Now, consider the state of my dander.

This evening, I have been forcibly brought to the conclusion that all the people I know who are 'even vaguely' feministy* disapprove of my tendency to sit on the floor.
To be more specific, they deplore my predilection of sitting on the floor by the arm chair** my boyfriend might be sitting in, on the rug I've been bitching about since day one, close to a fireplace that may or may not have a fire raging within.
It just doesn't look good, they say. You're the arrogant thespian, one said, charmingly I feel, so you know about the importance of visual leveling in revealing the inner working of the characters. Subconsciously, you clearly think he's more important than you, and I feel you have to come to realise this. And another, addressing Stuart, why the fuck do you get the seat? Why the fuck do you let*** her sit on the floor?
Left to my own devices, I will sit on the floor. Give me a room with a chair, a rug, a book and a fireplace and I'll be content curling up as close to the fire as possible until my skin starts to crackle and burn and I run out of reading material.
Once upon a time, I missed a General Studies exam when I was in college - definitely back in the day - in favour of staying home by the fire and reading, if memory serves, War and Peace. It was certainly more useful to me, even if I did get a U in the overall A-level. My bad.
Give me a room with just a chair, a rug and a book, and I'd suggest, now I've been trammelled into thinking about it, to look for me at knee height, with my legs curled under me and my back leaning against the chair.
Whether the chair is filled or not makes no difference, but since people have been objecting not so much to me sitting on the floor but to me quite clearly sitting at somebodys feet, I have to defend myself on another count. And it requires introspection. God, how dull. I am entirely too given to erecting emotional blockades at the drop**** of a hat to allow myself to do what I want to do without thinking about it first; actually, that's not quite right. I'm too impulsive for that to work out on any level, so let's go with the specifics. I'm quite a touchy-feely girl, something which, like, totally***** stems from my mother being a complete she-wolf who practices emotional terrorism like she's going for gold and not giving me enough affection/ attention as a child. But I don't really let myself indulge these touchy-feely tendancies.

Except, y'know, with people I'm boffing and have been boffing for long periods of time.

Six months or maybe thereabouts in******, and I've been sitting on the floor, by whichever chair he's sitting in - generally, lucky for me and my reluctance to be importune and ask him to do something for me, this is the one closest to the elecky fire - leaning against his legs with my arm round them.
Like a pet one of them said. My. Blood. Boiled.

It's nothing to do with my subconscious desire to subjugate myself to the Man and very much out dated social values. Nothing to do with my letting the side down, as one of them put it, as women like you she went on to say, would cast the whole feminist movement back a century. Oh yes, because of course the fact I like touching someone I care about isn't the real point here, it's quite clearly an expression of my very very well hidden inner belief that I'm just a girl and should defer to the man in my life.
Oh, please. If I'd been a cat, my hackles would have hit the rafters, and hissing would be a very real option. Instead, because I'm too emotionally stunted, I stayed sitting on the floor and took pity on Stuart who was looking utterly pissed off and uncomfortable and told them to get the fuck out. Postponing the rest of the argument for another day. Then felt the need to write it down before bedtime, because writing stuff down is how I get my head round things, it adds high definition to previously unclear footage. I can read what I've written and know exactly what I am all about.

It's all very much to do with the fact it just makes me feel better. Comfortable, comforted, whatever. And any discomforting psychological analysis of that can fuck right off. And I'm sure the rights of the subjugated female can be better protected elsewhere.
I'm very much of the newly encountered position that if I can touch him without curling up in his lap to do it, which strikes me as very unpractical if I were to do it for hours at a time and also a little too PDA (when company is present, of course) for my liking, and if I can do it while maintaining my habitual motion of eschewing furniture for the floor, then I'd call it more a previously totally unconscious act that makes me happy without compromising my previous stance regarding seating arrangements.



* Actually, make that, 'totally fucking bonkers'. We are not amused. Feminist was their word, not mine.
** It's a bachelor pad. Lots of arm chairs. Totally designed for the family that is the clan of the single male.
*** And I'm seeing just a smidgeon of hyposrisy right there. Huh, let me indeed.
**** Add 'tilt' and 'possible slip' to that.
***** American accent duly inserted for those last few words? Good good.
****** He's more romantic and less of a slut than I am, so he reckons its longer than I'm giving it. I'm also less decisive than he is, so I just sort of compromised and went for a half way mark that I'm not about to defend because no jury would acquit me if monogamy was, like, a decisive marker.