[Julie Steiner]

Originally Posted by James Brancheau

The view of men is archaic, there, at the end of your original post.

James, that metaphor of Dorothy Sayers's has obviously hit a nerve with you, but I think you are reading way more into it than the author intended.

To you, the word "love" seems to conjure an entire relationship. (As it does to me, too, in most circumstances.) But I think someone writing for a respectable publishing house in the 1930s was very likely to use "love" as a euphemism for "sex," or "orgasm," or something even more frank than that.

The context of Sayers's metaphor was writers' sudden loss of the compulsion to write after the "release" of putting something down on paper to their satisfaction. Comparing that feeling to sexual release is reasonable, I think.

Personally, I would have stopped there, but if Sayers wanted to go on to suggest the tendency of men (unlike some women) to have zero interest in having another orgasm of their own immediately after the first one, I don't think saying so is defamatory. And in my admittedly limited experience, men do tend to drowsily nod off, but that doesn't necessarily imply that they are totally uncooperative if you wake them up again after a bit.

In short, I'm fairly certain that Sayers was NOT saying that the male half of humanity cares only about their own comfort and pleasure, with no thought for the wants and needs of their partners after their own are met. If she were, then I would object to her unfairly tarring men, too.