I was shocked to read the piece by Jude Bentham on her twin daughters (Girls can be pirates too, Family, 5 December). I could not believe that this kind of discrimination was still with us – I am 71, and in my childhood I liked being the prince with the sword better than the princess. My parents didn’t mind. It didn’t make me a tomboy; I was afraid of climbing trees. In the 1960s, I thought it was time that women should do something other than train to be a secretary, was liberated by the pill to have a sex life – even though we had to wear a ring on our left hand, one which went round the female students at college. But if you’d told me that in 2015 I’d be reading about women trying to foist princess crowns on three-year-olds and cards being gender-selected, I’d have been flabbergasted. I thought that the fight was about ageism now, but I see I am wrong.
Bella D’Arcy Reed
Little Totham, Essex
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