it truthfully should've gone further. if you dream of impenetrable art to those that are criticized in this scattered set of pieces, you might as well take it to the ends of the earth too. but that in no way means there's nothing of significance; there's quite a lot that makes perfect sense once you fall into it. if you're not insufferably boring, you'll love it for that.

there's odd tangents that are intimately endearing and squeamishly ambivalent; there's little direction, through which it obviously benefits from an inexhaustible jest (i'll never read it either), but that doesn't mean i don't still wish for it to mean just a bit more, have just a bit more of a strong point other than defense of a point so out of popular contention that it's virtually impenetrable non-academically—or something similar, because that doesn't feel like the right terminology. you just have to know that female and female are two different personages; one is a jinn, the other an inward/outward psyche.

the false misogyny here is so pedaled against because there is a fundamental unwillingness to hear. 'attacks on women' are good cover for anti-intellectual critiques, but that's not what andrea's doing in the slightest. her target, her focus of intent, is the acting object, the one whose life is defined in relation to, by others; of course everyone is female.

i still wish it reached something that could develop, could push a bit more stiffly, could mean more towards the experiences gleaned upon in this reading, of what it should mean or could mean to be female as we all are, what it could positively evolve and further unfold. there's simply more i wish it could connect together, though it does noticeably, unguardedly attempt it. and there's something of a dreamy, kindred similarity felt within, of a hopeful hopelessness that this is the best that can be done, and that her life that is loosely tapped into is one that can connect quite well to its artistic analyses of these character portraits and their fascinatingly off-putting inconsistencies. maybe all you can do is diverge and back up a point that will positively impact few.

i do want to critique the 'biological female' approach she takes at times, and the inconsistencies seen with the excursive yet decisive points she makes—though i usually know what she is meaning anyways, and her deeper look towards gynecology's origins in 'de-sexed' black women (and what that means for sex/gender as an ontological, sociological whole) is the most moving of them. in the same way that she cites a grotesque description of androgen insensitivity syndrome, there is blurriness to the biological, because the biological too, the scientific, is female; it is grafted upon rather than 'truly inate'. as much as many would like it to be an 'objective' lens, whatever the fuck that means, it is an object to be acted upon, rather than the subject; she is gleaned upon rather than from, her desires and movements are wielded by her self-righteous band of male practitioners as what they see from others upon themselves, and by her as what they want in and from her. the practitioners, actually, are female.

do we really hate being female though? there are at least three sub-questions within, relating escaping, embracing, the possibilities of it all if we are to take this as an ontological validity (sorry); and i don't think there are answers to them yet.

andrea does make a connection that reads life as female, more than simply the eve principle she cites:

Gender exists, if it is to exist at all, only in the structural generosity of strangers.
You do not get to consent to yourself, even if you might deserve the chance.

while this runs at breakneck, and it's jauntily exciting for it, there is a well of depth just here. and it's the first, and perhaps only, point in this collection that allows for a disclosure that this is all couched in a lively discussion of what it is to be real.

this is riders on the storm by the doors. we are born without direction, without inquiry, without eyes, and we spend our entire time alive hopelessly pretending that we have all three. how else could you be female if others cannot see you. all that is left when you die is what you meant to others, what you left behind for others to interpret and look upon; your female 'essence' is all you ever meant, because that's all you ever were. and while that can be terrifying, it is comforting knowing that that is why we craft fables and religions and laws, how we can reach what may be hidden conclusions and self-meaning in the art we observe, and why we try hopelessly, charmingly, to push against it.

or maybe i'm just projecting.