I agree with Gaby Hinsliff (I was puzzled by younger women’s reaction to Barbie. It turned out Gen Z men held the answer, 2 February) that “all those well-meaning school assemblies on toxic masculinity” aimed at boys don’t work. How can they? Relationship and sex education lessons have a role, but occasional non-examined sessions can never drown out the drip-drip of misogyny that boys get every day; they cannot counter the narrative boys are exposed to when they go back to their lessons, where women are more or less invisible in every part of the curriculum.
Sexual harassment happens because boys believe they are superior to girls. This is not an attitude they are born with; it is one they learn. Studying a diet of Dickens, Orwell, Steinbeck and Shakespeare leaves both boys and girls with no positive female role models, no examples of female literary genius, and no opportunity to discuss a female perspective of the world.
