BTW, one night’s viewing of TV provides incredible evidence of what you say regarding our culture, as we are offered one effeminate hero after another, undistinguishable from most women even in their dress, many of them lawyers, who ‘guard’ our honor without wit and attract women no self-respecting man would ever consider.

The only “novel” I read in the last 38 years was Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park (far superior to the movie). I have read a lot of “science fiction” working in the Defense Department!

[I loved GP the movie! Classic. Check my mention of it in “Vanilla Pie-in-the-Sky with Diamonds.”]

Regarding columnists, If the first paragraph makes sense, I’ll read the last. If that makes sense, I might read the middle stuff. Dipshittery is not determined by the mass of No. 23.

An interesting aside regarding “planned parenthood” here. In humans, the ratio of males to females is 1.05, in quadrupeds the ratio is reversed. The ratio of mass between X and Y in No. 23 is 1.03. The gravidy of this observation may be accelerating! ….. I have just been cuffed in the back of my head with a rolled up copy of American Rifleman!

In conclusion, dipshittery aside, yes, a reader regardless of sex can usually sense whether the writer is male or female depending on the apparent priorities of the author.

Have a swell day!

“Every summer there’s a new trend that makes our dicks shrivel so far into our bodies, it looks like we have two belly buttons.”

I forbear to quote the author’s long, admittedly virtuosic, passage about toilet paper. (Actually I’m rather sympathetic to the fellow who wrote in this screed’s combox: “This article was a waste of time. The writer belongs in Maxim or some other magazine dedicated to horny young men.” This comment’s accuracy so impressed me that I immediately clicked on the “Like” button.)

Oh yes, and just in case you thought that the female contributors were any better, the website’s agony aunt – one Delphina Boncompagni Ludovisi – has titled her latest effort: “Nympho Home-Wrecker, Jilted Leg-Breaker, and Lesbian Vagina-Inspector.” Charming, n’est-ce pas?

Not only is this (to quote a phrase that you, Ilana, have coined) The Age Of The Idiot, it’s also The Age Of The Eternal Pubescent.

Hey – what about Saint Ayn? Actually, I read her essays (cogent), but no novels other than Anthem (weird). Frankly, Fountainhead’s “love story” was rather bizarre…

As for scientist/engineer women – there are many whom I admire technically but the Nerdettes tend to have the seductivness/sexuality of a doorknob …. but the other end of the scale – I’d want to either shoot myself or my mate if I found myself in a relationship with a complete ditzy dingbat.

A lot of nerds seem to have been happy with social workers (I was), nurses, and “professionals” in areas that involve a combination of compassion and competence.

And I think Sean did quite well with a very good writer and logical thinker!

[Myron, you know “nutting.” If I tell Sean about a book- or column topic, he gives me a list of logical pitfalls I should avoid. LIKE I NEED HIS INSTRUCTION! I adore my husband—and admire his brilliance—but he still instructs me how to do my job.]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/quiz/2011/jun/02/naipaul-test-author-s-sex-quiz

Of course I also spare myself the worst forms of male proletkult. It’s great to be able to boast, aged 49, that one has never finished reading a single screed by (a) Roddy Doyle, (b) Irvine Welsh, or (c) the late unlamented Frank McCourt, surely the greatest Anglophone liar since Alger Hiss.