![](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/screen-shot-2014-10-07-at-9-58-37-am.png?w=2400&quality=85)
According to Aziz Ansari, most people are feminists — whether or not they actively call themselves that — because most people believe men and women should have equal rights. The comedian discussed this theory with David Letterman on The Late Show last night after explaining that his chef girlfriend is a “big feminist” and has turned him into one too. Here’s the thing, though: he doesn’t give some big, dramatic speech about feminism. To Ansari, being a feminist just seems like a no-brainer.
“If you look up feminist in the dictionary, it just means someone who believes men and women have equal rights,” he says, after asking fellow feminists in the audience for a round of applause. “But I think the reason people don’t clap is that the word is so weirdly used in our culture. Now, people think feminist means, like, some woman is gonna start yelling at them.”
He continues to add his signature humor to the topic, which is clearly important to him. “I feel like if you do believe that men and women have equal rights, if someone asks if you’re a feminist, you have to say yes, because that is how words work,” he quips, adding a metaphor about a doctor who treats diseases of the skin but deems the word dermatologist “too aggressive.”
Then he throws in another metaphor about Jay Z and Beyoncé and basically this whole speech is perfect and it makes us feel like this.
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Eyewitness Accounts From the Trump Rally Shooting
- Politicians Condemn Trump Rally Shooting: ‘No Place for Political Violence in Our Democracy’
- From 2022: How the Threat of Political Violence Is Transforming America
- ‘We’re Living in a Nightmare:’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
- Remembering Shannen Doherty , the Quintessential Gen X Girl
- How Often Do You Really Need to Wash Your Sheets?
- Welcome to the Noah Lyles Olympics
- Get Our Paris Olympics Newsletter in Your Inbox
Contact us at letters@time.com