[LMB] OT: Gender; new question

[Azalais Aranxta]

On Mon, 26 Nov 2007, Mandos Mitchinson wrote:

> > But I have a question: do you all identify only, or most,
> > with protaganists who are the same gender as yourself?

As an adult, no.  As a child, I read a lot of SF because it was
(this was the 1970s, remember?) one of the few genres that
provided me with female characters to read about--there was all
that 1970s feminist SF, Joanna Russ and Pamela Sargent and LeGuin
and Millett and MZB, plus Heinlein and Asimov and James Schmitz
and so many more.  I grew up wanting to grow up to be like Telzey
Amberdon and Dio Ridenow and Maureen and Gillian, and recognising
that I was already a lot like Arkady Darell.  I wanted to be a
Bene Gesserit or a Keeper or a Renunciate or a Stardancer.

I would watch movies or TV about men, but I didn't like things
with no women in them.  I loved the original Star Trek and the
James Bond movies because even if the heroes and leads were male,
there were women in them who got to be beautiful, intelligent and
effing dangerous.

As a child I wouldn't watch anything with no girls in it.  This
is why I didn't get into Age of Sail until I was an adult.  I
basically didn't ever watch any war movies or cop shows until I
started writing slash.

> > People talk a lot about providing boys with books about boys,
> > and girls with books about girls, but it seems to me that I
> > always had no trouble identifying with the main character,
> > whoever he or she was, and still do.

Well, like I said, for me it mattered much more when I was a kid.
As an adult I can imagine what it would be like to be a man, or a
boy, and I can enjoy stories about any combination of genders.
But as a young girl I didn't particularly like stories which
didn't at least have strong female supporting characters.  I
wanted to see people who looked like me in the worlds I was
reading and writing about even if they weren't the main
characters.

On the other hand, people make a big deal about children playing
with dolls the same race as themselves.   As a child I wanted
dolls of every race and was irritated when my parents denied me
the friends of Barbie and Ken who did not happen to be white.
The real world had people of every colour in it, Star Trek had
people of every colour in it, why did my doll box only have white
people in it?

~malfoy :)
****************************************************************
Azalais Aranxta (~malfoy)
ataniell93 on LiveJournal and Vox
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/malfoymadness

"I know the true world, and you know I do. But we needn't let it
think we all bow down." --Christopher Fry