I'll add the customary excerpt from the Field Guide later.

I wish there was a mood selection classification for "Annoyed". We're watching An Officer And A Gentleman and I'm becoming increasingly more convinced that I might have been better off before acquiring cable--before, essentially, being bombarded with images of those people I classify as "dizzy".

I'll clarify--and say now that I'm aware that it's entirely possible that this classification is unfair on my part. Perhaps. Certain things are very subjective, after all. "Dizzy" is the classification I reserve for people who display the following qualities: obliviousness, deliberate or otherwise, to his/her surroundings and the consequences of his/her actions (or inactions); premeditated manipulation of members of his/her own or the opposite sex for his/her own benefit; deliberate minimizing of his/her own intelligence in order to impress members of his/her own or the opposite sex, etc. The list is lengthy, but the above-noted are the qualities that I find most objectionable and the ones that this movie (and so many others I've seen lately) portray as not only acceptable but desireable in females. This disgusts me, largely because I firmly believe that society will expect of you what you demand that it expect of you--and I believe that society will continue to expect women to behave as either bloodless, manipulative creatures who will resort to any devious ploy to achieve their goals or helpless, clueless stereotypes of male fantasies with the mentalities of children as long as there are women who reinforce these expectations.

The big rub in all of this is that I also happen to believe in the right to be whatever you desire to be--to achieve or to not achieve whatever you desire to (or don't) in this life--because that is, to me, one of the most beautiful aspects of this life. I would never deny that freedom to myself--or to anyone else. This becomes problematic when I see a romance between a woman who trolls naval bases to catch an aviator husband (and is portrayed as really having nothing more going for her than a pretty face and a desire to advance herself out of a factory job--by becoming a pilot's wife) and an otherwise intelligent aspiring pilot. The directors expect the audience to support this arrangement. I would much rather see the pilot's relationship with his female counterpart--a woman who also enlisted to beome a pilot (and who, although cited by the drill instructor as "having more character and more heart" than the pilot, is constantly seen crying on the obstacle course). What message does this send? Am I, as a person, supposed to buy into this lock, stock and barrel and actually believe that it is preferable (at least, in society's terms of being desireable and finding a partner) to be sweet and simpering and without goals save the bolstering of one's own ego through a connection between them and another with different goals? Am I, as a person, supposed to buy into the current culture of youth and try to squeeze myself into hotpants to emulate Britney Spears? Am I, as a person, supposed to believe that just because I am a woman I am obligated to feel one way or another--rather than just ignoring the whole damn thing?

Feh.

Frankly, and I might be burning some bridges in saying this, but so be it, I wouldn't have a man who chose such a person over one who equaled (or surpassed) him in ambition or capacity. Such a preference, in my perspective, bespeaks an innate fear of one's partner and of one's own weaknesses--and a fear that exerts such power over one's life that it dictates one's choices in lifemate is to be avoided at all costs. I have no use for men who are threatened by women who can walk the same path as they. Get therapy, sugarpie, and then we can talk.

In case you were wondering, this is not a feminist rant. I don't consider myself a feminist anymore--after having read enough rhetoric to realize that the movement simultaneously decries and encourages (in the form of "confessional art--most notoriously "The Vagina Monologues") an often malicious victim mentality. The movement today pushes women to manage career (because it's a failure to stay home and raise well-adjusted children) and "family life" while staging public spectacles that essentially boil female identity down to the connection between women and their anatomy (I am apparently not enlightened until I can "live more in my vagina"--yeah, _you_ try living in my vagina--I guarantee you can't fit a couch in there). My response to this, when I'm in a snit as I am now, is: How dare you? How dare you tell me that I cannot choose to follow in my mother's footsteps and stay home (if I am economically free to do so--which is a whole other rant) and raise children? How dare you tell me that I am the sum of my physicality--and that I should celebrate the funding of a woman who runs around asking people to tell stories about their genitalia rather than volunteering at a family planning clinic or rolling up her sleeves and becoming a teacher? How dare you tell me that heterosexual intercourse is always rape and that being a "sex-positive" female who supports what society considers "pornography" as a legitimate profession is a crime against my own gender? How dare you tell me that I should regard other women as my "sisters" yet never acknowledge the competitive nature of women in your studies? How dare you presume to tell me how I should be a "complete woman" when so many of you have never dealt with your own anger and seek only to see me express mine to make yourselves feel better? I'd rather have a beer with the guys--who, by and large, have never had a problem with being brutally honest with me rather than whispering behind my back. I'd rather look my own anger in the eye and realize that it is the result of my responses to the actions of other individuals--and, therefore, is my own responsibility--and not the responsibility of every man I meet. I'd rather be a person setting her own goals and mapping her own path than a "woman" obligated to lash out in the name of some petty grudge that will never be resolved.

So. In short. I would rather be who I am--an individual, bisexual, Southern, "female" by biological terms, who addresses others as individuals (not "men", not "the patriarchy", not "the enemy") and doesn't buy into the infomercial of inadequacy-fueled hatred that you're trying to shove down my throat.

I'm a woman--so the fuck what?

As an unrelated footnote: Peter was playing with Luce (my red-tailed boa, Lucifer-Kha Mor-Xerxes), just now. Luce adores him, which pleases me. One of the few things that my mother taught me that has rung true as I've gotten older is that "animals always know". Dogs, cats, snakes, etc. have a particular sense of people and their motivations that we humans often don't bother to pay attention to--as a result, one should always pay special attention to the reactions of animals to those you interact with. Luce loves Peter--he has never been as receptive to anyone as he is to Peter--and that is very reassuring. He is utterly at ease having Peter pick him up and drape him around his neck--whereas he has had, if not adverse, then definitely different reactions to others I've known. Baghera, my feline roommate, is going through a jealousy phase right now, but otherwise has taken to Peter very well. So the boy I live with has passed the animal test, as it were.

Yay.