Is the beauty myth good to men? It hurts them by teaching them how to avoid loving women. It prevents men from actually seeing women. It does not, contrary to its own professed ideology, stimulate and gratify sexual longing. In suggesting a vision in place of a woman, it has a numbing effect, reducing all senses but the visual, and impairing even that.

Obstacles, of course, are developmentally necessary: they teach kids strategy, patience, critical thinking, resilience and resourcefulness.

What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men?

The idea that women are innately gentle is a fantasy, and a historically recent one. Kali, the Hindu goddess of destruction, is depicted as wreathed in male human skulls; the cruel entertainments of the Romans drew audiences as female as they were male; Boudicca led her British troops bloodily into battle.

Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men's eyes when deciding what provokes it.

Women who are beautiful or who achieve beauty according to the imposed standards are rewarded; those who cannot or choose not to be beautiful are punished, economically and socially.

When women are subordinate by their culture, in being able to anticipate or think about pleasurable sex, it boosts dopamine, which is about confidence and assertiveness and motivation and drive and focus. So that to me, explained why for 5,000 years female sexuality has been targeted.