War on boys, war on girls,

....or war on both? It's popular in some areas to complain about how boys are hurt by eliminating playgrounds, typically feminine worship services, school formats, and so on. It's popular in others to complain about how girls don't get a fair shake in various areas.

Me? I'm pretty sure that our culture wages war on both. Boys are told that they've got to go to college whether they've got the aptitude or desire or not--and end up in debt and without the mechanic's certification they could have really used. Girls are told to get rid of their dolls and forget about cooking or sewing, and get out there on the basketball court. Boys are told to eschew their desire to defend others--the instigator and the victim of a fight get punished equally, after all. Girls are told to get their master's degree--wait until their career is started and their fertility is gone to try and meet someone and start a family. "Make sure you've got your 40 credits for Social Security!"

Is it any surprise that, having been excluded from the ordinary passtimes of boyhood and girlhood, that boys and girls tend to put their sex on display in an inappropriate way? Is the sports fixation of young men, and the immodesty of young women, simply an attempt to tell the world "I am man" or "I am woman" when all other ways of identification have been denied them?

It's probably an over-simplification, but I don't know that we can over-emphasize Biblical masculinity and femininity.