The Guardian's blogging editorial policy seems determined to be as divisive as possible regarding gender. The Guardian used to be one of my quick links but recently I removed it because I was fed up with being sucked into a Comment is Free blog full of mutual hatred just because I was looking for some news to read. I still have their arts blogs feeds set up in Netvibes because they are interesting. However, this piece by John Sutherland is mind-bogglingly stupid. He asks whether women can write about war by going on about joysticks and shrivelling balls when he hears a woman's voice coming from a cockpit and, without irony, uses an article by Pat Buchanan to illustrate a point. (Hang on, maybe, the whole thing is ironic! And maybe it's meant to be funny!) It is painful to read because of sentences like this

Can a class of writer so institutionally and historically disengaged from a subject write a classic (or even a good) novel on it?

and

Why, with all those "women's subjects" at her disposal, did Kennedy venture into this most exclusive of manly enclaves?

I shall certainly read Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? and Is Heathcliff a Murderer? in a different light now.

But still, a good thing has come out of it - I actually quite fancy reading Day by AL Kennedy now.

PS Even it is written in humour this type of article is all over The Guardian these days and they are serious.