“Young testosterone has gusted into my home”
These events have strengthened my conviction that gender — whether it’s in the genes, socially conditioned, learned behaviour or a mix of all these and something else besides — exceeds the limits of the purely anatomical.
Right now, if I look through the hall to the sitting-room, I can see a pair of giant feet hanging sockless over the arm of the sofa: my son, back from a study year abroad, snoozing off his jet lag. From outside come the sounds of frenzied barking and shotgun rounds of laughter: my daughter’s boyfriend, recently acquired, is swinging in demented loops on the long-forgotten tree-swing, while the dog runs in crazed circles beneath him.
