I just found this statement a bit funny and felt like I had to comment on it. I am pretty sure that men and women have been able to be “just friends” for longer than just recently, and rather believe that cross-gender friendships are more common today because society has changed, not because “boys and girls do a better job” at not feeling the need to romantically connect. I believe, or I at least hope, that it is due to our society becoming more accepting in regards to allowing boys and girls to engage in activities that have stereotypically been labeled as female or male, and that we are starting to not care so much about where you are a girl or a boy. We like the same things and we are equally as capable of doing them, regardless of gender! Furthermore, romantic attachment could just as well develop between two people of the same gender.

This infuriates me a lot, and especially the “Get us something to eat. Go fetch a Coke." part of this passage caught my attention, as it reminds me of a study conducted in a Swedish kindergarten a couple of years ago. The researcher, who focused on the construction of gender, noticed how the teachers, when it was time for lunch, seated the children according to their gender: boy, girl, boy, girl etc. The teachers later explained that they did this in order for the lunch time to not be as rowdy, as the girls, who tended to be more calm, would keep the boys in check. During lunch, a boy screamed something the teachers could not comprehend, but the girl next to him quickly knew what he wanted: “He wants the ketchup”. Consequently, the girls are praised for interpreting, being organized, helpful and caring. Another experiment that I read about talks shows how girls tend to take responsibility and do most of the work during group projects. As seen here in the text, boys continue to expect girls to be their servers and caregivers. This has to stop! I do not think many teachers realize how small things such as seating may, in the long run, contribute to gender inequalities. I often hear people saying that women choose to become e.g., nurses or caregivers (with bad pay, but that is a discussion for another time) because they are inherently more nurturing. I do not believe it to be the whole truth. Girls are taught to do it, and boys would benefit from such a lesson too.

Embrace comprehensive sex education! Being from Sweden, I have always just taken sex education in school for granted. When I went to school, all schools were obligated by law to teach about what was called “sex and co-living”, in 2022, the governing documents were updated and sex education now goes under the name “sexuality, consent and relationships”. The nations "abstinence only until marriage" (almost) does not exist at all in Sweden, and the legal age to have sex is 15, but that is not why the swedish education system values comprehensive sex education, rather we believe it is important to provide students with the opportunity to reflect on topics of identity, sexuality, gender patterns, relationships and equality from several different perspectives. Teaching about sexuality, consent and relationships from multiple perspectives can provide a comprehensive picture of what sexuality and relationships can look like. It may be about a historical perspective on relationships or expectations of girls and boys. It can also be about how different religions relate to issues of sexuality and relationships. Further perspectives can be how norms around gender and relationships are expressed in advertising images and the media or what the legislation around these issues looks like in Sweden today. I personally believe this has a positive impact on students' self-esteem and self-worth, as well as that it provides them with the tools they need to make judicious decisions regarding sex.