hexafu

“What would the world look like if girls were taught that they were volcanoes, whose eruptions were a thing of beauty, a power to behold and a force not to be trifled with?

What if instead of breaking their wildness like a rancher tames a bronco, we taught girls the importance and power of being dangerous? What if we nurtured and encouraged the expression of anger in girls the same way we encourage reading skills: as necessary for their navigation of the world? What if we believed that, just as reading and writing help a girl to understand the world around her and to express herself within it, expressing anger was also a necessary tool for a girl making her way through life.

Imagine a girl justifiably enraged at her mistreatment.

Imagine if we acknowledged her justifiable anger so that a girl understood she would be heard if anyone abused her and that her anger was just as important a trait as honesty.

And imagine if we taught a girl that injustice anywhere and against anyone was also worthy of anger, so that she developed a keen sense of compassion and justice and understood that injustice, whether personal or affecting others, was wrong? What kind of woman would such a girl grow up to be?”

— Mona Eltahawy, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls