...tend to think that men are "just like women," only strangely uptight about it.

This is very lucky for men, most of whom would otherwise never get laid.

I enjoy romance novels, for example, for just that reason, because there's a vast reservoir out there of perfectly great escapist lesbian literature masquerading as heterosexual, but with *really* stone butch leading "men."

I disagree, however, about men's characterisation of women, most of which is laughably two-dimensional and shallow. Every women I know thinks that Molly Bloom's last soliloquy in Joyce's Ulysses is fatuous masculine self-delusion and inadvertently hilarious, whereas many men think it's sexy, so titillating that those very lines got the book banned in Boston.

Cheers,

Puddin'
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"...and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

It's not for nothing that Ulysses is often seen as a "seminal" literary work. Putz.

I haven't read it, but the "fart" comment in the "article" text pretty much ensured that it's on the large list of things I rather have a root canal than read.

Frankenstein, on the other hand, is amongst the first SF/F novels ever written by a woman, and arguably the first transsexual novel as well, since Victor Frankenstein's real sin was to attempt to wrest a woman's power to bring forth new life away from her using the sterile tools of science, but to so distance himself from his monstrous "child" that he refuses to even name him, refuses the mother's love and care which might have saved him.

It's very telling, and what makes this book a "woman's story," that the "monster" falls into deep and suicidal depression at the end of the story and flees into the wasteland, rather than conveniently explode into blazing gobbets of flesh, as is the preferred male model for resolution in these affairs.

There's a vast industry and literary legacy grown up from Mary Shelley's creation, and it never hurts for women to be reminded of it from time to time.

Cheers,

Puddin'
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The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite...
--- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, spoken by Frankenstein's Monster

I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone?
--- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, spoken by Frankenstein's Monster

If you'll pardon the inference, since in this context I don't know what gender you favour, my memory of names and relationships, even in books, is not at all exceptional among women, and my grandmother on my father's side had a memory for relationships that astounded me. She was from the Texas panhandle country, and my grandfather (from Oklahoma) once saw a car at a gas station in southern California with Texas plates and walked up to the woman and said, "You're from Texas, right? My wife thinks she's related to you."

Of course she hadn't said any such thing, but between them, those two women held enough genealogical data that they discovered within a few moments that they were, in fact, related. Of course, we're *all* of us related, if you go far enough back, but few of us, in this time of nuclear families, know enough about our ancestors to make the connections. She knew. As it turns out, she was also related to Lyndon Johnson, the former President, and I have a cousin who used to wear cousin Johnson's cast off shirts. They were monogrammed, so he used to spend hours picking out the embroidery thread, until he became President, when he decided to leave it where it was. I know this, because I met him once, and he took the trouble to point it out.

I'm sure most men have experienced the frustration involved in arguing with one's significant female other, in which the woman can tell you *exactly* what was said three years ago, what she was wearing, and what you did, you dirty dog. The poor fellow is lucky if he remembers that they were married then, much less what went on, or what she *had* on. It's that corpus callosum thingie, I'm sure.

Cheers,

Puddin'