Beyoncé is proud of the feminist conversation she feels she helped generate.
“I’d like to believe that my music opened up that conversation,” the “Drunk in Love” singer, 32, wrote in a recent email exchange with Out magazine for its May issue. “There is unbelievable power in ownership, and women should own their sexuality. There is a double standard when it comes to sexuality that still persists. Men are free and women are not.”
“The old lessons of submissiveness and fragility made us victims,” the mom to 2-year-old Blue Ivy continued. “Women are so much more than that. You can be a businesswoman, a mother, an artist, and a feminist—whatever you want to be—and still be a sexual being. It’s not mutually exclusive.”
Bey, who has been married to Jay Z since 2008, also weighed in why she feels her self-titled album has received such a warm welcome from the LBGT community.
“Being that I am a woman in a male-dominated society, the feminist mentality rang true to me and became a way to personalize that struggle … But what I’m really referring to, and hoping for, is human rights and equality, not just that between a woman and a man,” she wrote. “So I’m very happy if my words can ever inspire or empower someone who considers themselves an oppressed minority.”