Men have been loved for their astonishing initiative: embarking on wide oceans, starting a farm in rocky country from scratch, imagining a new business, doing it skillfully, working with beginnings, doing what has never been done. Young Viking men sometimes trained themselves by walking on the ends of the oars while the rowers continued rowing. Women, until recent times, have not been praised for their activity. They have been asked for centuries to live in an enforced passivity, demanded of them by monks, doctors, philosophers, moralists, theologians, and judges. Women are coming out into
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