All hail! Will there ever be a female president?

In “Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide,” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maureen Dowd explores the mysteries and muddles of sexual politics in America. Dowd visited “Today” to discuss her new book. Here's an excerpt.

I don't understand men.

I don't even understand what I don't understand about men. They're a most inscrutable bunch, really.

I had a moment of dazzling clarity when I was twenty seven, a rush of confidence that I had cracked the code. But it was, alas, an illusion. I think I overcomplicated their simplicity. Or oversimplified their simplicity. Are they as complicated as a pile of wood? Or as simple as a squid?

I was loath to accept the premise of Jerry Seinfeld, who claims that “men are really nothing more than extremely advanced dogs” who want the same thing from their women that they want from their underwear: “A little bit of support and a little bit of freedom.”

I was more prone to go with the thesis of James Thurber and E. B. White in their seminal 1929 treatise, Is Sex Necessary?, that the American male was the least understood of all male animals, and that more attention needed to be paid to his complexity — “the importance of what he is thinking about and what he intends to do, or at least what he would like to do ....”

“How often do you hear it said that the little whims and desires of a man should be cherished, or even listened to? You don't hear it said at all. What you do hear is that ‘the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.’ A thing like that hardens a man. He may eat his spinach and say nothing, but he is being hardened just the same.”

Thurber and White don't date the start of the troubles between men and women to the snaky Eve. They contend that things got bollixed up in the 1920s, when the female, “face-to-face with the male's simple desire to sit down and hold her” (aka “the attack of the male”), retaliated with irritating Diversion Subterfuges — such as Fudge Making and Indoor Games for groups — meant to fend off and put Man in his place. “The American male's repugnance to charades, which is equaled, perhaps, by his repugnance to nothing at all, goes back to those years,” the authors explained.

Putnam Adult

I know women are disorienting to men, too. In his memoir about The New Yorker, The Years with Ross, Thurber tells this story from the early '30s about the legendary editor's reaction to having a baby girl:

“One morning, I found Ross, worried and stoop-shouldered, pacing a corridor, jingling those pocket coins. He came right out with his current anxiety. ‘Goddamn it, I can't think of any man that has a daughter. I think of men as having boys, and women as having girls.’ ”

“ ‘I have a daughter,’ I said, ‘and I wanted a daughter.’ ”

“ ‘That's not natural, is it?’ he demanded. ‘I never heard of a man that didn't want a son. Can you name any, well, you know, goddamn it — terribly masculine men with daughters?’ ”

“The sun and moon of reassurance shone in his face when I came up with ‘Jack Dempsey has two children, both girls.’ His day was saved from the wreckage of despair, but he still had one final depressed word. ‘Goddamn it, I hate the idea of going around with female hormones in me.’ ”

In the final analysis, Thurber and White decided matters went irretrievably awry during the Jazz Age when flappers began to imitate men, smoking, drinking, wanting to earn money (“not much, but some”) and thinking they had “the right to be sexual.” All these strained attempts at equality, they contend, destroyed the mystery of the sexual tango, or sexual Charleston, if you will.

This spurt of cocky independence faded, and over the decades women lapsed back into domesticity and deference, until their only avatars were perfect gingham moms such as Donna Reed, June Cleaver and Harriet Nelson.

Then came the Sexual Revolution. When I entered college, in 1969, women were bursting out of their '50s chrysalis. The Jazz Age spirit flared in the Age of Aquarius. Women were once again imitating men and acting all independent: smoking, drinking, wanting to earn money (not as much, but some) and thinking the Pill gave them “the right to be sexual.”

I didn't fit in with the brazen new world of hard-charging feminists. I was more of a fun-loving (if chaste) Carrie Bradshaw type, a breed that wouldn't come into vogue for several more decades. I hated the dirty, unisex jeans and no-makeup look and drugs that zoned you out, and I couldn't understand the appeal of dances that didn't involve touching your partner.

In the universe of Eros, I longed for style and wit. I loved the Art Deco glamour of '30s movies. I wanted to dance the Continental like Fred and Ginger in white hotel suites; drink martinis like Myrna Loy and William Powell; live the life of a screwball heroine like Katharine Hepburn, wearing a gold lamé gown cut on the bias, cavorting with Cary Grant, strolling along Fifth Avenue with my pet leopard.

My mom would just shake her head and tell me that my idea of the '30s was wildly romanticized. “We were poor,” she'd say. “We didn't dance around in white hotel suites.”

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