Women’s rights are a hot-button topic these days, and it isn’t just women who are weighing in with their opinions. From Andy Samberg to the Dalai Lama, male celebs are proving feminism isn’t just for females.
1. Joseph Gordon-Levitt
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“What [feminism] means to me is that you don’t let your gender define who you are — you can be who you want to be, whether you’re a man, a woman, a boy, a girl, whatever. However you want to define yourself, you can do that and should be able to do that, and no category ever really describes a person because every person is unique. That, to me, is what ‘feminism’ means. So yes, I’d absolutely call myself a feminist.”
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2. John Legend
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“All men should be feminists. If men care about women’s rights, the world will be a better place. We are better off when women are empowered — it leads to a better society.”
3. Ryan Gosling
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“You have to question a cinematic culture which preaches artistic expression and yet would support a decision that is clearly a product of a patriarchy-dominant society, which tries to control how women are depicted on screen. The MPAA is OK supporting scenes that portray women in scenarios of sexual torture and violence for entertainment purposes, but they are trying to force us to look away from a scene that shows a woman in a sexual scenario which is both complicit and complex. It‘s misogynistic in nature to try and control a woman‘s sexual presentation of self. I consider this an issue that is bigger than [one] film.”
4. His Holiness the Dalai Lama
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“I call myself a feminist. Isn’t that what you call someone who fights for women’s rights?”
5. Seth Meyers
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“When you work with the sort of really strong women that I work with, the idea that anyone would want to make decisions for them is hard to wrap your head around.”
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6. Jay Baruchel
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“I was raised by my mom, I have a little sister and I’m constantly annoyed [by] how terribly written most females are in most everything — and especially in comedy. Their anatomy seems to be the only defining aspect of their character, and I just find that untruthful and it straight-up offends me. A lot of the strongest people I know are chicks. And as a viewer, I get a kick out of watching real characters. So I take it upon myself to clean that shit up and write actual women. And I like writing strong women, because as a straight male, there’s nothing more attractive to me than a strong girl.”
7. Prince Harry
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“We know that when women are empowered, they immeasurably improve the lives of everyone around them — their families, their communities and their countries. This is not just about women; we men need to recognize the part we play, too. Real men treat women with dignity and give them the respect they deserve.”
8. Ezra Miller
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“One in three women in the world will experience domestic violence or rape within the course of their lifetime. To me, I grew up in a household of women and I feel that all revolutionary causes should start with addressing misogyny.”
9. Jon Hamm
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“Men ruled the roost and women played a subservient role [in the 1960s]. Working wives were a rarity, because their place was in the home, bringing up the kids. The women who did work were treated as second-class citizens because it was a male-dominated society. That was a fact of life then. But it wouldn’t be tolerated today, and that’s quite right in my book… people look back on those days through a thick veil of nostalgia, but life was hard if you were anything other than a rich, powerful, white male.”
10. Alan Alda
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“I think [misogyny] is like a disease that needs to be cured. And if we could eradicate polio, I don’t see why we can’t eradicate misogyny.”
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11. Harry Belafonte
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“Let us use this century to be the century when we said we started the mission to end the violence and oppression of women. Let us never, ever let our children become the abusers to our women that we permitted in our lifetime.”
12. Will Smith
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“We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it’s like, how can you teach her that you’re in control of her body? If I teach her that I’m in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she’s going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She can’t cut my hair, but that’s her hair. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she’s going out with a command that is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives.”
13. Joss Whedon
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“Equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition.”
14. Eddie Vedder
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“I’m usually good about my temper, but all these men trying to control women’s bodies are really beginning to piss me off.”
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15. Andy Samberg
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“Since there have been men and women, there have been funny women… f***ing idiot-ass men keep saying that women aren’t funny. It makes me crazy. I find it disgusting and offensive every time.”
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