Why So Much Changes When She Makes The Move

Lust is not gender-based. Until recently, however, men and women had to follow different manuals. Both macho brags and mothers’ dire warnings pointed to the same norm: The male had to go out and seduce while the female waited for the kiss of true love. With birth control iffy and abortions illegal, only marital sex got a thumbs-up, which was for the grim purpose of filling up the world. Anything else was taboo and came with statutory warnings.

Cavemen had been hitting women on the head with their clubs and dragging them into caves for millennia, we were told. The trad romance tableau shows boy chasing girl. Him in hot pursuit and her primly looking for the exit. Puberty put men firmly in the animal kingdom even as women grew a halo and were handed harps. A boudoir contained at any given moment a randy bull and a doe caught in a car’s headlights. For a long, long time, the ball was always in his court.