Malala Yousafzai identifies as a feminist, thanks to Emma Watson

Category: Professional

At the Into Film Festival's screening of He Called Me Malala, actress, "He For She" ambassador and all-round wonderful woman Emma Watson spoke with Malala Yousafzai, the documentary's eponymous education advocate who cites Watson's inspirational UN speech as the catalyst for her own feminism.LONDON — Feminism is a hot topic and rightly so. Slowly but surely, more people of note are coming out of the woodwork, identifying as feminists and bringing the movement to wider public attention. Yousafzai is the subject of the documentary He Named Me Malala, which looks at the events leading up to a Taliban attack on the Pakistani schoolgirl and Yousafzai’s subsequent advocacy in the aftermath. Watson says that the most profound moment was when Yousafzai identified herself as a feminist, saying that she was surprised to hear the Yousafzai use the hot-button word. “I think this gesture is so emblematic of what Malala and I went on to discuss. I’ve spoken before on what a controversial word feminism is currently,” Watson wrote on Facebook. “I want to make it a welcoming and inclusive movement. Let’s join our hands and move together so we can make real change. Malala and I are pretty serious about it but we need you.” Watson shared a video of the interview to her Facebook page, saying, "Perhaps the most moving moment of today for me was when Malala addressed the issue of feminism. "To give you some background, I had initially planned to ask Malala whether or not she was a feminist but then researched to see whether she had used this word to describe herself. Having seen that she hadn’t," Watson goes on to say, "I decided to take the question out before the day of our interview. To my utter shock Malala put the question back into one of her own answers and identified herself. "Maybe feminist isn't the easiest word to use..." Watson says, "but she did it ANYWAY." In response to a question about men's role in feminism, Yousafzai discusses the positive impact her father has had on her life and understanding of gender equality. But, Yousafzai says, "this word 'feminism' has been a very tricky word." "When I heard it the first time, I heard some negative responses and some positive ones," she continues. "I hesitated in saying am I a feminist or not and then after hearing your [Watson's] speech, when you said 'If not now, when? If not me, who?' I decided that there's nothing wrong by calling yourself a feminist. So I am a feminist, and we all should be feminists because feminism is another word for equality." - See more at: http://www.khanstory.com/2015/11/malala-yousafzai-identifies-as-feminist.html#sthash.Ugp8EPhc.dpuf