Thanks Mr Fry

At last someone has said it - straight men are the most oppressed out of everybody, or something. BBC2's favourite brain, Steven Fry has seen fit to let us in on his extensive knowledge of female sexuality and it bodes ill for the poor benighted straight male I can tell you.

You see, according to Fry, "The only reason women will have sex with [men] is that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man". Well let's hope they don't have to pay that price too often, that would be horrible. I'm assuming this also means that lesbian relationships are mercifully sex free? Let's hope so.

Is this, perhaps, because his female friends (if any) have told him as much. Nope, quite the reverse in fact; “Of course a lot of women will deny this and say, ‘Oh, no, but I love sex, I love it!’ But do they go around having it the way that gay men do?" If by 'the way gay men do' he means with men, then yes frankly straight women *do* have sex with men. Snap!

So if women deny Fry's thesis and, as a gay man he doesn't have a huge back catalog of sexual experiences with women (no wonder as they're all frigid) what does he base this on. "If women liked sex as much as men there would be straight cruising areas in the way there are gay cruising areas." Oh dear.

Look Fry, go to any city center on a Friday and Saturday night and behold - hundreds of ladies all out on the pull. For men. To have sex with. Preferably drunk, so they can't see them properly, ugly blighters.

The history of homophobic laws led to a culture of clandestine liaisons in shady spots where in-the-closet married men could indulge their behaviours without having to go through the 'shame' of being openly gay by having a partner actually share their life. Cottaging allowed some gay and bi-men to have sex with other men at a time when there were few other avenues, and the culture has stuck - not least because those problems have not entirely disappeared.

I'm sure cottaging is fun or whatever too so the tradition holds but because straight sex has never had the same stigma 'our' cruising areas are basically everywhere. We get to do it openly in the warm, with a glass in one hand and a fag in the other... hmmm... maybe I should rewrite that sentence... no, too lazy.

Anyway, I'd rather die than go dogging just as many gay men aren't massively interested in having sex in horrible public loos. So I think Mr Fry is wrong on this one and indulging in rather old fashioned stereotypes.

However, should he ever meet a woman on the set of QI (and I admit this is unlikely as it prefers all male panels, bless their nineteenth century cotton socks) he could at least pretend to be 'quite interested' if she cares to tell him just how ill-informed his opinions really are.