People reacted with derision – loud and long – when American vice president Mike Pence said he refused to have dinner alone with any woman other than his wife. Now it turns out that far from being an aberration, he has company.

A recent survey by The New York Times discovered that the majority of Americans were cautious about having dinner or a drink with a member of the opposite sex on his/her own. And substantial minorities also felt iffy about driving together, having a work meeting or going for lunch. In both their private and professional spheres, one-on-one meetings between people with differently configured genitals were very much considered a fraught and perilous undertaking. This is enraging on multiple levels.

Firstly, I suspect that, far from being solely the preserve of the kind of maniacal, narrow-minded Christianity in which the US and its current administration specialise, the results would be exactly the same here too.

Lucy Mangan is all for platonic friendships: “Men and women can be left alone together”