From "Notes From a Subterranean Library in Oregon," a compilation of Ray Peat's newspaper letters and columns, compiled by T3Uncoupled (2023). Originally published 1973.

Ray Peat, "Not generous", p. 24

The aspect of Mailer that you condemn is what’s best in him. You apparently have evidence that “good fucks” don't “make good babies,” since you saved your wildest insults for that “pseudo-biological hypothesis” of Mailer’s. Before you can convincingly reject this and other sexual-political ideas of Mailer’s, you should be able to dispose of the following observations, which have reported in recent years in medical, biological, and psychological journals: Circulatory patterns are not the same in women who have a capacity for pleasure and orgasms, and those who don’t. Schizophrenia has autonomic and circulatory correlates. Women who are schizophrenic at the time of conception abort male embryos much more often than female embryos, and if their symptoms appear later, male babies are more likely to have defects: male embryos are known to be more sensitive to a variety of unhealthy uterine conditions. Bad uterine conditions can cause defective babies, including small brains and mental retardation, depending on when the trouble occurs, what it is, etc. Improved uterine conditions — presumably the circulation — can improve the percentage of healthy and precocious babies. The literature that may be relevant to this question is surprisingly large and varied — surprising, because our culture is ruled by an anti-biological dogma that denies any connection between physiology, emotion, and politics. Your commitment to an abstract, anti-biological form of existentialism is fine for a bourgeois literary critic, but to imply

that such a philosophy is the best hope for women is not very generous.