Just as there are certain social and developmental proclivities that distinguish men and women generally, there are some subtle differences between male and female authors. Unless you’re a tediously strict social constructivist who doesn’t believe in such diversity, you would largely agree that no man could realistically have written Beloved, or A Room of One’s Own, or The Handmaid’s Tale, and that, by contrast, there are certain preoccupations, attitudes, and energies men can bring to literature.

Sadly, through a mixture of the publishing industry being risk averse, the threshold for offence and wounded sensibilities and problematic content being so low, the domination, numerically, of...