Said to be from the north of England, your agrarian aphorism for the day is “Old enough to bleed, old enough to butcher.” Referring, of course, to the idea that a woman who is old enough to menstruate is old enough to have sex.

There aren’t enough fingers and toes to enumerate all the ways in which that aphorism strikes modern sensibilities as politically incorrect. But this sex blog is on record as being, at least, concerned by the fact that our society attempts to condemn sexually adult young people to years of sexless frustration. It’s worth remembering that this attempt is not universal, nor even particularly common, across a greater spectrum of human societies.