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‘Harry Potter’ Actress Urges Men to End Gender Inequality

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a recent speech, actress Emma Watson urged men to help end gender inequality in the world. But is anything she said consequential? It’s certainly easy to roll one’s eyes at this sort of fluff. But some think the speech was a “game changer.”

Filling her role as a UN Women Goodwill ambassador, the 24-year-old Watson spoke in New York last week insisted that if only women listened to her entireties, gender inequality would continue.

Watson claimed that as she studied the problem of gender inequality she became aware that “that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating.” This, she said, would have to stop if progress was to be made.

The speech is part of the UN campaign dubbed the “HeForShe” campaign.

“For the record, feminism by definition is: ‘The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes,'” the actress said.

Watson said that her friends felt they had to drop out of sports so that they wouldn’t look “too muscly” and decried that as an actress the media began sexualizing her when she was only 14-years-old.

Of course, any Google image search of Emma Watson will show hundreds of photos where she is willingly sexualizing herself, so these claims can appear somewhat hypocritical.

She went on to say that these situations could not be addressed if only women were listening to the issues.

“Men; I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too,” The Harry Potter actress proclaimed.

“I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness unable to ask for help for fear it would make them look less ‘macho’–in fact in the UK suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20-49; eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality either.”

It was a speech that Vanity Fair called a “game changing” address that was met with a “thunderous standing ovation.”

The glamour magazine also assumes that Watson can be far more effective in her role as ambassador for women than others might be. “Her role as Hermione Granger, the universally-adored heroine of the Harry Potter series, gives her an automatic in with male and female Millenials,” the magazine said.

Others seemed to agree. YahooNews called Watson’s address a “stirring speech”

Watson ended her speech acknowledging that some may find her advocacy the fluff of Hollywood giving her little attention. She admitted that people may ask, “Who is this Harry Potter girl? What is she doing at the U.N.?”

“It’s a really good question,” Watson answered. “I’ve been asking myself at the same thing. All I know is that I care about this problem and I want to make it better. And having seen what I’ve seen and given the chance, I feel my responsibility to say something.”

Watson ended with an often misquoted adage but added a feminine twist saying, “Statesman Edmund Burke said all that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.”

In the end, with that false quote, Watson made herself look a bit foolish, as if she put little real effort into her speech.

Still, this is exactly the sort of stuff liberals love. They can solemnly shake their heads, tut tut their enemies, and clap their hands for a young woman “speaking truth to power” but understanding that it is all just sturm und drang amounting to little real action. Fluff. Yammering. The sort of blather that makes liberals feel all warm and mushy inside.

But, sure, it was a nice speech nicely delivered.

Days after her speech, though, a fellow feminist proved why men should ignore Watson and her silly cohorts.

In the UK Guardian feminist writer Harriet Minter proved to be a nutty conspiracy theorist about Watson, showing that these women are just silly things, not to be taken seriously.