ISBN: 9789090387512
Publisher: Uitgeverij het Haantje
Published: 2 September 2024
Length: 368 pages, paperback
Price: € 23.00
The book · Dutch edition
Gender Rebels
Critical stories for brave young women
Gender Rebels is the first feminist book for girls and mothers to take on every taboo of our time. Striking essays examine online madness and self-diagnosis, the confusion surrounding biological sex ("choose your own sex"), and the oppression of women in Islam.
Young experts explain how the online world of fanfiction, girls and transgender content fits together, and how peer judgement feeds stress and gender confusion. Detransitioners and queer women tell their stories — including accounts of violence by men who identify as trans.
The English edition, Rebel Girls, will be published in 2026 by Spinifex Press.
Forty contributors
Forty girls and women from the Netherlands and abroad contributed to this anthology. Ten young women share their personal experiences — and were photographed for the book. Among the experts:
Liesbeth Woertman
Psychologist — on the self-image and embodiment of young women.
Jolande Withuis
Biographer and sociologist — on the legacy of feminism.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Political scientist — on the oppression of women in a religious setting.
Riittakerttu Kaltiala
Finnish psychiatrist — on the surge of adolescent girls in gender services.
Femke Lakerveld
Chair of Vrij Links — on the erosion of progressive values on the political left.
Detransitioners
Young women undoing their transition — speaking for the first time about what they have lost.
What the book covers
Online madness
Fanfiction, TikTok trends, self-diagnosis and the way girls measure themselves against others — and find themselves wanting.
Biological confusion
"Choose your own sex" — what that means for a growing girl who is still learning to know her own body.
Detransition
Women who walk back their transition explain what led them there, and what has turned out to be irreversible.
Women and religion
The oppression of women in Islam — a subject progressive Netherlands would rather not discuss.
Men in women's spaces
Men who identify as trans and gain access to women's prisons, changing rooms and sport — and the violence that follows.
Positive sexuality
Love for yourself and your female body as the foundation of a healthy sex life.
Order Gender Rebels
€ 23.00 — via VoorzijSybilla Claus
Anthropologist, journalist and author. Author of Gender Rebels (2024) and the upcoming Rebel Girls (Spinifex, 2026).
Published by Uitgeverij 't Haantje · © Sybilla Claus