However, I'm already looking forward to kissing and making up!

So, here goes my first salvo:

Reducing this phenomenon of women preferring female docs and men preferring male docs to choice is an unexamined position. If one's a female and just prefers female docs, one is living an unexamined life: at least in this sector. Our feelings are just additional data and should be treated as no more or less germane than other input. Yet, for many, feelings are sacrosanct, the holy cows that are allowed to plop their poop wherever they wish, for they're extra-extra special. Casting feelings as divine certainly obviates the need for excrutiating self-examination.

Here's an anecdote: I once had a Harvard Medical School-educated doctor as a student. She once came and wept before me. She told me how, when she was a resident serving at a tony hospital, some patients would articulate their disdain for her because she was black and they were white.

"My daily struggle at the end of each day," she said, "was to not step in front of the bus."

Now, those to the left of the KKK will feel compassion for this woman, but in this thread, there are folks who don't/can't/won't transfer this compassion/understanding to male docs who are trained to work with women and are comfy stating this without unpacking it. I truly do have compassion for people who don't want to unpack themselves. We are all Pandora Boxes. Every...single...one...of...us. There is no person who doesn't dutifully practice self-delusion.

She's in her Hell on Earth.

But there isn't a parent alive who hasn't risked their children's lives or some child's life.

Do you use your cell phone when your kids are in the car, thus immediately reducing your reaction time to that of a 75-year old and increasing four-fold the risk of an accident?

Do you ever use your cell phone when you kids aren't in the car, thus increasing the risk to other folks' kids?

Do you ever speed?

Drink booze?

Feed your kids food that compromises their health?

And so on.

As Capote's Holly GoLightly once observed: "Everyone likes to feel superior to someone else. It's just customary to present proof before taking the privilege."

Now, you get a kiss too. Here it is:

*KISS!*

I once had a column that gets the daily hits that Salon does, but I switched to writing for meat world mags (No, not porn!). Those mags give me all the work I want and more. Whenever I'm posting at Salon, I'm avoiding my work. But what I really want to do is write very few articles. I have a bunch of books under contract and my latest is on various bestseller lists and just won an award (Yay!).

However, I once queried Salon (with an article idea). They didn't respond.

Pity me.

Pity them.

Pity you.

I just visited your website. I love your work and your face and your smile! Your education is pretty snazzy too. A pretty face atop moxie can peel my adult sensibilities, which are carrot-skin thin anyway, and reveal me as the squealy 14-year that I forever am.

You're welcome, Pumpkin.

However, we might do battle tomorrow, even if we were cuddly today, and if we do, I'll still tender respect, albeit aggressive, to you.

There was a mob scene. People cluster to defend their comforts, as in "I'm more comfy with a woman doc poking in my crotch," which is a positive framing, but they're also defending their fears and, as I already noted, often unexamined fears. Men and women have more in common than most folks realize and woman and woman (and man and man) have less in common than most assume.

Nice rebuttal. Wouldn't it be swell if folks who disgreed like you and me made it to the airwaves instead of the shrieking heads who litter media (Joan Walsh being an exception)?

I can't deny that sexuality can't poison a gyno visit, but if that's a determining concern, will you ban lesbian docs from becoming gynos? Will lesbian nurses be kept out of the examination room?

And even if you limit it to women docs who aren't attracted to other women, you're still not free of encumbering factors. For example, projection often discomfits doctor/patient relationships. A woman doc is more likely to project into a woman patient, thus bleeding away the dispassion that serves analysis. No one is ever assured of objectivity. We roll the dice when we walk into every room, whether it's an examination room or an airport terminal.

However, it might not be for a week or so. I'm about to begin a tank-draining mini-book tour, which is a lot like campaigning: handshaking and nodding, nodding, nodding, but not enough nodding off in hotels.

Lev is already my pal. How funny is that in the wide, wide world? And yes, Lev is wicked smart and cool.

And you seem wicked cool too. So, expect an email this weekend or next.

"Thou shall not"?

Are you more comfy with the "I shall not" that so many employ, which hinges upon their feelings, which are, as I already delineated, unexamined data considered as definitive conclusions.

For example, a woman might say, "I shall not be attended by an attending gyno if he's a guy...'cause I'm more comfy with gals."

99 times out of 100 (I'm imagining this ratio, of course, but it's probably an underexaggeration.) this woman will die never having examined her holy feelings. But she'll die swaddled by other women who'd echoed her feelings. So, it'll be a swaddled life, but there's something to be said for removing those blankets and having a good, long look at something far more intimate than a vulva: the psyche.

Let me warn y'all: there's nothing as cold as a psychological speculum and there's no agent on Earth that can warm it.