Must not suggest that women have different characteristics

Veteran literary figure Gay Talese dared to suggest that men and women can have different interests and abilities.  The feminists are raging

Verandah Porche didn’t grasp the full significance of what she had done until later.

At the time, sitting in an auditorium at Boston University (BU) at the Power of Narrative conference, she simply felt curious about something the keynote speaker, writer Gay Talese, seemed to have left out. Talese regaled the roughly 550 attendees with tales of his childhood and reporting tips

Then Talese took questions from the audience. Porche’s question was first.  “In addition to Nora Ephron, who are the women who write who have inspired you most?” she asked.

“I’d say Mary McCarthy was one,” Talese began. His voice tapered off, and then he paused.  “Of my generation…” A 12-second pause. “None. I’ll tell you why.”

Then Talese dug the hole out of which he’d spend days trying to climb. At first, he clearly confined his answer to the past, saying when he was young, women tended not to do the kind of journalism that interested him. But then he did something my former journalism professor would have slashed in red pen: He shifted tenses.

“I think women, educated women, writerly women don’t want to—or do not feel comfortable dealing with strangers, or people that I’m attracted to, sort of offbeat characters,” he said. “I didn’t know any women journalists that I loved.”

SOURCE