Lip Service: The Truth About Women's Darker Side in Love, Sex, and Friendship

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, and the author of Kurlek, Margaret Laurence: The
Long Journey Home, and As Though Life Mattered: Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Toronto Life magazines, challenges this deeply rooted myth with
arguments that confront the darker side of women’s behavior. Her goal
is to free women from typecasting and encourage more honest assessments.
Her conclusion, which is based on academic research and on numerous
interviews with North American men and women, is that “female moral
superiority is a myth that keeps women strangers to themselves, judges
of other women, and contemptuous of or fearful toward men. Women are, in
fact, capable of the full range of human emotions and actions.”

The latter truism, that women experience the full range of human
emotions and actions, is fairly obvious. As for the attack on the myth
of female moral superiority, Fillion ignores or downplays the effects on
men and women of cultural conditioning, not to mention hormones. Stand
near any primary school and watch the kids coming out: girls emerge
talking with other girls; boys tumble out punching and wrestling with
other boys.

Lip Service is lively journalism, argued with enthusiasm, panache, and
a great many anecdotes. Fillion’s 12-page bibliography enables readers
to pursue debatable conclusions at their leisure.