In the 11th episode of the 3rd season of House called Words and Deeds, the main character, Dr. Gregory House says the following:
Male menopause: high estrogen, low testosterone, explains temperature swings, disorientation, endocrinologically similar to female menopause but without the vaginas and mahjong tiles.
What do the mahjong tiles refer to in the above statement? I can't wrap my head around it.
Best Answer
I actually agree with RegDwigнt that this looks like sloppy writing. The cause of the confusion looks to be that this line is very thinly related to the episode title (and probably theme of the episode).
In The Analects of Confucius, there is a section named "Words and Deeds," and is no doubt where the episode title came from. The show, House, is known for extremely subtle and/or obscure jokes and references. I would assume that if you rewatched the episode, there would be more references to Confucius as well.
Wikipedia description (emphasis mine):
The link here is that there is some people believe that Confucius invented Mahjong.
Usually, the menopause joke would probably have been about playing Bridge or Canasta, but the writers decided to tie this line to the episode theme by using Mahjong instead. However, because the reference is so obscure, and Mahjong does not fit in our Western stereotypes of post-menopausal women, the joke falls flat and becomes confusing.