The Gift of MANNING UP ALREADY

In an effort to be service-y here at the start of the New Year, and the New Decade and all that, I'd like to go ahead and recommend that all the female characters on General Hospital get themselves to a bookstore and buy themselves a copy of Gavin DeBecker's The Gift of Fear. Like, immediately.

Because REALLY. All the male characters on this show need to Slow Their Roll. And the women need to stop encouraging their ridiculous stalking and calling it "romantic" a la, it's only stalking if I don't think you're cute! Tee hee! NO. It's really making me mad.

Those of you who know my IRL, I have probably belaboured the point already about how this is a Really Important Book for women to read. All women. Including fictional women who let pushy mobsters sway them by superduper romantic stalking tactics.

Really!

DeBecker's book is brilliant and important and seriously go buy it now. His main thesis -- and he knows of what he speaks, he's a private security expert -- is that fear is gift (hence, you know, the title) honed through eons of evolution. It's a tool to help keep you safe. Feel creeped out by that dude that holds the door open for you? Blow him off. Be rude to his face. The book includes the so, so brilliant I want to find him and kiss him line: "Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them." OMG srsly.

It's not that DeBecker is encouraging you to be afraid of everything. He just wants you to be aware, so when you are afraid, you know to pay attention, and to act on what your instinct is trying to tell you. Another (paraphrased) favorite line? "If you're worried that someone's going to break into your apartment with a knife? That's good news! Because someone isn't already in your apartment with a knife!" I am neurotic. This book helps calm me.

And so, my boyfriend DeBecker gets super ranty on the topic of Hollywood portraying stalking as romantic, because then everyone's gauge is off for what is normal and acceptable. I know this is a problem that not only General Hospital faces (think of how creepy the Lloyd Dobler boom box scene would be if instead of a rom com, Say Anything was a horror movie, I mean, I love Lloyd too, but it's all about MIXED MESSAGES). And Bob Guza in particular is a big offender, since he sure likes the whole woman being relentlessly pursued by a hero, I mean mobster, I mean hero, oh wait we're in love! nevermind.

Sonny Corinthos, I'm looking at you.

And so, Olivia, we are totally in a fight. When the dude who knocked you up when you were a kid and then fell Madly in Love with your cousin? (But everyone seems to have forgotten that now that she got shot twice?) keeps showing up and bothering you even though you repeatedly ask him not to?

The answer is not take a glass of champagne and simper.

Just look at her smirk. ARGH.

That answer is to firmly tell him NO. Don't teach him that after 72 times of asking you, you're finally going to sleep with him. Don't you see how that can set a bad precedent for the teens you so dearly hope watch this show? I mean seriously! Do something other than simper. It's ridiculous and insulting and it makes me really mad. Cut it out.

My Wolverine Action Figure considers DeBecker a personal hero, although he's mad that I won't let him send any more love letters to Jean Grey. It's over Wolvy!