How Not To Be a Boy

by Robert Webb

Seven of us from that year of Coningsby Junior School have passed our eleven-plus. Or to put it another way, seven out of about thirty of us have managed to attain a sufficiently high score in a random quiz based on a meaningless version of an IQ test which in 1984 had already been discredited for over twenty years.

The Persil is the political. There are several steps to male enlightenment if he aims for equality of unpaid domestic labour. At first, he puts a wash on and expects a medal. When the medal doesn’t appear, he may give up. There again, if he has steel in his heart, he may try again. This time he puts a wash on and then takes the clothes out. He may even attempt to dry them. Still no medal. Finally, and this only took me five years, he may eventually put a wash on, dry the clothes, fold them up and put them away.