I chew slowly and swallow my food my mind racing to answer this. All I can come up with is, "Why do you ask?"
So she launches off into what her day in online school was like and that during the English class, they were learning masculine and feminine gender and when the teacher said, "A female dog is called a bitch", some of the kids tittered and then got reprimanded for it.
She's watching me intently at this point and I'm struggling for words.
How do I explain to her that as a woman being assertive and headstrong is the last thing people want from you? If you have voice, a loud one, stand up for yourself and fight back, you are akin to a female dog who bares her teeth and snarls when you get too close to her pups.
How do I explain that this is years of conditioning. Years of consistent effort to make confident women feel shame for their boldness, their bodies, their opinions, their choices. If she's a professional, unflappable, composed - she's animalistic.
She's still waiting patiently, so I give her the only answer I can come up with.
"If you're doing what is right and what is strong, people who do not like that will call you names. Call them out on it and calmly ask them to explain their choice of words. That WILL make them uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough to think twice before saying that to another girl or woman. You cannot change what people say and how they perceive you. But you can stand up to them and tell them it's not okay. That is your right. You are not responsible for the discomfort people feel when they are called out on their ignorance."
She's still waiting patiently, so I give her the only answer I can come up with.
"If you're doing what is right and what is strong, people who do not like that will call you names. Call them out on it and calmly ask them to explain their choice of words. That WILL make them uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough to think twice before saying that to another girl or woman. You cannot change what people say and how they perceive you. But you can stand up to them and tell them it's not okay. That is your right. You are not responsible for the discomfort people feel when they are called out on their ignorance."
She continues chewing thoughtfully and then says. "So only if girls are assertive they're bitches, but if boys are assertive what does that make them? It would be wrong to call them dogs."
I'm so proud of this compassionate little girl, who realises what is wrong and how two wrongs DO NOT make a right.
She's asking the correct questions. She's thinking for herself. She's aware of the difference in acceptance of the same set of attributes in boys and girls and yet she refuses to be part of the problem. The problem of paying back in kind. Like the lovely Michelle Obama said, "when they go low, we go high."
She's asking the correct questions. She's thinking for herself. She's aware of the difference in acceptance of the same set of attributes in boys and girls and yet she refuses to be part of the problem. The problem of paying back in kind. Like the lovely Michelle Obama said, "when they go low, we go high."
