Check your assumptions…at the door.

Every so often, I have an encounter with readers (usually academics, but sometimes not) who are happy to tell me, in detail and at great length, all the reasons why I wrote something, or wrote it in this or that particular way. (Usually because they object to the reasons they've come up with…but I digress.)

And to date, they have always been dead wrong. Every time.

The most common incident of this sort involves discussing my "feminist agenda" in Dealing with Dragons…things like making "King of the