I think it is pretty clear at this point that Rebecca Traister is "trolling" Salon and its readers, digging up tenditious statements on discussion forums and Z-list websites and sprinkling them with her own rather contentious material in order to stir up controversy and letters to the editor.

I encourage other Salon readers not to respond to these Traister articles until she gets back to doing what she's paid to: real journalism.

I'm afraid you're right, Anonymous person. This has become a sad game of Poke the Readers, Make Them Flame Traister, Count the Clicks and Letters. The level and degree of mutual contempt here is simply depressing.

I agree with the two posters above. This is taking on a trollish quality. Let's not rise to the bait any more.

Traister's aside that C. Baum may be a woman brings up an important point. Traister assumes that those who hate Dowd's book will probably be men, and that those men will of course be threatened by Dowd's criticism. It's a misguided assumption on both counts. Can't men -- or women -- disagree with Dowd without being threatened by her? Why does debate on gender politics always have to be described in terms of attacks, threats, and defense?

Agree with the above posters that quoting Amazon.com reviewers is gratuitous and on a site like Salon, cheap.

Dowd's book is a lightning rod for male hostility no matter where it's discussed; the twist here is that much if not most of the commentary I've read on the book appears to have been written by readers who read -- at most -- only the excerpts that appeared in the New York Times Magazine a couple of weekends ago. Otherwise, they might have noticed that:

a.) Dowd frequently writes tongue-in-cheek (may I introduce tongues into this argument?). Any reviewer, on Amazon or elsewhere, should look up "polemic" before writing a single word. And, you know, read the book. How many readers do you even understood that she labeled Hillary Clinton a (possibly unnecessary) "man" in the final chapter? I don't see anyone berating her for going all chauvinist on a feminist icon. Could this have something to do with illustrating the fungibility of gender roles?

b.) Dowd spends very little time on her own dating adventures and I must have missed the part in the book where she allegedly bemoans her lack of a husband. The most "damning" quotes about men are, in fact, made by men, and only in a mostly scientific (but still ironic) context involving the deterioration of the Y chromosome:

Are men necessary? I asked Dr. (Brian) Sykes.

"Clearly not," he replied.

Are men necessary? I asked British geneticist Steve Jones.

"You don't even need the sex slaves," (referring to an earlier quote by Norman Mailer) Dr. Jones assured me. "You just need their cells in a freezer. You'd have to have a very good electricity supply."

Some guys I know have been fretting for years that they may be rendered obsolete if women get biological and financial independence, learning how to reproduce and refinance without them.

Hello? Satire.

c.) Dowd clearly likes men very much. The book's title and subtitle should have been reversed, because "when sexes collide" is a more accurate indicator of its content. Dowd's aim isn't to dis the male race, but to point out the increasingly baffling problem of gender roles and relations. She holds no sacred cows, and all subjects: male, female, liberal, conservative, feminist, religious and so forth -- are open to her critical observation. The book is sloppily edited (I say that as an editor) but its observations (notice I didn't say "conclusions," because she leaves those to the reader) are mostly sound.

If she deflates an ego or two along the way, well, that says far more about the egos involved than about the book.

Its probably not journalism in the highest sense, but reporting on what the so-called "man on the street" thinks is indeed journalism.

It has deep roots, even if some think it is "cheap" or "demeaning" to the craft. It certainly appears that Rebecca is choosing the most ridiculous and brazen "posts" to various outlets as her fodder, without questioning whether the "sources" do indeed represent real people. In this sense, Rebecca is departing from journalistic tradition. She may indeed be baiting, but perhaps she does so in hopes that something worthwile is said by someone in the end.

This may be her intent, but it seems to me that starting from a position of vitriol or an obviously ludicrous strawman isn't the best way to go.

Maybe Rebecca would be better-off spending her time browsing for thoughtful responses to Maureen's book, rather than the shrill. Otherwise, some of us non-neanderthal men will have to start finding Dworkin-style feminists and posting their inanities ("all men are rapists") here to prove that some women are just as regressed. How about it, Rebecca? Truce?

...no authority on anthropology. If he (she?) were, he'd know that, unlike the silly Hollywood stereotypes of cavemen and woolly mammoths, the reality of hunter/gatherer societies is that women did most of the food-providing, not men. Women were the ones who gathered the plant-based foods, which are the majority of dietary staples in almost any society. The men went out and killed for meat, but meat was a small portion of what people ate. That is, until our modern society made factory farming a common thing, thus providing the bloated protein overkill we enjoy (along with hardened arteries, heart conditions, etc.)

Given that, I gotta say that if you're not interesting in bearing children...no, men are not particularly necessary. C. Raum clearly doesn't get that liking a man's company is a very different thing from his company being necessary.

Rich observes:

>>She may indeed be baiting, but perhaps she does so in hopes that something worthwile is said by someone in the end.

This may be her intent, but it seems to me that starting from a position of vitriol or an obviously ludicrous strawman isn't the best way to go.<<

Yes, well said, and I agree that there is, in the best of Traister's writing, an experiment with journalistic traditions and with voice that are at least interesting. My issue with her choosing to continue this particular topic, however, in this particular tone is that all ensuing discussion necessarily begins and ends at the most moronic levels. It's not even public discourse anymore, just unregulated splenetic emission.