Contrary to this piece's subtitle, actually, I *can* dismiss Maureen Dowd--precisely because she is inflammatory and she is generally satisfied with being exclusively that. Traister says, "Dowd has clearly touched a nerve. And you only touch a nerve by telling a truth."

Well, pardon me, but what kind of bullshit is that? Sometimes you touch a nerve because the flesh has been scraped off by having the same old, rusty untruth scraped over it again and again. For instance, "Sex and the City" sociology jangles my nerves not because it's true, but because I'm so appalled at the notion of having complicated lives reduced to anything so facile that even Sarah Jessica Parker can narrate it.

When Salon runs "the trouble with feminism" (or "the trouble with men", or "the trouble with guys who don't wanna date me") pieces like this, I have to remind myself that this is the same magazine where Joan Walsh printed her "Actually, I do want to run the world, and what of it?" column in the wake of the NYT Magazine's piece on women opting out of careers. This magazine is capable of seeing through trend pieces and the memoirs of a narrow stratum of women. So how'd this pointless assemblage of quotations and would-be ahas get through again?

I got tired of her writing a long time ago. Can't Salon get someone else to write these "why don't I have a man?" articles?

Are men necessary? No more than women are. Is that facile? No more than Traister's column or Dowd's article.

I haven't read the book, yet or perhaps ever. But I know that in my neighborhood, teetering into the chaos of poverty and true need, as Lear calls it, the question is not merely facile, but impertinent, silly, idiotic. My recommendation to Traister, Dowd, and all the hoity toity cloud-top walkers also comes from Lear: "Take physic, pomp. / Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, / That thou mayest shake the superflux to them."

There is little so unattractive as a person wondering obsessively (enough to write a book) about why they can't find a partner. When men do it, they are labeled "nice guys" or "creepy" or worse and get taken advantage of by almost every woman they encounter. When women do it, they get Pulitzers.

How incredibly self-absorbed does a person have to be to attribute their lack of success in love with a grand sociological movement that is unfairly punishing them? Maybe you can't get a boyfriend because you're so neurotic and self-centered as to think books like these have merit in the marketplace of ideas. Passing off your own fears of intimacy and dependence on another as bold social commentary and even science! Give me a break.

The prize for most inane statement about gender politics in memory has to go to Dowd's claim--made in her Times piece last week--that she would be more popular with men if she were a maid instead of a political columnist.

Think about that for a minute. Refer to, if it helps, the list of men she's dated, or who have pursued her, that appears in every article about her. Look at her picture. Read the anecdotes about her lifestyle. Picture, in contrast, the likely life circumstances of a maid today.

Oh, yes, you can dismiss Maureen Dowd's views on dating.

I always appreciate Rebecca Traister's courage in tackling the important issues of our times.

First, and for the record, let me note that not only am I myself single but I have never really been able to maintain successful relationships with women for very long. This is not because I harbor any animosity toward women in general, it's just that I haven't gotten along very well with the particular women I have known. That said, almost all of my friends have been subjected to long discourses from me on the topic of how it's good to be single and how being single gives me the opportunity to pursue my true interests in life without compromise and how as a man I do not have to aspire to be a caretaker for a woman or a family. I can be my own man, independent and free. I can be a modern, self-aware man in charge of my own destiny. I don't need a family.

Of course, it's all a lonely lie I tell myself and friends to make it seem like I am comfortable with the fact that unlike everybody else on the planet Earth I alone seem to be incapable of forming meaningful long-term relationships. Being single for life is symptom of a larger problem.

In other words, what Maureen Dowd is saying in her book is the sort of thing all chronically single people say to themselves as a way of dealing with their suspiciously single status. Maureen Dowd's book seems to me to be an exercise in trying rationalize a personality disorder by pitching the whole issue in terms of vague generalizations about gender. What she writes is the sort of schtick you will hear in any singles bar anywhere in the world that caters to successful-but-lonely 30-and-40-somethings, i.e. people who have missed the boat in love.

The fact that Maureen is in her 50's is what gives her writing such verve because if she cannot frame the whole issue of her inability to form a meaningful life-long commitment in a broader philosphical context, then she will be little more than an aging woman left alone with the conclusion that she is indeed suffering from a personality disorder, i.e. that she is single because there is something wrong with her.

Being single for life is difficult and dangerous for alot of reasons. For example, when you get old you will be alone because you have not spent the many years building up a family that will take an interest in your well-being. This agon with the sad truth is why Maureen Dowd's book is so interesting. Philosophy is an evasion.

The main thing I would say about being single for life is that if you do not live with another person for many many years you will miss out on learning alot of things about yourself that you could not otherwise know. Relationships with the opposite sex ought not to be seen primarily in a philosophical light from the vantage point of gender-politics or feminism. Being too philosophical or too political about love is itself a kind of personality disorder.

There is a kind of love that a person can only experience in all it's many facets by forming a family and making a commitment to a life-long partner. Not that I know that for a fact on a personal level, because like I said I have never really had a successful long-term relationship, but that's what I have heard from other people. Reading her book it comes across very clearly that in fact what Maureen Dowd has is a socially acceptable personality disorder and not a real philosophical problem.

Finally let me say that it's obvious from reading her book that for Maureen writing is symptom and not a cure. It's nice of Rebecca Traister to indulge Maureen's symptom.