CONNECTING TO DOT. New York Press's sex columnist Dr. Dot is an enigma. If she's a doctor, why does she wear that skimpy nurse's outfit? Wouldn't that confuse the patients? I know it confuses me! I mean, if I were to judge her strictly on her appearance, I'd say she looks less like a doctor (or nurse) and more like the infamous Saugeen Stripper, the ecdysiastic Canadian college student whose images have been coursing through the blogosphere over recent weeks.

Anyway, last week the so-called Dr. Dot addressed an age-old question: "How can I preserve passion, you know, keep it hot?" In "Ladies First" she offered "10 tips for women on how to keep it HOT." (This is about hot het sex, by the way.) As you can see from the article, her tips seem practical and pretty common in this type of article.

But something that gets to me about such columns is the tendency to rely on generalizations. In this particular case:

Men love porn.

Men like to be the hunter.

Remember, it's all visual for men.

Men need adventure; the risk of getting caught will spice things up.

This week the shoe was on the other foot in the delicately titled "Lick Your Own Ass." This column was less bothersome to me, in part because Dr. Dot at least qualifies her generalizations more. She writes

Most women don’t want to just rush to the sex part; they require a lot of foreplay.

and

[M]ost chicks, not all, are too afraid to whip up a fantasy because they think might think they are too dirty or laugh at the idea.

though she also comes up with these:

Latin men are so successful at getting laid because they understand what women want.

“Men cuddle to fuck, and women fuck to cuddle”.

That kind of verbiage just drives me nuts.

It reminds me of what John Derbyshire posted recently under "Jennifer's Bristols" at National Review Online:

It is, in fact, a sad truth about human life that beyond our salad days, very few of us are interesting to look at in the buff. Added to that sadness is the very unfair truth that a woman’s salad days are shorter than a man’s — really, in this precise context, only from about 15 to 20. The Nautilus and the treadmill can add a half-decade or so, but by 36 the bloom is definitely off the rose. Very few of us, however, can face up to this fact honestly....

I think a lot of readers were freaked out by Derbyshire's fascination with the mid-teen female body and his assertion that male bodies had longer lasting appeal, but beyond the specifics there's also that damn reckless generalizing (a.k.a. stereotyping).

So is this Derbyshire fellow a qualified medical professional like Dr. Dot? I wonder. His online bio describes him as a "critic, commentator and novelist." If those are indeed his credentials, what makes him such an authority on male and female bodies? And what's the point of making such statements, anyway?

Photo: David Marc Fischer