In the modern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people's lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, g… - Margaret Mead

If a society insists that warfare is the major occupation for the male sex, it is therefore insisting that all male children display bravery and pugnacity. Even if the insistence upon the differential bravery of men and women is not made articulate, the difference in occupation makes this point implicitly. When, however, a society goes further and defines men as brave and women as timorous, when men are forbidden to show fear and women are indulged in the most flagrant display of fear, a more explicit element enters in. Originally two variations of human temperament, a hatred of fear or willingness to display fear, they have been socially translated into inalienable aspects of the personalities of the two sexes. And to that defined sex-personality every child will be educated, if a boy, to suppress fear, if a girl, to show it.

Tutte le discussioni sullo stato delle donne, sul carattere e il temperamento delle donne, sulla sottomissione o l’emancipazione delle donne, fanno perdere di vista il fatto fondamentale, e cioè che le parti dei due sessi sono concepite secondo la trama culturale che sta alla base dei rapporti umani e che il fanciullo che cresce è modellato, altrettanto inesorabilmente comeLa fanciulla, secondo un canone particolare e ben definito.

For the very first time the young are seeing history being made before it is censored by their elders.