This Game of Thrones Actress Has an Opinion on Feminism Sure to Offend the Hollywood Crowd

Barbara Boland | December 15, 2014
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Proving that she is just as plucky as Arya Stark, the character she portrays on the HBO series “Game of Thrones,” British actress Maisie Williams made a statement almost revolutionary in the Hollywood set. Feminism isn’t high on Williams’ priority list because “there are women in the rest of the world who have it far worse” than women in the UK and America.

The full quote comes from an interview she gave The Guardian:

Williams is a feminist, though it’s not an issue high on her agenda. “There are creepy things that people say online that I shouldn’t have to read,” she explains, “but there are bigger things going on in other countries.” We talk about actor Emma Watson’s recent UN speech, in which she talked about her reasons for becoming a feminist, and the need for men to be onside; Williams says she is impatient with this kind of “first-world feminism”. “A lot of what Emma Watson spoke about, I just think, ‘that doesn’t bother me’. I know things aren’t perfect for women in the UK and in America, but there are women in the rest of the world who have it far worse.”

You can hear the passion in her voice, and Williams campaigns for a number of causes: breast cancer is one, “because my mum had it”, and another is online abuse.

Here are a few quotes from Watson’s UN speech that Williams dubbed “first-world feminism:”

 

 

“I decided I was a feminist and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word.

Apparently I am among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, anti-men and, unattractive.

Why is the word such an uncomfortable one?

I am from Britain and think it is right that as a woman I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in the policies and decision-making of my country. I think it is right that socially I am afforded the same respect as men. But sadly I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to receive these rights.

…. We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.

If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.”

For an example of problems beyond the “first-world feminism” of Watson, one need look no further than Ayaan Hirsi Ali, noted author, speaker and survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM.) Ali agrees with Williams’ take and calls some of modern feminism’s pursuits “trivial bullshit.”

Feminists used to fight for girls to access education, something Ali desperately needed when she was in Somalia, a country where she couldn’t leave the house without a male guardian accompanying her (and granting her permission to leave.)

“If something wrong were to happen to me, and where I come from that happened all the time — you were groped, you were harassed, you were raped — you had no recourse because you weren’t supposed to be where you were,” Hirsi Ali said at the Independent Women’s Forum Women of Valor dinner last month. “You were married off as a child and you had to obey the person that you were married to, it was just your luck.” Ali added: “We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.”

That’s just a small taste of what women endure in countries outside the first-world. Maisie Williams is a smart lady.

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