JOANNA GRAY
What have Little Red Riding Hood, Jane Austen’s Emma and prison reformer Elizabeth Fry got in common? They are all female-coded ‘compassionate’ girls and women who can help us understand why young women are veering to the radical Left. The New Statesman has reported on this trend and the predilection of young women to support various perceived victim groups – trans rights and Palestinians, for example – even when these groups clash with their own interests.
Explained as “suicidal empathy” by Gad Saad and the “hijacking” of instinctive female care for victims by Eric Kaufmann, the lurch to extreme Left-wing ideology by young women today deserves our full attention. Lord Young wrote about the phenomenon last week and wonders:
Can anything be done to arrest this trend? … Our best hope might be to focus on adolescent girls, with teachers trained to spot misandry and sufferers being shipped off to play darts and given a crash course in banter.
By contemplating Little Red Riding Hood, Emma and Elizabeth Fry, we might however be able to work out another solution. Rather than bantering and darts lessons what’s needed is a nationwide celebration of the compassionate and caring nature of girls and women, directed, crucially, at the genuinely – not Left-confected – needy.
When female compassion is misplaced or poorly executed it is a terrible thing. In Little Red Riding Hood’s case, her kindness in taking a basket of goodies to her ailing Grandmother attracted the attentions of a hungry wolf who soon gobbled up both her and Grandma. Emma’s compassionate bid to assist the love life of family-less Harriet Smith resulted in heartache, confusion and insults all around. Emma’s meddling, though well-intentioned, hurt those she loved best. In both instances, men, in the form of the woodcutter, and firm but fair Mr Knightley arrived to sort everything out.
Some might dismiss these examples of female folly as misogyny, but whether we like it or not, girls and women love to care. HR, GPs, teachers, nursing and care workers are all female dominated industries, for instance. Men obviously care as well, but on average, women score higher on measures of empathy and concern for the vulnerable or marginalised. Anyone who has ever seen a newborn baby will understand immediately why such a temperament in women might be vital. My sister used to sit next to our Hi-Fi sobbing as she listened to Ralph McTell’s ‘Streets of London’.
This deep, profound and good instinct to care for animals, our own children, the dispossessed, the homeless and so on is entirely to be applauded. Alas what has happened in recent years is that caring girls and woman have been laughed out of town. Mothering has been ridiculed by politicians such as Jeremy Hunt who talk about the wasted talent of women who look after their own children. Caring, if there at all, is reduced to hashtags, slogans and ‘safeguarding’. Remember Michelle Obama uselessly carrying the sign #bringbackourgirls.
‘Childcare’ at secondary schools is suggested as an option only to those girls who have little academic aptitude and girls are instead encouraged to become plum-trouser-suited Chancellors of the Exchequer. Very few teenage girls or young women would openly and proudly admit that their life’s goal is to get married and have children. The idea that, like my Grandmother-in-law, girls at school would spend their breaktimes knitting baby jackets for orphans is impossible to contemplate. Regular school visits to old people’s homes? Forget it. Trips to children’s homes to give epiphany gifts? A safeguarding risk. Shifts at the night shelter? Too dangerous.
Though society elevates different accomplishments (STEM in, Cookery out), human nature doesn’t change. With limited encouragement to actually and practically care, girls and women will direct their caring attentions to those currently deemed vulnerable. At the moment, this group consists of illegal immigrants, gentlemen who think they are ladies, Gazans and more recently, the anti-ICE protestors. Luckily in the age of the iPhone, nothing actually needs to be done for them beyond a digital like here or there. And we wonder why 20% of teenage girls are said to have a mental disorder.
Elizabeth Fry (born 1780) might however provide an answer. Known as ‘the angel of prisons’, the formidable mother of 11 reformed Newgate Prison, then a festering hellscape. She set up schools, forced Parliamentary prison reform, hosted the King of Prussia in prison and inspired a whole generation of female philanthropists.
Unlike Little Red Riding Hood and Emma, whose caring natures led to danger and unnecessary strife, Elizabeth Fry’s caring hard work actually improved the lives of thousands. The solution therefore to stopping the Leftward march of young women is not to insist on bantering lessons and darts, but to allow girls and women to give full vent to their caring natures.
The devaluing of domestic caring work within the home must stop, a desire to have children must be celebrated, and youngsters of both sexes must be encouraged to roll up their sleeves and help the vulnerable and dispossessed – real life ones in our own towns and cities: visits to the lonely elderly next door; shifts at the homeless shelter; childcare for disadvantaged babies and toddlers; homecooked meals for families with not enough money. When an enthusiastically caring 17 year-old I worked for the Church Army and did a stint at mother and baby homeless unit. It convinced me that problems were far more complicated than I then understood them to be. I have leaned Right ever since.
There is enough need out there to fully occupy caring young people, girls in particular, and keep them from channelling their laudable instincts into toxic Left-wing causes.
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.
This article (How to Stop the Female March Leftwards) was created and published by The Daily Sceptic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Joanna Gray
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