Ariana Grande Pens Powerful Essay on Feminism: ‘I’m Tired of Needing to Be Linked to a Guy’

Ariana Grande wants to make one thing clear: She doesn’t belong to anyone but herself.

That message was at the heart of a long post Grande, 21, published Sunday afternoon, a response to the chatter surrounding quotes she gave to The Sun in which she explained, “A girl can be friends with someone with a d— and not hop on it.”

Grande told the paper, “I’m tired of needing to be linked to a guy, I’m not Big Sean‘s ex, I’m not Niall‘s new possible girl. I’m Ariana Grande.”

That is: “What I meant when I said what I said about not being Sean’s ex is that I am tired of living in world where women are mostly referred to as a man’s past, present or future PROPERTY / POSSESSION,” Grande wrote in her Sunday post.

She added: “I have clearly not been having the boy questions in my interviews lately because I have come to the realization that I have SO. MUCH. MORE. to talk about.”

She said she’s spent the majority of the past eight years “feeling like I constantly had to have a boy by my side.”

But her new time as a single woman has been a revelation.

“I can’t wait to live in a world where people are not valued by who they’re dating / married to / attached to, having sex with (or not) / seen with…. but by their values as an individual,” she wrote.

“I come from a long bloodline of female activists,” she wrote, also taking time in her post to discuss the double standards in how society talks about men and women and their relationships

Grande ended her post with a quote from feminist icon 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.”

This article originally appeared on People.com