Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Linus Van Pelt: "I thought little girls were innocent and trusting."
Sally Brown: "Welcome to the Twentieth Century."

-- From "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."


I am feeling better about the options available for the little fellow that I mentor. He has a resource period that I will start attending every week.

In discussion with a school counselor, he has confirmed what I have seen a time or two: a couple of girls in his class pick on him. I don't know how badly or how often, or how much this is affecting his behavior this year. I don't know how much he may have brought upon himself. But I do know, in spite of my strong faith in the glory, beauty and divinity of Woman, that She can be capable of cruelty; and so, too, can the little flower that grows up to be a Woman. This is the hardest, most awful fact that I think I have ever had to face and I would give anything to make it untrue.

The cruelest words that ever stung my childhood pysche came from the lips not of some hideous boy but from a girl -- though I learned to fight with boys and defend myself, I had no defense against the verbal sucker-punch of a beautiful but thoughtless young lady. I never did understand why: we were total strangers. She could have asked me to carry all her books all the way home for the rest of the year and I surely and gladly would have. Why be so senseless, so mean?

And I remember a few years before that, being amazed when a school chum of mine, a guy whom I thought of as tough and cool, began to blubber and cry when a couple of girls from our school stole his hat and called him names.

4 comments:

Open Grove Claudia said...

I heard Bessel Van Der Kolk talk about this very topic. He believes one of the reasons women's brains are different from men's brains is the harsh interaction between females.

Human beings can be unbelievable cruel.

Janice Thomson said...

I have to agree little girls can be
mean, deceitful and vicious. I can't help but think they are what their environment dictates - I've often seen the mother's genes in a little girl's actions. I think in past history women have been suppressed, belittled and considered second rate citizens (and in some countries still are) that they have swung from one extreme to the other (as in Women's Lib) and truly don't know their place in society anymore - a reflection often seen in little girls nowadays. Ok I've rambled enough here.

Nadiyya said...

aaah oh yes! In my class in school we were four girls. One was the queen of the class, she chose two as her friends and picked on the fourth.

Eastcoastdweller said...

Janice, that makes sense -- and gives me hope for an end to rhis nightmare, once Women do fully find Their place, and no longer have to battle for it, either as Girls or as Women.

And that place is this: to be what They want and do what They want, fully equal in every way to men and even slightly superior.