Women and Children

I’ve noticed in the coverage of the genocide in Gaza, more recently, how “women and children” continue to be highlighted together, in the description of the violence. Women and children, there’s a ring of innocence to the pairing, which is used to emphasise the brutality of the attacks. Literarily, it is a work by contrast. Innocence and Violence, Victimhood and Oppression. But what of male bodies? I suppose there’s a way where, culturally, we continue to assign more agency, and thus less innocence to men, so they are not victims but casualties. In news coverage, it is as though there is a hierarchy of victimhood. The best death is the cleanest, most unjust death, to the purest subject. Can we mourn, say, political agents? Or just because they are involved in activism, and they are not passive, that makes them less ideal victims? We continue to place women in that detached, apathetic, category. They are still damsels, they not only need saving, but are worthy of saving, like a child, who is pure, who understands nothing and is politically removed from the violence around itself. We still have the 19th-century angelic female ideal very much present in our culture and exacerbated by our mediatic circus, always in search of the most sensationalized framework.

We should mourn because they are being attacked; we should fight for them, not because they are purely innocent, but because they are human and their rights must be protected. Do not infantilize victimhood.