The gender gap

In great danger of upsetting at least my female readers I have to tell you of a story in the papers today, about a school who have resorted to insisting that their female pupils must come to school in trousers. The reason is that the girls have ignored the schools advice that skirts were getting too short and the sight of their underwear was becoming embarrassing to teachers and distracting for the boys.
We are in strange times.
The feminists are determined to give women and girls their right to wear what ever they want (or don't want) so long as it's within the law. Their claim is that irrespective of the flesh revealed men/boys have no right to become in anyway effected and certainly not aroused.
Quite right. Men and women for that matter, should always be in control of themselves and in theory be able to contest any sort of advance made on them with a terse "non"!!
But of course lurking below the surface of every human being is their primeval state, a large part of which is controlled by the sexual urge to procreate. The primates have all kinds of rituals to signify their acceptance of each other, the timing of which is made even clearer by chemical derived odours for each potential mate to recognise and with mankind's sociological persuasion, we have created a set of criteria to help society to manage the inevitable sexual attraction between men and women.
Having decided that monogamy is the best way to ensue that the offspring, who have a long gestation period followed by a very long child rearing period, that both the woman and the child need protection, rules of behaviour . Rules were in place, depending on which end of the social structure you came from, and Society was the guardian, particularly for the younger members of society, to ensure, by observation and comment,that these rules were embraced as far as possible.
Part of the strict rule base was the dress and the demeanour of the boys and girls toward each other. Respect was uppermost and the formality which went on in the middle and upper classes was epitomised by the painful, drawn out dialogue in Jane Austen's characters.
Today we have gone full circle.
Perhaps the pill, perhaps abortion has meant that there is little downside to a romp in bed. Perhaps it is the badge of 'motherhood' which childbirth initially brings to a poorly educated girl, knowing she has the Welfare State to fall back on, but there is no doubt young women and young girls flaunt their sexuality these days in a way which was unheard of outside prostitution.
The claim that it is their "human rights" which are at stake if they are inhibited in anyway and that it is for men to handle the provocation since it is argued that no sexual intent is intended.
It's a strange thing this question of flesh and its effect. In Victorian days the sight of part of a woman's bosom, even an ankle was enough to drive the men to distraction, and of course the cleavage in those dresses were an architectural masterpiece of peek a boo engineering.
Today, women in all walks of life are keen to show of their bodies. It comes in the form of the young intoxicated lass who stumbles down the street with everything flashing to the female athlete who run in little more than a bikini with a logo and a number on. I'm no prude but why do the men feel happy in a pair of baggy running shorts and a full vest whilst the women seem to need to reveal more and more each year.

In the case of the athlete it's not sexual but it is about their needing feel attractive but attractive to who and why. The women in tennis are lovely but it seems as much a fashion show as it does a game.  When you see the men turn up looking as if they've just crawled out of the washing machine unshaven and unkept why is there such a discrepancy. The girls wishing to be "seen"in a certain way and the men apparently feeling good, irrespective of how they look ?