishing how confidently people attack something they cannot even define. The loudest critics of feminism often have no real understanding of what feminism actually means. They have inherited a caricature of it—an exaggerated, distorted image passed around in conversations, social media arguments, and cultural stereotypes.
Ask the average person who spends his time attacking feminism to explain what it is. Most cannot. They hesitate, fumble through vague accusations, or default to tired clichés about “man-hating women.” But the moment you begin asking simple questions, the contradiction becomes obvious.
Ask him if his daughter is less important than his son. He will say no. Ask him if his daughter deserves the same opportunities, education, and rights as his son. Again, the answer will almost certainly be yes. Ask if she should be able to pursue her ambitions without unnecessary barriers simply because she is a girl. The answer remains yes.
And yet, after agreeing to all of this, the same person will still proudly declare that he is against feminism.
At that point, the conversation becomes almost comedic. Because what he has just described—equal dignity, equal opportunity, equal rights—is the very foundation of feminism. What he is opposing is not feminism itself but a misunderstanding he has been conditioned to believe.
But what sometimes frustrates me even more than this intellectual confusion among men is the reluctance of many young women to embrace the word feminist, even when they live out its principles every single day.
You ask a young woman, “Are you a feminist?” and she quickly distances herself from the label. She says no, sometimes almost defensively, as if she is trying to reassure you that she is not one of “those women.” Often this response is driven by social pressure. Society has spent decades portraying feminism as something aggressive, disruptive, or hostile to relationships.
But listen to the same woman when she talks about the future she wants.
She speaks about partnership, not domination. She wants a relationship where both partners respect each other’s goals. She wants to be able to build her career without being treated as though her ambitions are secondary. She expects her voice to matter in the relationship. She hopes for a marriage built on shared responsibility and mutual support.
In essence, she is describing feminist values.
The irony is remarkable: people reject the label while fully embracing the ideology.
I remember a young man telling me about his girlfriend. When they first started dating, he asked her if she was a feminist. She quickly said no. But as the relationship progressed, nearly every principle she advocated in their conversations—about equality, respect, and partnership—reflected feminist thinking.
I laughed so hard when he told me this story, because the contradiction was almost poetic. People are afraid of a word they are already living.
Now let me address another common misconception: the idea that feminism somehow ruins marriages.
The reality is often the opposite.
One reason many feminist women experience healthier relationships is because we are transparent about who we are from the very beginning. There is no attempt to disguise our values to secure approval. There is no performance designed to appear more submissive or agreeable than we truly are.
Before my husband and I got married, he knew exactly who I was. I was vocal about my beliefs. I did not dilute them to make anyone comfortable, and I certainly did not hide them to appear more acceptable.
Naturally, some men who held rigid patriarchal beliefs stepped aside. That was perfectly fine. They needed partners who shared their worldview, and I was not one of them. I even told some of them, quite sincerely, that they should find women who genuinely believed in those structures.
Compatibility matters. Pretending otherwise only creates problems later.
Eventually I met a man who understood partnership deeply. He was secure enough in himself to value a woman who stood beside him rather than beneath him. That understanding has shaped our marriage in ways that many people still struggle to imagine.
In nearly nine years of marriage, anyone who has lived around us or spent time in our home has seen the difference that honesty and mutual respect can make. Like every couple, we disagree. But our disagreements are handled with maturity and calm. We discuss issues as two adults who respect each other’s intelligence and perspective.
There are no dramatic power struggles, no competitions for dominance, no silent resentment building beneath the surface.
The only real surprise in our marriage has been how consistently kind we have been to each other.
Sometimes my husband does something thoughtful and I simply look at him with quiet appreciation. Sometimes I do something and he smiles and says thank you. My son once joked about the “look” we give each other in those moments. It is the look of two people who are genuinely grateful for the life they are building together.
And the truth is simple: we keep falling in love again and again.
Why? Because nothing about our relationship was built on deception.
I never pretended to be someone I was not. I never promised a lifetime of silent submission only to grow resentful later. Everything my husband sees today is exactly who I said I was from the beginning.
Unfortunately, many relationships begin with the opposite approach.
Some women feel pressured to prove that they are “not like those feminists.” They suppress their opinions, hide their ambitions, and bend themselves into shapes designed to fit patriarchal expectations. For a while, this performance may appear to work.
But no human being was designed to bend endlessly.
Eventually reality intervenes. The woman grows tired of shrinking herself. She begins to rediscover her voice, her ambitions, and her identity. When that moment arrives, the transformation can be dramatic.
You have seen it happen when people say, “She suddenly turned into a tiger.”
It is rarely sudden. It is the result of years of suppressed individuality finally demanding space to exist.
And here lies the irony: women who were pressured to reject feminism sometimes emerge from that process with deep anger toward men in general. The resentment built during years of forced silence becomes explosive.
Feminists, on the other hand, rarely go through that transformation. We entered relationships as whole people from the beginning. There was no silent suffering, no hidden resentment accumulating beneath the surface.
We were honest about who we were.
That honesty matters even more when a woman is financially independent and capable of standing on her own feet. A woman who has her own career, her own achievements, and her own stability is not trapped in a relationship for survival.
She is there by choice.
And relationships built on choice are almost always healthier than those built on dependency.
So when people mock feminists for having happy marriages, what they are really exposing is a misunderstanding of how strong relationships actually work. Equality does not destroy love. Honesty does not weaken commitment. Independence does not threaten partnership.
In fact, those qualities often strengthen it.
Interestingly, many of the same men who once dismissed women like me now look back with a different perspective. Time has a way of sharpening understanding. Some of them now say, sometimes jokingly, “I knew her back then.”
Yes, you did.
And perhaps now you understand something you did not understand then: when a woman truly discovers her purpose and her worth, she will always gravitate toward the principles of equality and dignity.
Some embrace those principles early and openly. Others arrive there after years of exhaustion and self-suppression.
But sooner or later, the truth has a way of catching up with everyone.
