I like being unseemly, as did my mother Mary Ellmann, I think, in her more intellectual way. An Irish-American, she grew up working-class in Massachusetts, and got to university by chance, when her brother smashed his car and gave her the insurance pay-out.

Later, she published the most startling book, the much imitated (and occasionally plagiarised) Thinking About Women (1968). Though based on her background in literary criticism, the book pinpoints the ways men seek to discredit women in other realms too, through the usual stereotyping and physiological analogy.

Take the unamiable habit of forever identifying women’s minds with uterine processes. Men are the worst hysterics around, but they rush to characterise female thought as slow, passive, accretive and unproductive, supposedly in likeness to the ovum, which they depict asthe form of a metallic sulfide powder such as an iron sulfide powder, a copper sulfide powder, a nickel sulfide powder, a molybdenum disulfide powder, or the like, and at least one kind among these sulfide powders is used.
When S is added in the form of the metallic sulfide powder or the like, to the raw powder, the metallic sulfide powder is decomposed in the sintering, thereby providing atoms of S. The atom of S combines with Fe surrounding the metallic sulfide powder
particles and generates FeS. FeS added in the form of the iron sulfide powder and FeS generated by the decomposition of the metallic sulfides react with Fe of the primary component and generate eutectic liquid phases. Therefore, liquid-phase sintering
occurs, and neck growth between powder particles is