I enjoy being a grrl

I'm sitting here on the couch, my cat sprawled out in her upsidedown, paws crossed position next to me. I have Chinese class tomorrow morning — well, later today — for which I am not prepared. I've accomplished very little tonight, beyond arguing with a pompous asshole on another blog. Which of course raises the question, is that actually an accomplishment?

Mmmm, not so much.

Usually, I'm not particularly argumentative on blogs. I'm generally regarded as the peace-maker, the person who avoids inflammatory language and looks for common ground. But when I took over guest-posting duties on a far more popular blog than this one, I found myself frequently attacked, and almost always on a really personal level. The typical wingnut assaults about being a traitor and all that, but even more so, attacks on my credibility, character and intelligence.

Now, this last insult is probably the most frequent, and I must admit, given my personal history, I find it pretty ironic. I was always the smart kid, the one in the advanced classes, the egghead who didn't fit in to the normal girly scheme of things. In my current job, I'm the person people call to find out information. Whatever weird, esoteric stuff they need to know. I don't always know it, but I know how to find it, and that's what counts the most.

So having men in the blogosphere routinely tell me I'm "not particularly intelligent," or a "stupid cow," is, I dunno, almost refreshing on some weird level. Growing up when I did, it was at times kind of tough being the smart girl. It seemed to mean that you weren't a real girl, somehow. You didn't fit the mold of how you were supposed to be a girl, of how you were supposed to be a woman. If you cared more about books and ideas and accomplishments than shoes and make-up and flirting, there was something wrong with you.

I see some women who seem to have this whole thing figured out much better than I ever did. I guess they didn't grow up with that divided message in their heads, praised for being gifted but that expressing intelligence was somehow incompatible with being "feminine."

Now that I'm officially stoopid, perhaps that makes me a real girl, at long last...