Ann Oakley on the psychology of the academic male

From her wonderful novel Over Heads, pg 13:

Like most academic men, he regarded equal opportunities and gender as something of a turn-off. But one wasn’t supposed to say so. Gone were the days when one could happily ridicule women for being interested in themselves, confident of not getting the rejoinder that in a patriarchal world that’s only what men have been for aeons. No, now you had to pretend to be on their side. Of course, on another level, there was a considerable incentive to do this, because you wanted women to like you. The psychology of it was odd, because fi you liked them and they liked you, then you couldn’t help but see they had a point in going on about gender.

Thanks to Roger Burrows for the recommendation. One of a number of books I’ve started reading after his keynote at the Accelerated Academy.