<here's something to discuss. i was just mulling over in
my mind the general and consistent failure, in my eyes, of
female writers to produce female protagonists with any sort
of real visceral fortitude of the sort you see in the
archetypal male PI. i think this missing element is commonly
identified as testosterone. does anyone agree/disagree that a
good PI has to have a strong heterosexual
orientation?>
You must be talking about modern day PI's. I seem to remember
most of the classic PI's avoiding sex. The Op was asexual, I
honestly don't remember if Spade and O'shaunessey did it, (it
was very discreetly in the white space if they did,) Marlowe
seemed to discussted with women to even look at them for
long, and Lew Archer seemed to always be putting women in
prison so he wouldn't have to fornicate. It all seems to
relate to Chandler's 'tarnished knight' theory, but I always
found it a little distracting that they would go to such
lengths to describe a woman's beauty, have her throw herself
at the PI, and have him take such lengths to avoid her. (It
also seemed to give them a pathological need to fire their
gun!)
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