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27 November, 2005 - 4:55 p.m.
AMN: part two of the review

here's more of the book review exchange. this was written last week sometime. Tuesday, I think.

watching this episode of "my fair brady" and am totally pissed off by it. she throws down this "all or nothing" ultimatum and has a fit when he doesn't take it. if you're giving an ultimatum, you have to be prepared for them not to take the bait. that's the problem with "all or nothing" deals. there's no give and take. no compromise. there's a winner and a loser or two losers. how can there be a loser in love? how is that even fair? how can you have a caring relationship in which both people get what they want when you force someone to choose an option they're not happy with? she says, "i ask for so little" and then says she asks for him. What does that say about how she feels about him? And then he proposed. wtf.

anyway, in the book, she talks about how men are intimidated by intelligent, strong women. "men, don't fear that cute little genius you have your eye on." heh.

i've been thinking about this part i read today about when women become what their man wants them to be. and i can see back in the days of crippling insecurity when i, too, (yes me) would morph into whatever they wanted me to be. i wore khakis for a while, too. sick. i think it's like certain kinds of clays or plastics. you can only stretch so much so many times before the medium loses its elasticity. there comes a point in time when i could no longer be anything but who i am (come hell or high water). how long does it take for other women to reach that point? and why do we do that? why can't we just be ourselves and be confident that we'll find somebody (or we won't)? what's the matter, we want to breed so badly? i know we're in a society that treats the childless as inferior. family values and all that. but if happens for me, it does. and if it doesn't, i'll be living alone in a condo somewhere with my books and my cats. spinster.

but her section on politics not being an avenue for men (stating that women would really do much better in it)... oh my god hysterical. accusing our current administration of having pms and hot flashes. "cheney's hormonal mood swings are so terrifying, all you can do is duck as the guy goes to his secure underground lair to plot which countries he wants to preemptively invade next."

MoDo and I do agree on politics. we mock both the left, right, and middle for their flaws. she did bring up a good point about there not being enough female journalists in positions of power. there is always a man to cover large scale news and crises, as if they're afraid we'll be hormonal or something and crack up on national tv. and she also brings up that if the same text (critical political piece) was attributed to a male and a female, it would be received better from the male. the woman would be called a man-hating bitch.

she also talked about there not being enough women who write letters to the editor or blogs or rants. i'm like, "i'm here!!!" so i think that it is changing. maybe, as MoDo says, only 1 woman for every 7 guys does these things. but times are a-changin'. and she admits we're perfectly well-qualified to do it. and better than men due to our socialization with other backstabbing females over the years. because men in politics are catty, and apparently so are all females all the time. i see where she's headed with the argument, but i don't agree with her point that we're all backstabbing.

why is it that intelligent, critical women are automatically bitches? why are we castrating? why are we mean? why do the same words with the same intonation and the same presentation coming from a man seem so much more positive? i would think maybe criticism would seem more gentle coming from a woman. but it also comes from presentation. here we go with freud and critical mothers again. *rolls eyes*

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