I Would Date Robert Heinlein

Apparently, girls aren't supposed to enjoy reading Robert Heinlein. At best, his critics claim his target audience was adolescent boys (true enough) and his novels aren't able to hold the interest of female readers. At worst, he was a chauvinist pig and therefore unworthy of female interest.

I like Heinlein. I am a girl. A conundrum.

I haven't read too broad a swathe of his work yet--I've only finished Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and though I started Stranger in a Strange Land I've been derailed by the beginning of the school year--but one of the reasons I enjoy Heinlein is because I like his female characters. When perceived by male characters they are inherently set apart, different, special. Woman are so different from men they cannot be compared. They are a mystery, a precious enigma.

I admit that such a point of view is not in vogue and does not reflect current trends in gender role enlightenment, especially because the sheer alien aspect of women in Heinlein novels borders on making them objects. But doesn't that gulf between the sexes exist? How much ink has been spilled, breath wasted, tears cried over the misunderstandings between male and female? We are alien to one another.

But keep in mind I'm also the kind of girl who laughs at barefoot-and-pregnant jokes and read John Donne's sermon discussing whether or not women have souls with an open mind.

The Epiphany that Brought Us Here

It's my first blog entry and I'm already upset with my title. No matter what ANYONE says, hyphens are ugly. Unless you combine two of them to create a dash--I find dashes quite rakish. But hyphens stitch together words like Dr. Frankenstein stitched together body parts: the result is awkward and stunted emotionally at best. But sometimes words just roll off your tongue and into the air in front of you and won't be swatted aside.

Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to begin my very first blog and my very first blog post at 1:30 AM.

I am a college student. Only starting my third year, already been a senior for a semester. I'm a Type A bitch when it comes to grades, or, rather, I used to be a Type A bitch when it came to grades, but then I had an epiphany: choosing to read Heinlein instead of Dostoevsky did not make me a bad person. Baking cookies for my friends rather than busting my butt studying for that 98.6% in Brit.Lit.II did not make me irresponsible. Sleeping the night before a test rather than staring at the popcorn ceiling of my dorm room reciting spanish verb conjugations for hours did not make me an idiot. It meant that I was a well-rounded (damn hyphen) individual. It meant that I had a life and that I wanted to keep it.

Such realizations are probably indubitably obvious to the rest of you, but I was honestly astonished. And very very relieved. My life is changed forever. For example, I now have time to attempt a blog. I am going to write about whatever I want to write about on a regular basis. Hell yes.