It is not that I love girls more than I love boys—I love them all and hope that my children and grandchildren can attest to that. It is that, in almost every place in the world, little girls are the most vulnerable, while also the greatest promise for the future. In almost all societies, where misogyny has dominated history, where girls are systematically repressed, under-privileged, married off, beaten, raped, assigned to subservient roles, or simply never considered… it is they, the little girls who carry the promise, maybe the only hope for the future of humankind.
We live in a fragile time when, despite brutal, noisy propaganda to the contrary, our true strength is in our vulnerability, our wisdom in our compassion, our survival chances in our abilities to care for each other. And these are the natural talents of girls, or maybe the evolved talents of girls who throughout time in most societies have been left with the ‘support roles’, or simply left to figure it out themselves.
“Our strength is in vulnerability. Our future is in them.”
Girls are physically more vulnerable than boys, the bigger, stronger, often more aggressive of our species. But vulnerability teaches us kindness and tenderness for those needing protection: today, just about everybody and every living thing on our planet.
And not that boys are incapable of compassion—I’ve known many who disprove that—but to girls, it seems to come more naturally. The quieter ones in the school class, the shyer ones on the playground, girls get the chance to see and identify with the vulnerable, and this creates compassion.
And service of course, the cliché of womanhood, and we learn it as girls. Being good at school, helping friends, helping at home with cooking and cleaning, with younger siblings, homework and music lessons and sports, and… helping Mom when she’s tired. (I remember this so well, bless my wonderful daughter.)
I live in one of the most “emancipated” societies on earth, the Netherlands. And yet, last week, my 13-year-old granddaughter, playing outside with two other girls, was hit on her face by a cork thrown aggressively by some boy, biking through the neighborhood with a couple of friends.
Why? Just an aggressive kid, wanting to bully… a girl.
So I read the reports of 165 girls in Iran killed by US bombs, the very first victims of the latest US/ Israeli war of aggression in the region. How totally, sickly appropriate in a world where political, military powers begin yet another horrific war, scorning the most vulnerable, raining destruction on a girls’ school, killing 165 school children, 165 girls.
And I think about Hind Rajab, the 6-year-old girl killed by IOF soldiers, who fired 335 bullets at her while she was alone in a car, surrounded by her dead family members, desperately calling for help.
Little girls, how we need them.
And I also see the little boy alternatives: the little Palestinian boy in Gaza gone viral, holding his black cat in his arms, showing us his garden, his tomato plants, the vegetables he’s grown from seeds. Big smile, gentle, full of energy and life force in one of the deadliest places on earth. Here’s a little boy who has learned the little girl lessons of kindness, compassion and service.
And I weep for all the children who suffer from this abhorrent violence against civilians, for the sake of what??? Land theft, oil, wealth, the ambitions of powerful (white) men who want to dominate the region, own its resources, control the world. The sick version of masculinity that has ruled our world for hundreds of years, always there in the background but now unmasked and clear for all to see. Unlimited violence now being played out in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran, to name only a few of the countries in one of the most war-torn parts of our world, “normalizing” the principles of might-makes-right for our collective future.
It’s time to pick up our feminism again, in defense of all little girls and all little boys, acknowledging the powers of vulnerability, compassion and service—the unacknowledged strengths of our species, the only hope for our survival. As adults who were once little girls or little boys, we must stand for them now, against the war machine, against the billionaire bosses, against the corrupt, aggressive forces of greed, violence and domination that have infected our societies at almost all levels.
We owe it to them, to give them the chance to rebuild our broken world from the spirit of vulnerability, compassion and service.
—Laura Hassler, Director Musicians Without Borders