Rebel Girls

A conversation with Sybilla Claus

Iratxe Álvarez. Visit www.genderrebels.org to view more photographs by Iratxe Álvarez.

BTW, I’ll be posting an excerpt from the chapter I wrote for Gender Rebels soon.

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Sybilla Claus edited the first anthology by and for young women about the problems they face growing up today. She is a long-time journalist and anthropologist who lives in Amsterdam. Visit www.genderrebels.org to learn more about the book. 

What inspired you to create the book Gender Rebels?

I was inspired by my worries about young girls today. Take, for example, a teenage girl who was born in Brazil and came to the Netherlands five years ago with her mother when she was nine, who has become my little sister’ . She is the first one I interviewed for the book. She struggles with hating her body every single time she gets her painful period. Ever since primary school(!), boys in her class shamed and hurt her because of her body hair, they scrutinized every part of her lovely body, from her breasts to her behind to her eyebrows, increasing her insecurity and anxiety to panic levels. These same boys call girls whores and kech (Arabic for whore). This is pure hate against girls.

When I look at girls here in the Netherlands today, they all tend to look the same: long hair, skinny jeans, and makeup. There is hardly any girl with short hair to be found, the ones that do have short hair can be ostracized by other girls: ‘You are no girl. You are not one of us.’ Young lesbians are being asked if they are boys and lured into medical transition. It hurts me to see how mastectomies are celebrated in my own queer community. We traded female solidarity for denying and escaping womanhood. 

I am 65 years old and sometimes I wonder: whatever happened to all the ways you could be a young woman? There was much more freedom of expression in my student days than there is today! Why is it still so bad to be a girl and a woman? This little country below sea level is the best in the world, we have good healthcare for everybody, take care of the elderly and homeless people, we have equal rights, affordable education for all, the best bicycle and mobility policies, and we are prosperous, we were the first to introduce lesbian and gay marriage in 2001. So why all this female unhappiness? As a writer and long-time journalist, these questions  set me on a  quest to figure out what’s going on.

Why did you choose 'Gender Rebels' as a title?

I was a student back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. I remember  being very confused about where I fit in as a non-conforming liberal girl in a male-oriented world. Looking backwards, I can say that I was saved by second-wave feminism. Back then, nobody questioned biology, that mammals–including humans–are sexed beings. There was no talk about choosing another sex. 

There were just a few transsexuals: adult men wanting to live as women and performing a traditional female role (clothing, makeup, stereotypes) that none of us found attractive. All our discussions were around topics of liberating women (and men!) from stereotypical gender roles that were limiting our lives.  

Gender meant confinement for women. Gender meant abuse, forced marriages, witch-burnings, rape, and no education for centuries. My own mother was fired from her job as a teacher when she married my father. This was Dutch law at the time! I consider myself lucky to have been born when I was. 

My generation rebelled against these injustices on a massive scale that created lots of enthusiasm and empowerment. It was genuinely liberating. We took up martial arts to confront daily violence. We developed self-defense courses for women in the Netherlands. We started women’s bookstores, cafes, festivals, campings, living communities, bicycle and car repair shops, and read up on female history and the lives of women all around the world. I myself studied female genital mutilation in African and Arab countries, and later on everyday violence against lesbians in the Netherlands.

So, for me, the words Gender Rebels are connected to the good old feminist days when we were working hard in solidarity with oppressed women all over the world for change, when we wanted to open up the world for women to take on new roles, act in new ways. 

What do you think has changed between your childhood and what girls growing up today must contend with?

We didn't have the Internet, we didn't have radical and unscientific gender ideology, and we didn't have the presence of orthodox Islam in our adolescence. In higher education, we learned to read and debate, to challenge ourselves and test our ideas, instead of feeling hurt and canceling other opinions on the basis of an empty word or false accusation. 

These new factors are spinning a complicated web, interacting with old forms of oppression in novel ways, and harming  girls and young women in ways we haven't seen before. These harms can be hard to see and hard to understand. So much of the harm is happening online, or it’s packaged in an ideology of inclusiveness that comes at the cost of women, or because it is being preached in foreign languages.

Today’s children and young people have grown up with the smartphone, fast Internet, and social-media platforms designed to ensnare  youngsters, especially girls. So, in the book, we have an interview with a psychologist who stepped down from an advisory board for Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) because these companies just don't care about the wellbeing of vulnerable girls. They care about making money, period.

A big part of the book is dedicated to the ways these online spaces harm girls, or turn girls against each other, or unite girls in their rejection of their bodies. Fanfiction communities are where millions of girls gather. Online is where they have developed all these theories about who is the biggest victim, who deserves the most victimhood points, who is on top of this victimhood and identity hierarchy. 

Several young brilliant female writers explain how they came to identify as  boys and men online, or how they found themselves only ever writing about boys and men, and how that enforced the idea that you can escape womanhood.

You yourself wrote a chapter about your thesis on how trans communities deal with doubt, where doubt is taken as proof of being trans. This section of the book is an eye-opener to all the adults that have no clue what these girls are doing online.

The other important difference between growing up in my time and now is that, back then, we were fighting in community for a better world. Now we live in the time of the individual, who uses cosmetic surgery or mood- and mind-altering drugs to personally adapt to the world as it is. The concept of women's liberation seems to have vanished and been replaced by personal dreams of success and perfection on narrow terms.

Worldwide, female breast augmentation is the number-one form of cosmetic surgery, poor countries included! The more young women make use of cosmetic surgery, the harder it becomes for others to resist this pressure. We have a psychologist explaining how this mechanism works and influences teenage girls. Girls feel a deep sense of not belonging and a big disconnect from their own bodies, fueled by unrealistic ideals:skinny limbs combined with big breasts. 

We know from psychologists like Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt that girls who are heavy users of  social media feel worse. Every extra hour you spend on your smartphone per day means one hour less for seeing friends, playing sports, or sleeping. The stats of young people feeling isolated and depressed, and self-harming have risen sharply over the past 10 years or so. Girls top all of these lists. Especially progressive girls, and especially girls who identify as LGBTQ+. This is a classic chicken-or-egg question: what came first? In northwestern Europe, acceptance of this minority group is very high. In the Netherlands, seemingly every town has now installed a rainbow crosswalk to show solidarity with LGBTQ+ people. So maybe their feeling horrible, relates more to confusion about their identity and online addiction than real oppression. 

So I want to say: girls, no matter whether you identify now as straight, bi, lesbian, nonbinary or trans, listen up! You don't have to choose a permanent identity when you are young. Identity changes over time, especially so with females. I switched from feeling lost to calling myself  ‘Charlie’ for a year, to being 100% lesbian for 15 years, back to living with men. I tried almost everything on the sexual spectrum and had lots of fun with many people. You never know what the future holds.

But I will tell you this. I still suffer from what some people might call ‘gender dysphoria.’ I'm still learning to love my female body as it grows older and changes. After all those years of unnecessary bleeding (I never wanted to get pregnant) comes menopause. It’s hard to accept when your body ages and changes and you can’t do all the things you used to do. But my dysphoria is over the role of women in society, not over our wonderful bodies. This is the reason I wrote a chapter on sexuality for girls and young women. The key is to accept and love your body. Otherwise, you cannot develop a positive sexuality. And positive sexuality is such a gift from nature, its force can be empowering and make you feel invincible.

The last explanation of what is different for girls at this time is the coming of Islam to northwestern Europe. In my generation, we witnessed and celebrated the retreat of the influence of women-oppressing Christian religions, and all the abuse by priests and nuns. But now there is a new religious threat on the scene. 

Refugees warn us that the Islamist cultures they fled hate women.  Sharia is the most patriarchal rule of law. We see that clearly now in Iran and Afghanistan. I see the rise of Islam in the streets of my neighborhood where girls as young as 10–in some cases, as young as three years of age (!)–must cover themselves in  the hijab. So we included a chapter by my heroine, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, on an outbreak of sexual violence in northwestern Europe that is the result of millions of male migrants and refugees who live here now, who see women as property instead of independent human beings. 

With this development, the division between state and religion is coming under pressure. We see our liberal mayor of Amsterdam–a woman–pleading to allow public-security officials to wear the hijab on the job. How does this advance women’s rights? Covering up the female body for men is clearly patriarchal thinking! We see a rise in honor killings of young girls and women in the Netherlands. We know thousands of young Muslim girls in the Netherlands are oppressed at home.

This is a serious emancipation struggle and a big step backwards for the rights of women and girls in the Netherlands. And it is totally ignored by liberal parties, who embrace Islam and ignore its harms, even as their inaction drives voters  to far-right parties all over Europe. Liberal parties nowadays defend Islam’s anti-women beliefs, calling the hijab a matter of woman’s personal choice, for example, and ignoring the pressures women are under from their own communities. Likewise, these parties refuse to see the connection between the rise of gender ideology and the loss of women's rights. 

Tell me about some of the girls and women you've met while putting this book together.

Putting this book together was a wonderful period, working one-on-one with an ever-expanding group of women across generations, finding our feminist strength, writing towards the best possible version of each chapter. It reminded me so much of the old days. Working as a group on a project to help young women and girls gave me wings. It made me feel so powerful. Nothing beats working together with intelligent women towards the same goal: defending the rights of girls and women.

Eliza, I met you! How wonderful is that? I admired the work that you do and I was so happy that you wanted to participate straight away. You are the first person that scientifically researched trans online communities. I did a small experiment myself of getting push notifications from Reddit FtM groups for a couple of months, and it made me feel so bad. So thank you for holding on and analyzing these worlds for us.

Helen Joyce’s newsletter, ‘Joyce Activated,’ led me to dive into fanfiction. And after trying to connect with Ayaan Hirsi Ali in vain for months, I do suspect an email to her by Helen did it in the end. (Helen, if you read this: I love you!)

When I invited another young lady by email to stay at my place whenever she might visit Amsterdam, she replied: ‘That won't happen anytime soon because I live in Russia.’ Sad to hear we cannot meet in real life, but a joy to connect online with women all around the world. 

I asked this young woman, how does fanfiction influence the world of women in Russia? She analyzed this world where she had been participating for 15 years, telling us the difference between western fanfiction and the Russian version.

I also felt a strong connection with a lesbian couple–Kitty Robinson and Max Robinson–in the United States, even before I got in touch with them, because of their work. They collected and shared stories on violence by men who identify as trans against young women. So young, so smart, and so brave.

Another brilliant mind cooperating is an American homemaker who calls herself Autist. Everytime I came up with a new question, she would send me long replies, going into depth, leaving me with new confusion, because I already had to Google every fourth word–partly because your American online jargon is so different, there is the age gap, and then there is my different  Dutch way of thinking. (Thank God for Hans, the translator, who helped in any way he could.) She writes about her fellow “weird nerd women,” whom she loves dearly. She participated in the world of online fanfiction for 15 years, and explains how mainly young women with mental issues come together to–alternately–support and bully each other. In these worlds originated ideas like canceling, victim hierarchy, sharing your pronouns, labeling yourself with your mental and physical health diagnoses (and self-diagnoses), identifying as (gay) men. She shows how strong group pressure is and how any criticism may lead to ejection from online communities isolated girls and young women have come to rely on.

Oh, I wish I could visit all of these foreign ladies, in all their faraway places. Because online connection is great, but for me spending time together in real life, looking each other in the eye, and hugging beats everything.

Can I mention a really special man, as well? He is a pathologist and a Christian, who had to cut more and more healthy young female breasts into slices on his research table. The incredible sadness of this work made him doubt what is going on with transition surgery. His doctor's oath–first do no harm–made him wonder and worry about what is going on in the Netherlands. He is one of just a few critical doctors over here, and I am so happy I could interview him for the book. By the way, the daily Christian newspaper, Trouw, where I worked for almost 30 years, turned down an interview with this man, preventing their readers from accessing new information and hearing a different viewpoint from a fellow Christian. Do subscribers realize liberal newspapers are keeping them ignorant?  

How did your ideas about the book change from start to finish?

Actually, the switch from close to home to international is the biggest change that happened. Originally, our think tank (a small group of feminists my age) planned a book for a Dutch audience, featuring Dutch girls and women. But I was open to anything, looking for all kinds of feminist opportunities, viewpoints, personal stories, and research to include in the book. Soon it appeared that–because the Netherlands is so small and the gender-critical movement is lagging so far behind–the knowledge I was looking for was to be found in the US, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, and the UK.

So we kept growing and growing, as a group. In the end, it became a real international effort, telling stories from women all over the western world, and even Hong Kong. My first request to printers was for a book of 232 pages.  Now it’s 368!

What surprised you most in all the research and interviews and editing you've done for this book? 

The fear that surrounds free feminist speech and writings in the West. It is incredible to have so many ways in which women are not allowed to speak their minds. Over a third of the contributors in this book did so under a different name. To protect their careers, education and safety. Is that some world record? 

Whatever happened to free speech and democracy? Other women did not want to participate out of fear for the consequences of appearing in a book that is critical of gender and critical of Islam. Others never even replied to my repeated requests.

One story stands out. I had an interview with a great 17-year-old. At nine years old, she decided to get a really short haircut, and ever since she was bullied every single day in primary school by her classmates. I was shocked to hear this story, but so happy just talking to her: she was one of the few girls with short hair we could find. She looks super cute, and told me she is a lesbian.

This kid was good at soccer, she was participating in the regional training for talented girls. But on the first day of her higher education it was decided the first-year students would play mixed rugby to get to know each other. Within five minutes, a dude in her group tackled her so badly that, even a year later, she was still struggling with a serious knee injury. After our interview, she was going for a knee operation. I didn't dare tell her that this rugby attack would probably mean the end of her professional dreams. The school never apologized. On the contrary, the gym teacher was on her back because she had to miss so many physical-education classes.

In her story, I saw so many different forms of oppression coming together. The importance of safe and separate women's sports is so obvious. The freedom to be nonconforming without being bullied or told that the way you wear your hair or who you love means you’re really meant to be a boy. She looks like the young lesbians lining up at gender clinics, who seek transition maybe even without acknowledging they are lesbians, because the gender therapists are too ignorant to ask.

She and her dad liked my written interview but then her mom stepped in and withdrew permission to include her story in the book. That was understandable, really, after this girl had suffered three years of abuse as a kid. Even my efforts to protect all the girls and young women I interviewed by leaving out their last names and city names–was no guarantee.  In the current climate,  nobody can predict what the result will be if you appear in a gender-critical book with your life story and pictures. 

You know what is surprising as well, but in a very positive way? Total strangers putting their trust in me! I have a good reputation as a journalist in the Netherlands, but what did people from other countries know? Could I pull off what I promised? And yet all these individuals started out on a journey with me that oftentimes took several months to complete an article for the book. Thank you, ladies! I hope we will succeed in finding an English editor and publisher, so you can read the other great chapters as well. This book brings together the voices of so many young women from all backgrounds. 

How do you hope Gender Rebels will help girls?

One psychologist said that, after reading my introduction, she had a better understanding of all the stressful things that girls have to deal with these days. I hope parents, teachers, and professionals working with girls and young women can take away just a little bit of knowledge about how to assist girls in finding their own way and happiness. 

I hope that girls themselves will gain more confidence, learn to believe their own bodies are beautiful, and fight with us for the rights of women and girls around the world, rather than looking for new ways to opt out of their sex. I was sexually assaulted for the first time when I was 13. Nobody had prepared me for that. Young girls have to learn how to physically defend themselves, and discuss how to ask for help in a threatening situation. An assault is never your fault.

Get away from that screen! Visit a friend instead, play a sport, read, laugh, fall in love, hold somebody’s hand, experiment - within your own limits - with sexuality and relationships. Do stuff that makes you happy. Girls in the West can do and become anything they like. Enjoy that incredible freedom. Accept yourself, build a dream, and go for it. And never let yourself be sidelined or stopped by silly gender rules.