The fairer sex?

SIR – I found it rather charming, if very rose-tinted, that feminists on social media should be aghast at the prospect of Lord of the Flies being re-filmed with an all-female cast (report, September 1).

It is hard to disagree that masculinity can be “toxic”, as reported. But it was a girl who bullied one of my pre-teen daughters at school for her pocket money; it was only the girls who bullied my partner as a teenager, for being naturally slimmer than they were; and it was exclusively the women in an adult workforce who refused to speak to another female friend of mine as their manager, when she tried to implement their organisation’s holiday policy.

Personally, I can’t help but think that a rewrite of William Golding’s story with an all-female cast might be illuminating – not least for anyone in denial that women alone can be just as horrid to each other as men. Jeremy Thorn

Fairburn, North Yorkshire