Do men really sit and hope that someone else will be Todd Beamer? My impression is that we aspire to be Todd Beamer, if situationally appropriate. As to women’s aspirations, well, the author just described hers. Which is fine – if she is 120 pounds of coiled literary angst, she may not be the best choice to grapple with a trained terrorist anyway.

As to her point – if “heroism” includes moral courage, as it should, then women are well represented by examples from history. If heroism is limited to brief displays of physical courage, there are surely many more examples involving men. That seems to follow from both cultural norms and basic biology, since the average guy is bigger and stronger than the average women.