I was just thinking about how when I traveled abroad to film festivals, I had various male intellectuals lecture me about why you "can't" make movies like I make today. Very nice men...very smart. They were just trying to educate me.

A Spanish filmmaker told me that you can't make movies like this after Word War II. He then went on to explain the history of cinema to me, mentioning Bazin, etc. A French philosopher talked about Simone de Beauvoir being such old news in France, or something like that.

The filmmaker who talked about WWII - well, in a sense he was right. Because it was after WWII that cinema really cracked down on women being able to write films in Hollywood or even to write for women's magazines. All the female writers were fired and men were hired.

As for feminism being outdated because now men and women are equal - well, that's one point of view, but my lived female experience says otherwise. These men twisted themselves in knots to tell me why I "can't" make the kinds of films I make.

It was framed as if they were educating me, but actually it was a prohibition - you better not do it, you're stepping out of line, you will be policed, you will be stopped. And they were friends of mine.

They liked the part of my work that's about showcasing female beauty and desirability - the rest was problematic for them. I'm assuming it's because it came too close to being "cinema." They were educated enough to know what I was drawing on, and to be intimidated by it.

So basically they were saying, "You can't do this. But if you do, it's not cinema." I've gotten that for years from male critics: suggesting that what I do is amusing, but it's not cinema. The first time I heard it was from my dad, another cinephile.

I never really argue; I just give the astonished Buster Keaton look. But I'm taking it all in. And I *am* learning. What I'm learning is not how to conform, but how to persist.

The part that's most painful and that I actually nearly forgot about (because I wanted to forget) is that these lectures were...kind of sexual. In the sense that they were trying to teach me, mentor me, make me grateful, make me fall in love.

It's not the sexual attention that's painful, but the fact that they did actually see me as...kind of stupid. The best I would get is that my choices are "intuitive" and "unconscious." The muse accidentally creates meaning, and the men have to explain her work to her.

I had this hilarious exchange with one filmmaker (our shared language was French) where I said, "Je suis en fait assez intelligent." and he said, "Tu es adorable!" And that was that!