I recently saw a tweet that read, “if you like the hashtag #WomenAgainstFeminism then you might also enjoy #SlavesAgainstEmancipation and #JewsForHitler.”

I find the phenomenon of women refusing to identify as feminists confounding. Why do women refuse to identify as feminists? Do they think they’re the “lesser sex”? That they deserve unequal pay, inadequate access to healthcare, limited access to education around the world? Or is it just a fear of the word?

“If you believe that men and women have equal rights, and then someone asks you if you’re a feminist, then you have to say yes,” says actor and comedian Aziz Ansari. ”Because that’s how the world works. You can’t be like, ‘Yeah, I’m a doctor who primarily does diseases of the skin.’

‘Oh, so you’re a dermatologist?’

‘Oh, that’s way too aggressive of a word, not at all, not at all.’”

The culture of the United States is much different than that of a lot of the world. We are privileged. Yes, there are still social inequalities. There is a pay gap, which is even worse for women of color than for white women. There is a rampant rape culture on college campuses. There is a stigma surrounding victims of sexual assault. Women face sexual and domestic violence in higher rates than men.

Sadly, there are parts of the world where women have little to no access to education, where girls are murdered for going to school.

There are places where women are denied access to basic sanitation and health care. According to the World Health Organization, around 1,000 women die from pregnancy or childbirth related complications every day—one every 90 seconds.

Many cultures partake in horrific genital mutilation, which can lead to a higher chance of death in childbirth. According to the Half the Sky project, more than 135 million girls and women have undergone genital mutilation, and 2 million more girls are at risk each year. Genital mutilation is a social convention. In many places, it is considered part of raising a girl properly. It lessens sexual pleasure. Many consider it to lessen a woman’s sex drive, and discourage her from committing “illicit” sexual acts.” It becomes linked to “premarital virginity and marital fidelity,” according to the World Health Organization. It often requires surgery later in life, and has various painful and endangering side effects.

“Honor killings” are on the rise as well, in which a woman’s relative murders her for disgracing the family.

Women both internationally and here in the United States are forced into sex trafficking. Sex traffickers, while affecting both sexes, mainly target women, because they are impacted in higher rates by discrimination and poverty, and have less access to employment and education. Sex traffickers hunt women in vulnerable circumstances, and lure them with promises of good pay and work conditions.

Gender-based violence is one of the “top public health crisis for women in the world today,” according to the Half the Sky project. Women from ages 15 to 45 are more likely to be maimed or killed from male violence than from cancer, traffic accidents, and war combined.

One-third of all women globally face beatings in the home. In most countries, between 30 and 60 percent of women have experienced physical or sexual violence by a husband or boyfriend. According to the World Health Organization, as many as 70 percent of female murder victims are killed by their male partners.

603 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not outlawed, according to the Half the Sky project. More than 2.6 billion live in countries where rape within a marriage is not a crime. In countries where these things are illegal, many women do not report instances of abuse, because of the stigma associated with rape and sexual assault.

It is important to note that men are victims of sexual violence and rape as well, and that their situations and experiences should not be ignored. But women are affected in exponentially higher rates, both here in the US and abroad.

Women make up 70 percent of the world’s poorest people, and own only one percent of titled land, according to a U.N. report.

In the United States, many people seem to think feminism is a brand of man-hating, of women who think all men are monsters. Women complain that they want men to be chivalrous and hold the door open for them. That they want to be a stay-at-home mother and cook dinner for their husbands every night.

Feminism is what gives women the option to stay home and take care of the children. It is also what gives women the option to be CEOs. To go to college. To not have children. To live the way women in the United States do, with access to education, legal services, jobs, and healthcare.

Feminism is what has allowed the United States to progress so much in terms of the equality of the genders—and we still have quite a way to go.

Feminism is also what men and women around the world stand by, in an effort to better the lives and conditions of impoverished, abused, battered women.

A majority of women around the world are not allowed basic human rights—this is what feminism fights for.

Feminism is simply the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. It is incomprehensible to me that people, especially women, believe that gender equality is a bad thing—especially when atrocities are committed towards women every day, simply because they are women.

If a feminist is someone who thinks a girl should go to school, feel safe in her gender, and have basic human rights, then I call on men and women everywhere to embrace the word as their own.

#WomenAgainstFeminism on Twitter boasts numerous women claiming, “I don’t need feminism. I just need human rights.”

Shockingly enough, this is just what feminists are calling for.