8 hours ago
Miranda July, the problem with purity culture, and why a professor of fascism left the US
Top of the weekend to you all. It's all a bit grim out there – even State of Origin is struggling to hit its usual high notes. Here's the pick of what I've been reading to tune out.
The US 'true love waits' movement was a phenomenon in the 1990s, inspiring Bill Clinton to spend tens of millions funding abstinence-only sex education. George W Bush doubled down, despite mounting evidence it didn't reduce teen sexual activity.
Matt (not his real name), who grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household of that time and was 'terrified' by the idea of sexual sin, had not had a relationship nor a sexual partner by his 40th birthday. He vented his frustration online. And of course, he was offered a solution: the Purity Culture Dropout Program.
Policy failure? Seventeen US states still offer abstinence-only sex ed – and they have higher-than-average teen pregnancy rates.
How long will it take to read: Ten minutes.
Meanwhile, Tinder is trialling a height filter in some markets and the dating app's shorter in stature men are feeling aggrieved (though the app said profiles that don't match the selected height criteria will not be blocked outright).
Discrimination, or a vital tool to help women satisfy an 'evolutionary drive' to find a taller partner? Leah Harper investigates.
Keywords: According to the dating app Badoo, the top word in profiles for men to get matches is '6ft' – for women, it is 'love'.
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
The US history professor Marci Shore, her husband and a colleague made headlines last month with what in ordinary times would be an innocuous move from Yale to the University of Toronto. Part of her reasoning – a fear the US is 'headed to civil war'.
Shore argues Donald Trump has an approach to politics 'in which all of the ugliness is right on the surface'. But, in conversation with Jonathan Freedland, she offers the world the possibility of optimism.
'Without a distinction between truth and lies, there is no grounding for a distinction between good and evil.'
How long will it take to read: Five minutes.
Further reading: How Trump is propelling the US towards authoritarianism at an 'alarming speed'.
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Studies suggest cats and dogs are capable of reading human emotions. From not recognising what different cat miaows mean to assuming a dog who has just torn up a cushion feels guilt (rather than fear at their human's reaction), turns out we're not as advanced as our furry friends.
Sam Pyrah – owner of Morris, her nomination for best dog in the world – asks the experts how we can be better.
How long will it take to read: Ten minutes.
Further reading: The raccoons that conquered a German city.
In her hit novel All Fours, Miranda July's heroine blows up her life after an encounter with a young dancer on a road trip. July herself separated from her husband two years before the book's publication and has a child roughly the same age as the narrator's.
So is All Fours real life, or just fantasy? As Zoe Williams discovers, even July's closest friends are fuzzy on the detail. Says the author of its creation: 'The joy of it, for me, was writing a thing I hadn't seen written about sex.'
Sample reaction: One woman who nearly divorced her husband after reading it said: 'I think what I felt, which I think is what a lot of us feel, is permission to be undone.'
How long will it take to read: Seven minutes.
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