I work really hard in my media consumption to make sure that I find films, books and other artwork that feature or at least include women as fully-realized, self-motivated characters.

It’s not easy, and it’s getting harder.

I’ve just never seen any reason at all to ignore half the human experience. That’s what I watch movies and read books for, even as non-social as I am – to partake in human experiences and ideas that I otherwise would not get to learn about.

I don’t feel like I should get a cookie or deserve congratulations for this. I feel like those who don’t do this are shortchanging themselves and lead a very desolate cultural life.

And truly, if you are not interested in watching a story about a woman, or have no women heroines or those you admire then I probably (almost certainly) want absolutely nothing to do with you. It means you are a misogynist prick in the most common case, or at the least culturally blinkered and thus also uninteresting to me.

When I was in an early grade, a classmate noticed me reading a Judy Blume book. I was already a much more advanced reader than this (was reading adult textbooks and National Geographic in first grade), but it was in the classroom so I picked it up.

It was good; I kept reading it. Then a classmate said to me, “That’s a girl’s book.”

So I said, “That’s good, because I like girls.” (Was not affirming a hetero orientation, just meant this in a general sense.)

Note I had not read any feminist theory then, and certainly no one around me in redneck North Florida would admit to being a feminist. I likely knew the word even then, but probably only had a vague idea of its true meaning.

However, I was already and always have been a pragmatic contrarian, and would frequently call out things I thought idiotic which lead to many fights and visits to the principal.

This time the classmate shut up, not really knowing what to say, and I kept reading the book.

Who knows how much is nature and how much is nurture? But I sure was at an early age ignoring and refuting bullshit that didn’t seem correct, and that really kept me distant from my peers, despised by many teachers, and I am sure made my parents contemplate burying me in the back yard.