The Orwell referencences all through this have been good for me in a theoretial way but not really hot home, I've appreciated them but not felt them.
Here we have our NEWS outlets - the sources that we rely on to tell us the truth - LYING to our faces and expecting us to go along with it.This is like reporting that day is night or up is down with a straight face and expecting us to ignore the evidence of our own eyes.
THIS is what girls in schools and in guides and so on are being expected to do - young girls told that boys are girls, that men are women, they can SEE, they know what's going on, and they are told they have to collude in this lie or they will be in trouble - sometimes it's hinted that this trouble will be with the police.
What are we teaching our daughters here? This secrecy. This pretending, this dishonesty. That she must PRETEND and treat anyone like this just like a woman - that they ARE a woman. We women and girls know that other women are almost certain to be MUCH safer than men. Now we tell them this is a woman. If they don't seek refuge from scary men with someone who looks like this but has, what, a dress on (they want to be "read" as female) then they are bigots?
Make no mistake that undermining girls and womens safety is a BIG driver here. The men who want into our stuff, especially stuff where girls are. HOW is it not OBVIOUS that loads of them will be creepy perverts and we've told girls NO you must not complainyou must not say anything this is a "nice lady" who you can trust. And not that we teach kids to trust everyone but let's be honest most know to go to a "nice lady" if anything happens, right? This is an attempt to remove the "right" of women to have girls trust them, it's sexist thatmen shouldn't be trusted just the same. I haven't articulated this very well probably.