Powerful girls and compassionate boys
Let's rewrite the gender script
…young girls often feel strong, courageous, highly creative, and powerful until they begin to receive undermining sexist messages that encourage them to conform to conventional notions of femininity. To conform they have to give up power.
— bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love
When did this happen to you?
When did this happen to me? I ask myself.
When will this happen to her? I wonder about my six-year-old daughter who, at present, tells me she doesn’t want to get married or have a baby.
You don’t have to, I reply, realizing that a generation or two ago—and in some places, still today—a parent or grandparent might have told their daughters that getting married and having babies is what women are supposed to do. That one day, when she finds the right person, she’ll change her mind.
I don’t tell her any of that. And maybe she will change her mind. Maybe she will meet someone she wants to spend her life with. Maybe she will have a baby. But those will be her choices—choices I hope she actively, consciously makes. Not because she has to, but because she genuinely wants to. And that want won’t come from a script someone handed her.
But then you won’t have a grandkid. She tells me.
That’s okay, I reply. Maybe your brother will have kids instead, or maybe none of you will.
I think of the phrase, protect your daughter educate your son.
And isn’t that what we should be doing? Why do conversations about feminism so often centre women as the only ones responsible for dismantling patriarchal systems? Studies show girls and women aren’t the only ones negatively impacted by the patriarchy—boys and men are, too. They’re taught to suppress their feelings, toughen up, dominate.
I think of my son who naturally loves trucks, being loud and climbing and jumping off of things. I think of his natural kindness, how he always stops to see if his older sister is okay, how he’s tender and concerned—all characteristics I will fiercely nurture in him.
There were many messages I took in as a child. Some came from purity culture and religion, others through media or at school. As a woman, you are meant to serve and please. Be quiet. Don’t stand up for yourself. Your virginity (or virtue) is more important than your voice. Your body has power over men. Desire is sin.
I think of the boys who were performing scripts and expecting me to fall into mine. I think of the men who considered themselves feminists yet had no idea how to implement equality into their daily lives and relationships. Men of quality don’t fear equality. So I ask them, what does that actually look like, in a tangible way?
Protect your daughter educate your son.
See? Feminism isn’t just women’s work. It’s men’s work, too. It’s government and laws. It’s parental leave. It’s equal pay. It’s reproductive rights. It’s more women in leadership.
I have never thought of myself as the inferior sex—the second sex, as Simone De Beauvoir writes. But there are days I’m exhausted from having to assert myself in situations where no assertion should be required. To not assert myself would mean becoming a doormat, which I spent far too many years doing in my early adulthood.
I was in an EDI workshop at work the other day, practicing what we could say when faced with inappropriate comments—whether sexist, racist, transphobic, ableist, etc. Becoming an active bystander takes practice, so we practiced. One woman said her default is to simply say wow.
I love that.
I love how simple it is. It shouldn’t be my job to educate every person about why their comment was sexist or racist or classist—but it will always be my job to disrupt these messages. Wow. Let them sit in the discomfort. Let them think.
However, education will sit on my nightside table like a bible and we’ll pick it up to read every day. I’ll remind my children of their power, of their kindness, of the importance of their voice, the fact that their words matter—whether cruel or kind.
We’ll keep asking questions. We’ll question our questions. We’ll question our statements. We’ll question our thoughts. We’ll stand up for our statements and our thoughts. We’ll be okay with changing our minds. We’ll apologize. We’ll remember that our social scripts are just scripts—but we write our own stories.
And in these stories, girls are strong, courageous, highly creative and powerful. Boys are sensitive, emotionally open and in tune, nurturing and imaginative.
And when my children walk out the door and leave me to my empty nest, I hope they take each other’s hands and remind themselves of their power, their gentleness, their infinite nature, their ability to create change—and their duty to be active, conscientious and kind humans.