It's neat reading things like that from the 1970s, as I feel like they often foresaw some of the culture of the now. The internet helps here; almost nobody (unless they know me in person) knows what gender I am, because it doesn't matter. Which is awesome.
Really, it's more freeing--I'm as masculine and as feminine as I want to be, except that's not even true; it's more that I'm me, and "masculinity" and "femininity" are simply external labels applied to make that make sense for other people.
To look at it from another angle, that's one of both the challenges and joys of writing science fiction and fantasy: our characters can be rebelling against established gender roles (Tamora Pierce gets a 72-point <3 for this) or can be living their own lives free of such ideas. In some sense, it allows a miniaturization of the struggles so many people face now since, in the end, so much of fantasy society is a reflection of our own postmodern struggle.
Whoa, someone threw my academic cloak over me when I wasn't watching. :D I'd better stop that before I write a term paper in comments...
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It's neat reading things like that from the 1970s, as I feel like they often foresaw some of the culture of the now. The internet helps here; almost nobody (unless they know me in person) knows what gender I am, because it doesn't matter. Which is awesome.
Really, it's more freeing--I'm as masculine and as feminine as I want to be, except that's not even true; it's more that I'm me, and "masculinity" and "femininity" are simply external labels applied to make that make sense for other people.
To look at it from another angle, that's one of both the challenges and joys of writing science fiction and fantasy: our characters can be rebelling against established gender roles (Tamora Pierce gets a 72-point <3 for this) or can be living their own lives free of such ideas. In some sense, it allows a miniaturization of the struggles so many people face now since, in the end, so much of fantasy society is a reflection of our own postmodern struggle.
Whoa, someone threw my academic cloak over me when I wasn't watching. :D I'd better stop that before I write a term paper in comments...