Review by Vrij Links: 'This is not a bitter, polarised or ideological pamphlet'

By the editors, 30 November 2024

With the dark days drawing in, Vrij Links shines a light on three recent books. The same core values are at the heart of all three: the freedom of the individual to think, to be, to act and to believe. Today, our second recommendation: Gender Rebels.

Gender Rebels: courage, freedom and self-determination for young women

Gender Rebels is a book about girls and young women and the many-sided challenges they face today. From the effect of social media on victim mentality and stereotypical role patterns, and the tomboy who has been edged out by a culture in which gender transition is normalised, to oppression inside orthodox religious families.

Every freedom-restricting feature of the present day that weighs heavily on this generation of girls is examined. The denial of biological reality, the images circulating online and religious fundamentalism all bear down particularly hard on the rights of girls and women.

Despite the difficult subject matter, the book's approach is strikingly positive. Heavy themes are interwoven with stories of courage, freedom and self-determination. It matters that the girls speak for themselves rather than merely being spoken about; the subject becomes tangible and concrete. But the experts and professionals — well-known women in the debate with the knowledge and the experience to match — also make this book worthwhile. The biographer Jolande Withuis argues for the importance of recognising the difference between sex and gender; the psychologist Liesbeth Woertman sets out the consequences of the flood of manipulated images of women that confronts young girls; and Ayaan Hirsi Ali draws attention to the rising sexual violence against women in Europe by male migrants from Islamic cultures.

The contribution by our own Vrij Links chair, Femke Lakerveld, on the disappearance of progressive values on the political left also fits in with the series of important questions this book raises — in particular, whether and how the Netherlands has failed to support girls who are trapped by dogma or ideology. "The political left turns a blind eye to abuses such as forced marriage, marital captivity and female genital mutilation," Lakerveld says. "It surprises me that progressive Netherlands does not kick against religious dogmas as hard as it did in the seventies and eighties. It concerns the rights of thousands of young women. With a relativistic 'it is their culture', you are throwing half of the world's population under the bus."

This polyphonic, 368-page book poses one important question: how do we safeguard the freedoms for girls and women to have free control over their own bodies, their love lives and the course of their lives? Because, as it turns out, those freedoms are far from self-evident. We should therefore take the somewhat misleading title literally.

The book's editor, Sybilla Claus, makes room for gender-critical voices, yet she has also managed to steer well clear of a bitter, polarised political or ideological pamphlet. Her love and care for the young girls of today are clearly greater than that, and they shine through the anthology. The message that remains is: you are fine just as you are, whatever you look like, whoever you love, whatever you want to do — be free.