I totally didn't mean to cause any ruffled feathers with my tongue-in-cheek comment about John being a woman, since the whole "John is a woman" thing is playfully bandied around in fandom (personally, it's something I feel entirely indifferent towards). It's just that the scene with the advisor really struck me as one of the classic "women's struggle" scenes, and John cutting his hair to look less like a stupid sub, and--everything that liviapenn mentions as examples, actually.

I didn't reply to your reply because I thought ileliberte's reply was pretty much what I would've said, so I'm sorry if that led to further frustration.