The "girl cooties" thing goes back to a sort of gender essentialism, right? Certain kinds of SF are inherently male, and others aren't? I think that's mostly rubbish, and what's left is mostly cultural, but mostly *I DON'T CARE*. I don't care what the socially perceived gender of the person who wrote the book is; I care what the book is like. I certainly haven't perceived a reliable enough correlation to make me want to filter that way.

Of course, I don't fit many of the stereotypes being debated all that well. I like David Weber AND Marion Zimmer Bradley AND Ursula LeGuin AND Samuel Delany (older short fiction, anyway) AND Lois McMaster Bujold AND John Ringo AND Ken MacLeod AND Niven & Pournelle AND Emma Bull AND John M. Ford AND Joel Rosenberg.