In the wider world, Oprah Winfrey is vastly more influential than Ashton Kutcher. But Ashton trumps Oprah in the male-dominated Twitter-verse, where men have 15 percent more followers than women do. New research from Harvard Business School has shown that not only are men more likely to follow other men on Twitter, but women are also more likely to follow men. According to the study:

These results are stunning given what previous research has found in the context of online social networks. On a typical online social network, most of the activity is focused around women—men follow content produced by women they do and do not know, and women follow content produced by women they know. [bold is theirs] Generally, men receive comparatively little attention from other men or from women. We wonder to what extent this pattern of results arises because men and women find the content produced by other men on Twitter more compelling than on a typical social network, and men find the content produced by women less compelling (because of a lack of photo sharing, detailed biographies, etc.).

Unlike the authors of this study, I don't wonder whether there is a major difference between the type of content created by men and women on Twitter when compared to other social networks. I think the difference is due to the sorts of people who use Twitter frequently. As the study also notes, 10 percent of Twitter users account for 90 percent of Tweets, and I would imagine that Twitter-lovers disproportionally come from the tech field, which is notoriously male-dominated.

I checked the people whom I follow on Twitter, and apparently I am an equal-opportunity follower: Of 98 individuals I follow, 48 are women (I follow 102 Twitter feeds in total, but because four are gender-neutral organizations like Newsweek, I didn't count them). How many women are you following? If you follow more men than women, why do you think that is?

Tags: Ashton Kutcher, gender differences, Harvard Business School, men, Oprah Winfrey, twitter, Twitter habits, women

Reading the obituaries column of the newspaper is so much cheaper than therapy, yet it's often just as effective at driving a trip down memory lane. This morning's tributes to British female impersonator Danny La Rue, who died at the age of 81, sent me back three decades to my grandma's house where the family would gather around the telly to watch his performances. (Scroll down for a video of one.)

La Rue disliked being called a "drag artist." His act was all about convincing the audience that the person on stage or screen was the most glamorous, dazzling dame in the world. Being a working-class lad himself, he knew how to tap into the ultimate British fantasy—that rich people aren't all condescending twits—as well as female audience members' hopes that male performers won't denigrate women. This understanding is what made his entrances such genius—he would stride on stage, showing off the gorgeous gown, the great gams, and the glittering jewelry, looking every inch the lady, and then he would declare in a deep voice and a Cockney accent, "Wotcher, mate." With those two words he revealed his sex and his class roots and declared, I'm not trying to deceive or mock you—I'm just going to put on a lovely show.

It was hard to dislike Danny La Rue—partly because he was such a sentimentalist. His signature song (delivered in his very mediocre baritone) was "On Mother Kelly's Doorstep," an anthem to endless love in which he wondered if Sally from the alley still remembered her childhood beau Joe—at the mention of Joe, he would point to his heaving bosom. In a modern context, the song reads like the wistful memory of a male to female transperson, but like all La Rue's work, it was just a look back to the good old days when everything was simpler.

Danny La Rue was always very discreet about his sexuality—he described his longtime manager as "the love of my life," and the Guardian obit mentions that his "companion" died of AIDS in 2000. Although La Rue was one of the most successful figures in British show business in the 1960s and '70s, he was conned and exploited and, as the New York Times put it so beautifully, at the end of his life, he "depended on the kindness of friends and the Grand Order of Water Rats, the theatrical charity, which named him King Rat in the 1980s." Fittingly enough for a man who always depended on wardrobe, he ended his days being cared for by his longtime dresser and friend Anne Galbraith.

Tags: britain, british, danny la rue, drag, female impersonator, nostalgia, obituary, sentimentalism

Another friend describes his wife's late-term abortion. Read testimonials from Tiller's patients here.

I did not know Dr. Tiller, but his assassination vividly reminds me of events in 1983, when my wife and I had a devasting experience with a late-term pregnancy gone wrong at 38 weeks. We had a daughter (I will call her that—in our case, the distinction between fetus and child was not relevant) who developed hydrocephalus (water on the brain) late in the pregnancy, which was discovered at the last ultrasound. Her head was huge with fluid, and therefore would not fit through the birth canal. Actually, it was called hydroencephaly, meaning that she essentially had no brain, because it had been substantially dissolved by the neural fluid from a spinal cord that had not properly closed. Because of the head size, we learned that my wife would have to have a caesarian to deliver the baby—although common, a major surgery. My wife had had an ectopic pregnancy, with major surgery that devasted her, but we very much wanted the baby. Yet we learned that even with the caesarian, the baby would either die shortly after birth, or would live somewhat longer, and very, very badly—likely paralyzed, blind, and without significant mental faculties. My brother is a neonatologist, an expert in premature babies and other problems, and he consulted with specialists around the country. Nothing could be done to improve the predicted outcome. We decided to terminate the pregnancy and avoid the caesarian, to preserve my wife's health and increase her chances for another child, and so we wouldn't simultaneously be grieving the child and coping with recovery from surgery. We made that wrenching decision and the pregnancy was terminated at Stanford University, with the baby delivered vaginally after the evacuation of the spinal fluid from her head. This is what was much later termed "partial birth abortion" and villified by politicians and ideologues who have no idea of the reality we experienced. We buried our daughter in a cemetary in Santa Cruz, Calif. We continue to grieve her loss, and we are also grateful to the caring doctors who assisted us in our time of need.

Would that Dr. Tiller's killer, and his allies, had any idea of the nature of the medical disasters for which he offered his help. Would that they cared.

Photograph of pregnant woman by Anna Jurkovska/Shutterstock Images LLC.

Tags: abortion, late-term abortion, Tiller

Scott Anderson's Modern Love Revenge column about a woman who wrote in the New York Times about how she Googled him before their first date, raises interesting questions about online etiquette. The piece that Scott reacted to ran less than a year ago, but already the concept feels dated to me. Embarrassment about Googling someone? As a journalist, I'd be embarrassed to go on a date without having Googled the potential suitor first—and looked him up on Lexis-Nexis and Facebook and (if he's older) Friendster, and tried to find friends who went to his college so they could show me his extended Facebook profile.

I see, though, that at some point we all reach the edge of our Internet comfort zone. For me, the awkward part is how to navigate everything that comes after the first date: Do I owe him a wall post to prove that I care? When do I change my relationship status? How do I explain to my mother or my bosses, who are also my Facebook friends, the cryptic status message I'd rather they not understand?

Double X wants to hear your awkward and wrong Google, Facebook, and Twitter stories—the times when things went awry in a relationship because of these tools (combined with your inexperience or lack of willpower or bad luck or whatever else). Send your tales to us, and we'll excerpt our favorites on the site.

Photograph of woman on computer from Medioimages/Photodisc/Getty Images

Tags: awkward, awkward and wrong, Facebook, google, modern love, relationships, twitter

It must be the season of the listicle. Too lazy to write an article, or, heck, even create a charticle, print and online writers turn to the list in an attempt to draw as many list-loving readers as possible. The latest comes from the folks at Nerve.com, who have seen fit to list: "The Twenty Sexiest Ugly People." Fair enough. I've long been enamored with the "beautiful uglies," or what the French refer to as jolie laide: "the aesthetic pleasures of the visually off kilter: a bump on the nose, eyes that are set too closely together, a jagged smear of a mouth."

Nerve's collection of the seemingly hideously sexy—or is that sexily hideous?—includes Daisy De La Hoya (if you don't watch VH1, never mind), Marilyn Manson (his screeching anthem "The Beautiful People" comes to mind), Iggy Pop (for some reason I can't quite explain, I must admit I would not kick him out of bed for eating crackers), Sandra Bernhard (a "jagged smear of a mouth," indeed), and Biz Markie (interesting choice, no matter how you slice it).

Some picks are spot on, I think: Tilda Swinton I adore, Mickey Rourke embodies the concept perfectly, and the twisted features of the terrifically transgendered Amanda Lepore hypnotize (me, at least). Some others, I don't get: Woody Allen? Amy Winehouse? Paul Giamatti? I can't say I associate any of those three with any kind of burning sexuality, above or below the surface. Of course, it's all so subjective when it comes to looks, sexuality, attraction. In any case, it's sort of delightful to see a list that celebrates something other than the cookie-cutter looks of Brad, Angelina, and George. Enough of that already. Bring on the sexy freaks.

Tags: 20 sexiest ugly people, beauty, Nerve, nerve magazine, sexuality