That’s a big question, and it involves a lengthy story. Here are the basics: Stephen Fry is a very famous and beloved British actor and comedian. He’s BFFs with people like Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson. American audiences may know him from his reocurring guest appearances in Bones (as Dr. Gordon Gordon Wyatt), as well as… you know, British things. Oh, he was in Gosford Park! Anyway, Fry is a famously good interview, so no one blinked an eye when he seemed to give an interesting and in-depth interview to Attitude Magazine. The quotes were… not good, however. And Fry took to his Twitter and wrote: “So some f*cking paper misquotes a humorous interview I gave, which itself misquoted me and now I’m the Antichrist. I give up. Bye bye.” So now it looks like he’s quit Twitter over the alleged “misquotes”. So what was the problem, you may ask? The quotes are just… awful:

Broadcaster and writer Stephen Fry has tried to establish himself as an unlikely authority on female sexuality, claiming that straight women only go to bed with men “because sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship”.

In uncharacteristically extreme comments, the openly gay Twitter champion said he believed most straight men felt that “they disgust women” as they “find it difficult to believe that women are as interested in sex as they are”.

“For good reason,” he declares in a candid interview in the November issue of Attitude magazine. “If women liked sex as much as men, there would be straight cruising areas in the way there are gay cruising areas. Women would go and hang around in churchyards thinking: ‘God, I’ve got to get my f-cking rocks off’, or they’d go to Hampstead Heath and meet strangers to shag behind a bush. It doesn’t happen. Why? Because the only women you can have sex with like that wish to be paid for it.”

Fry, 53, continues: “I feel sorry for straight men. The only reason women will have sex with them is that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man, which is what they want,” he said. “Of course, a lot of women will deny this and say, ‘Oh no, but I love sex, I love it!’ But do they go around having it the way that gay men do?”

[From The Guardian]

So… yeah. Basically saying that all women are prudish hookers incapable of getting off unless they’re being “paid” has upset a lot of people. Feminists want his balls, and I’m not sure how quitting Twitter is supposed to help matters. I would be interested in knowing if Fry said any of this – I suspect he did, in some variation, but the context would also be key. Fry fancies himself a satirist, so maybe we’re not reading this with the proper tone, wink and nod that we need. I’m trying to cut the guy a break – but I’ll be the first one to rip him a new one if he actually said this junk in earnest.

Also: Just FYI, I think women don’t go “cruising” (trolling) for strange the same way men do simply because women can keep it in their pants, you know? We’re not animals. We have standards. That being said, I’ve gone out before thinking “I need to get laid tonight.” But still, standards. I’ve never needed it so bad I would do it in the bushes of a public park.