Masculinity and femininity

Do you find that by nature boys and girls have different interests?

I do. At one time I thought that interests were deter­mined by custom and training. The girls washed up and made the beds while the boys were not expected to do any­thing in the house. That was the vogue when I was a boy. Boys tinkered with bicycles; girls never did. Girls sewed and knitted while their brothers played marbles. I thought that when both sexes had freedom these differences would disappear. I was wrong.

Summerhill boys mend bikes, tinker with their radio sets, make things in the workshop—guns, swords, boats, planes, boxes. Seldom have we a girl who enters the work­shop; seldom a bigger boy who attends a sewing class. Both sexes will make pots in the pottery and beaten brass trays in the metal shop. There is nothing much to differentiate between them in lessons, yet I could count on one hand the number of girls who liked mathematics. A few like algebra but most girls shy away from geometry.

Both sexes like dancing, painting, acting, communal games. Many boys construct tree huts; some girls do, too. Boys dig holes and connect them by underground passages; girls never do. Freedom does not alter the innate predilec­tion of the sexes.

MENSTRUATION

When should I tell my daughter about periods?

A goodish time before they are due to start. I have known girls who got into a panic, and thought they were bleeding to death.

CIRCUMCISION

I am not Jewish, but many of my gentile friends have their infant sons circumcised. Should I follow their example?

Why? On medical grounds? Whatever its history may be, circumcision is a symbolic castration. The rite is meant to weaken a child’s sex; the talk about prevention of veneral disease is pure rationalization.

Is there any evidence that the uncircumcised suffer more from venereal disease than the circumcised? Circum­cision is a cruel and barbarous custom which no humane parents should tolerate. Savages mutilate their faces; some put rings through their nostrils; and we, the superior races, smile at their childishness. Are we less savage when we mutilate a baby’s penis?

So, my dear questioner, I advise you not to be influ­enced by what the neighbors think, or for that matter, by what the specialists say. Any mutilation brings shame and inferiority. Men who lost an eye or a limb in war usually suffer from it great sense of embarrassment. As an extreme, imagine the feelings of a man in a nudist camp wearing a truss. Even dental plates are a source of shame to many people. Ihave more than once had a circumcised pupil who refused to undress in front of the other boys. I am con­vinced that unconsciously a young circumcised man may feel that he has lost something, been deprived of something very important.

No, do not do anything to your baby boy that will make him feel less of a man later on in life.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16