These stories are related, and not just by their association with Quillette. First, from Claire Lehmann herself: Three false narratives about women and sex. The final paras:
Women are not passive sexual beings, nor are they sexless, and nor are they without predatory impulses themselves. The human condition is complicated, and sexuality in particular can be a Pandora’s box of contradictions. (We have thousands of years of art and culture reflecting this fact.)
Yet the narratives I have broadly sketched are currently ossifying into dogma because we are too scared to challenge them. Falsehoods are going unchallenged because nobody wants to be seen as a prude, nobody wants to be seen as a “victim blamer” and nobody wants to be seen as anti-feminist.
But we are not doing women, and young women in particular, any favours if we fail to speak honestly about sex. The fact is that young people are more confused than ever. Clearly, the messages we are sending them are not providing them with much clarity, confidence, or empowerment.
This is from Quillette itself: The Gathering Resistance to the Stigmatisation of Masculinity. The final para.
Courage, risk-taking, persistence, strength, and stoicism are normal characteristics of young male development. Instead of trying to re-engineer human nature, educators should acknowledge that such traits and proclivities are of value to all children, and that they are most important to the process by which young boys become men.
My granddaughters have all immediately taken to playing with dolls. My grandsons immediately took an interest in building sites and play with toy trucks as their absolutely first preference. No one guided them that way. That is just how they are. These traits are inbuilt, just as is female modesty, Germaine Greer notwithstanding.
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