Joanna Gray writes for the Daily Sceptic about challenging a current political trend among women.
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.
