Ariana Grande Talks Misogyny and Double Standards, Quotes Gloria Steinem

Following an interview with The Sun where Ariana Grande shut down rumors of her dating One Direction’s Niall Horan by saying, “A girl can be friends with someone with a dick and not hop on it,” the singer took to her social media to share thoughts on being single and the double standards between men and women. Grande opened her Twitter rant with the revelations that, “Being ‘empowered’…is not the same as being a ‘bitch’…and “HAVING SOMETHING TO SAY…is not the same as HAVING A BAD ATTITUDE.” Fresh from her breakup with Big Sean, Grande goes on to describe how she has “never felt more present, grounded, and satisfied,” and has way more important things to talk about than boys anyway. “I’m currently making the best music I’ve ever made in my life, having the best time of my life on tour with some of the greatest people I’ve ever known, working my ass off every single day, performing/creating for my babes and getting the chance to meet and hug my babes all over the world every day,” she wrote.

Grande also talks about how she comes from a “long bloodline of female activists” including an aunt who was the first Italian-American female president of the National Press Club. “I think she would have been proud of me for speaking up about something that has been bothering me personally for so long,” she said. The newly-minted feminist then slams the sexual double standards women have to face:

“If a woman has a lot of sex (or any sex for that matter)… she’s a ‘slut.’

If a man has sex…. HE’S. A. STUD. A BOSSSSSS. a KING.

If a woman even TALKS about sex openly… she is shamed!

But if a man talks or RAPS freely about all the women (or more commonly used ‘bitches’/’hoes’…how lovely) he’s had…he is regaled.

If a woman is seen with a friend with a penis, there is an immediate assumption of romance or sex and she is labeled!!”

Grande continued her rant saying how she is tired of living in a world where women are referred to as the property of men. “I… do not. belong. to anyone. but myself. and neither do you,” she wrote.

The 21-year-old songstress ended her essay with this quote from Gloria Steinem: “Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. She will need her sisterhood.”