Badass!

Disclaimer: the two women I refer to here were really perfectly reasonable, but I like to exaggerate. No haterade.

Know this: I find it infuriating that otherwise intelligent people cannot seem to discuss gender without sounding like rejects from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. (The ladies want your money! They want to get married! Men are scared of commitment! And we’re dumb! Because we have penises! Am I right, guys?)

Even so, I found myself doing this very thing, albeit in a small way, on a friend’s blog the other night.

The post in question is a bit hard to describe, as it covers a lot of ground. But to drastically oversimplify: it’s about the fact that dark, realistic movies can be far more frightening than any horror movie; and the best horror fiction doesn’t necessarily require supernatural elements, because our own lives are rife with events that can turn horrific on a dime.

I found so much to respond to that I wasn’t sure where to begin, but I did want to say something. (Do I ever not?) Also, my pal began his post with a reminiscence about taking his high school girlfriend to see “Deliverance.” She was not impressed. And therein lay the seed of my comment:


“[It’s been] my experience that people of the straight male persuasion are often drawn to very dark movies involving warfare, violent crime, and general bad stuff [and] yada yada yada...”

I prefaced this by admitting that yes, I was generalizing, but that my thoughts were based on my own experience, and your mileage may vary.

Response from a subsequent female commenter? “You’re generalizing.”

Yes, I think I said as much. But continue!

“I’m a woman and my favorite movies are ‘Dr. Meat’s House of Puppy Rape’ and ‘Toddler Massacre IV’ (which is waaay better than ‘Toddler Massacres I through III inclusively.) Basically, I am badass. But if you’d rather watch Jennifer Aniston crying in a pink bridesmaid’s dress, I guess that’s fine.”

Okay, she didn’t actually say that. But it was implied!

So I reiterated that my comment was merely based on my own experience. I added that—in my experience—men tend to gravitate toward these difficult, violent movies, whereas women just tolerate them. (I didn’t add that sometimes women tolerate these movies because of the men. In other words, boys, we sometimes feign enthusiasm for stuff you like because you look good and we want to do things to you. I hope you don’t think you invented this strategy.)

Later, another female commenter weighed in. “I guess I must be a dude because I like yucky stuff,” she wrote. “Furthermore, I’m badass.”

Sigh.


Never one to let anything slide, I announced that I, as a non-badass, was off to watch “SATC2” and cry in my raw-cookie-dough ice cream, which I planned to eat directly from the container with a spoon. (Because the girls drown their sorrows by eating, dawg!)

Maybe I over-reacted (because the womenz be emotional, bro!) But I really, really hate being made to feel un-badass. Because I’m pretty badass.

***

If you were a high school guy when “Deliverance” came out, you missed Vietnam by the skin of your teeth, and were just a bit too old for subsequent conflicts. I know several men of this generation, and while they are each quite different from one another, they do share similar taste in books and movies. Dark stuff. War stuff. Man against nature stuff. Man against The System stuff. Man against Man stuff. Your Catch-22’s, your Cuckoo’s Nests. Anything in which a man is tested to the very limits of his being by his own environment.

It might just be the case that certain men are built for this stuff, and if they don’t encounter it in Life they look for it in Art.

Or, they might just be badass.

It doesn’t matter. Because really, none of us are vacuum-packed. When you sit down to watch a movie or read a book or listen to a piece of music, you do bring your gender with you. You also bring your age, your ethnicity, your religion, your socioeconomic status and your sexual orientation. You bring your scars, your heartbreak, and the things you thought you’d hidden away from yourself. You bring along the person you were at six, and at sixteen, and at sixty-six. We all contain multitudes.

The sad fact of life is that everyone, of all genders and backgrounds – even down to the sunniest Mary Sunshine at the PTA bake sale -- has known real horror and has been to some dark places. Some of us want to escape all of that when we go to the movies; others don’t.

But if you really want to prove you’re badass, read a newspaper on any given day in any given year. Then decide to go on living anyway. If you can do that, you’re badass. You are one badass motherfucker, girlfriend.