It says that you are male and have the privilege of, if you want to, read about people who get to do stuff without ever needing to leave the safe haven of your own gender.
True, so far. It was also true, without going into too much more detail of my deeply messed-up mindset at the time, that 'safe haven' is not precisely how I'd describe it. Truly safe havens don't have violent and volatile guards roaming the perimeter to intercept anybody who looks like straying. Not needing to leave was certainly a privilege; having cold reasons and burning unreasons to fear doing so was not.
This is admittedly not having it half so bad as growing up a girl, and getting the worse end of both bargains at the same time. Still, I think it's worth teasing the gender-policing aspect from the option of inertia, here. They didn't, and don't, feel very similar at all. At that time, even for a boy of my age, I'd internalized some pretty unfortunate and toxic stuff.
Seeing the world through the eyes of Lessa of Pern and, on a much more subtle level which I scarcely noticed at the time, Le Guin's Ged and Tenar - well, changes came of it. Quite a number of people on these memorial threads have credited Pern with getting them out of their early teens alive. I don't know as I'd go that far. But it might have had just a bit to do with getting me out of there fit to live.
The only thing I want to add along this particular line is that I also identified much more strongly and instinctively with Lessa than with most male protagonists, either - and that Lessa, brilliant and great-hearted and wonderful in so many ways, is not really a particularly nice person.
no subject
True, so far. It was also true, without going into too much more detail of my deeply messed-up mindset at the time, that 'safe haven' is not precisely how I'd describe it. Truly safe havens don't have violent and volatile guards roaming the perimeter to intercept anybody who looks like straying. Not needing to leave was certainly a privilege; having cold reasons and burning unreasons to fear doing so was not.
This is admittedly not having it half so bad as growing up a girl, and getting the worse end of both bargains at the same time. Still, I think it's worth teasing the gender-policing aspect from the option of inertia, here. They didn't, and don't, feel very similar at all. At that time, even for a boy of my age, I'd internalized some pretty unfortunate and toxic stuff.
Seeing the world through the eyes of Lessa of Pern and, on a much more subtle level which I scarcely noticed at the time, Le Guin's Ged and Tenar - well, changes came of it. Quite a number of people on these memorial threads have credited Pern with getting them out of their early teens alive. I don't know as I'd go that far. But it might have had just a bit to do with getting me out of there fit to live.
The only thing I want to add along this particular line is that I also identified much more strongly and instinctively with Lessa than with most male protagonists, either - and that Lessa, brilliant and great-hearted and wonderful in so many ways, is not really a particularly nice person.