"power's not given to you. you have to take it."

On the surface, one would think that an artist like Beyonce wasn’t the most obvious choice as an ally for feminism, but upon taking a closer look, there are few better fits. She is one of the most successful performing artists of all time as well as a mother and wife, embodying the idea that women can, in fact, have it all. Most importantly of all, though, is the fact that she self-identifies as a feminist. Women all around the world have been indoctrinating into believing that feminism is a “dirty word,” one that evokes an image of bra-burning, man-hating women who are unattractive and lesbians. Shailene Woodley, a prominent actress known for films like Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars, not a year ago said that she wasn’t a feminist because she didn’t hate men, completely missing the fact that what she was describing was misandry and not feminism.

Who would say Beyonce hates men? Looking at her and seeing she is a feminist as well as a mother, a wife, and a successful woman in charge of her own sexuality, women like her rebrand the term. One of the greatest weapons detractors from feminism can wield is the idea that a person has to choose between their morality and a conventional/successful lifestyle. Whenever I try to speak out on inequality, one of the first insults thrown at me is something along the lines of, “No man will ever want you if you don’t shut up about this nonsense.” My husband, of course, would beg to differ, but they can’t even imagine a world where I would fight this fight if I didn’t hate men.

Beyonce doesn’t hate men. I don’t hate men. There are surely some feminists who do, but in my experience, women who hate men have far less power and number far fewer than men who hate women, even subconsciously. There is power in numbers. The more people like Shailene Woodley that there are, the less worrisome it is to those in power. The more women who come right out and declare themselves feminists in towering lights to crowds of people, the more power the movement has.

There are plenty of valid reasons to not call yourself a feminist (lack of inclusion, trans-exclusionary politics, etc.), but hating men certainly isn’t one, and the idea that a feminist is just someone who failed at everything else isn’t either. Anyone who thinks so can talk to me when they get to headline the VMAs and marry Jay-Z. If anyone has the media clout to reclaim the f-word from the men's rights activists on a Voice for Men, it's Beyonce, especially considering that a lot of those MRAs probably spent many years lusting after her.