Commentary: Let's hear it for Kathryn Bigelow

Oh, no, she didn't.

Someone called Kathryn Bigelow "The Transvestite of Directors." And here it is Women's History Month.

I suppose it's not really surprising.

Bigelow's film, The Hurt Locker -- a tense thriller about an Army bomb squad unit in Iraq -- is nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and oddsmakers say she looks poised to win. If so, it would make her the first female to win the director's race in the 82-year history of the Academy Awards.

That makes the gender politics game inevitable this year -- but not just because there's a female front-runner. There's also an irresistible story arc at work here: A lot of people view Bigelow as the chick who made a dude movie. Should she win based on her gender? Hell to the no. But might her gender influence Academy voters who love a good narrative? Sadly, yes. (Hey, I'd love it if the Oscar voting were based solely on merit. But come on. Marisa Tomei? Dances With Wolves? Whoopi Goldberg for Ghost but not The Color Purple?)

As a moviegoer, I can't say I'm pulling 100 percent for Bigelow over some of the other nominated directors. I really liked The Hurt Locker, and I'm glad it made it into the nomination field, but a few other movies wowed me more. I'd probably cast my vote for Inglourious Basterds; maybe Precious. Jury's still out; loved both of them.

That said, as a woman, I couldn't help but beam with pride if a broad finally broke into the boys' club winner's circle. (Bigelow is the fourth female director to be nominated, joining Sofia Coppola ( Lost in Translation) , Jane Campion ( The Piano) and Lena Wertmüller ( Seven Beauties) .

But apparently not all us gals feel the same about Bigelow and this particular glass ceiling.

The charming "transvestite" moniker came from writer Martha P. Nochimson, in Salon.com. In one breath, she writes that she doesn't begrudge the praise for Bigelow's depiction of urban war violence, and in another, she calls her "The Transvestite of Directors."

Why? She reasons that while directors like Nora Ephron ( Julie & Julia) and Nancy Meyers ( It's Complicated) can't seem to get any Oscar love, Bigelow is "masquerading as the baddest boy on the block to win the respect of an industry still so hobbled by gender-specific tunnel vision that it has trouble admiring anything but filmmaking soaked in a reduced notion of masculinity."

Whoa, there, Martha.

It's fine to blame Hollywood for its hard-on for explosions and male-centric themes, but to slap a sister because she didn't make the right kind of girl flick? She's a transvestite because she didn't make Julie & Julia, which frankly could've used better direction (namely the entire "Julie" half)?

Idiotic. And a lousy, unwarranted woman-on-woman attack that could have come right out of the Mean Girls' "burn book." (It's also an insult to transvestites, but that's another column.)

Yes, The Hurt Locker erupts with volcanic testosterone -- but why should it matter more because a woman made the movie? Men have been directing chick flicks for years, and no one bats an eye.

By the way, Bigelow's ex-husband and Oscar competitor, James Cameron, gets lauded as a filmmaker who makes great female heroines ( Aliens, Terminator) . So it's peachy-keen when men imbue female characters with a certain amount of ass-kicking testosterone. But why get in a dither because a woman wants to explore masculinity?

A surface reading of The Hurt Locker might lead some to dismiss it as a big pile of rough-and-tumble guy stuff. But I saw something deeper. So did The New York Times' A.O. Scott, who described one of many memorable scenes: "[Anthony] Mackie and [Jeremy] Renner trade stomach punches in a ritualistic display of affectionate aggression that looks as if it will end in either sex or murder, and Ms. Bigelow's insight is that the tense comradeship of soldiers rests, often tenuously, on barely suppressed erotic and homicidal impulses."

I've never been in combat, but the scene felt brutally authentic to me.

So, all you Martha Nochimsons out there, go ahead and blame Hollywood -- they're the ones who celebrate movies that glorify male chest-beating.

But don't blame the woman who's busted out of the rom-com ghetto. If Bigelow does manage to make history Sunday, toast her with a whiskey shot and a Cosmo chaser.