All through this thread, I keep seeing statements that seem to be moot points to me. Somewhere in my mid to late thirties I lost the concept of "favorite". I have no favorite authors or colors or foods. I have read so many books and short stories over the years that I have no concept of how many. Many of them, if brought to mind, were wonderful or enjoyable or maybe just readable, but I couldn't rank the authors as favorites. I know some of the book and short stories were written by women. I also know I enjoyed some of those to varying degrees. I cannot even conceive of figuring out which gender's cumulative writing I like better (which in and of itself would be totally subjective) and it will never get any better. Once people get past the "what's your favorite color" stage in life, they should also get past the gender bias. If one assumes that one gender is better at a particular writing style than the other, one chances missing some spectacular writing. Statistically, there may be better sales generated by one gender, but popular does not mean good. Science Fiction and Fantasy has developed a large following but is still considered off the beaten path. We readers of these offbeat genre do not want to follow the tastes of the masses. The sales charts that may say that one gender writes better than the other also says that many other genre are better than what I want to read. I'm happy here.