The empty adult-proof bottle of Punzac—Prozac for pundits—sits on the desk. I stare at it wide-eyed, chastising myself for not having made the trip to CVS for a refill.

Is there something more painful than stepping barefoot on an errant Lego block, or spending an entire day at Chuck-E-Cheese? Yes, being forced to look at someone else’s photos. Like the time your neighbors—the people who you will see every day for the next twenty years—try and engage you in conversation as they force you to sit through two-hundred high-definition digital photos of her recent labor and delivery. After an hour you find yourself saying, “I have always wondered exactly how a placenta looks.” You will never again be able to look at her the same.

In the same way men and women react differently to viewing photos, they react differently to what is said and what is written about each other and by each other. When men talk or write about men, they do so or like to think they do so basing their points on facts, whereas women’s commentaries are often more focused on using language to convey their feelings about someone or some situation. Facts can be argued and debated. Arguing feelings is a little like trying to admonish soft cheese for not being hard—the cheese knows this is an argument it will always win. The battle lines, the interpretation seems to be drawn between what is said and how it is said.

For both sexes, the realm of the permissible seems to be that either sex can take someone to task viciously provided they are of the same sex. A man can castigate or verbally castrate another man without many repercussions. This is viewed as the art of war. If someone disagrees with what a man wrote about another man, for the argument to be unequivocal, he must argue punctiliously.

When a woman disagrees with a man she will be instructed to check her feelings. If a woman writes the same critical piece as a man did about the same male, her motivations will be examined critically by men through the lens of an electron microscope. Some men will attempt to undermine her writing by trying to determine which one of her repressed character flaws has caused her to hate men. Worse yet, some men will attribute her writings to a hormonal imbalance.

Through their writings women are permitted to scourge publically another woman in a homolistic catfight without offending anyone’s sensibilities. This can be done without any pretense towards context or facts and can be so vitriolic that many a man will be observed crossing his legs in sheer terror that the reflective repercussions of the words may have emasculative super powers.

In the same vein, a man who offers opinions on a single woman, a woman who is single, or the entire breed will be labeled a misogynist. Men should note, it is not possible to comment about an individual female. Doing so violates the rule of “what you do to one, you have done to all.” Any and all comments by men of women are treated as flagrant stereotypes whose only possible intent is to damage the entire gender.

Maureen Down said it well; the big fear of men is to be feminized whereas, the big fear of women if to be diabolized. Does it always have to come down to sex? Would men and women react the same if readers did not know who wrote or said what? Would men have reacted the same to Ann Richards’ comment about George W. having been born with a silver foot in his mouth had it been spoken or written by a man? Probably not.

Writing is a classic, no-holds-barred venue for free rein reverse discrimination. This is most unfortunate in that the written and spoken word, at least when it comes to humor and satire, have nothing to do with being fair. The only purpose of satire is to provide a different lens through which to view the world.

The New York Posts’ Ms. Dowd can flat-out write. There is probably nobody else with whose opinions I differ so strongly—except her Clinton diaries—but I read her; not for what she says, but because of her ability to do wonderful things with only twenty-six letters. I suspect if she changed her first name to Mark, she would fascinate more men, but that would be too emasculating.