But I still can cook a mean Denver omelette!

Kirsten Powers in Salon claims that Harvard president Lawrence Summers made gender inequities that much worse with his infamos remarks. I'm surprised by how many letters to the editor disagreed with her (as do I). Here's one representative one, by a woman:

As far as I can tell, Summers was merely pointing out that genetic differences might be a cause of the continued underrepresentation of women. We are all born with different abilities -- that's a fact. And genetic inferiority in some abilities is in no way demeaning. Women are clearly genetically inferior to men in many physical abilities. Does acknowledging those differences disparage us? No! But Powers implicitly asserts that having lesser abilities means we are lesser people, and that idea is much more dangerous than Summers'.

Katherine Hepburn's line in The African Queen is the most sensible response to this pseudo-controversy: "Nature, Mr. Allnutt, is what we were placed on this earth to rise above."