April 17, 2014 7:37 PM BST
I nearly wrote this about heroines..but the words don't matter, the thought does. Many of us here are Tgirls, trannies, transvestites, cross dressers and some of us want to go all the way and actually become the woman we think that we are.
I do know from my own experiences that many of us deny who and what we are. And that this extends to the books we read (let alone the films we watch and the games we play). Many times we overcompensate and become more macho than we really are. I found it ironic reading an article about beards on the BBC,which postulated that the popularity of beards has some kind of ratio. All I know is that I had a beard for years,and was once asked in an interview by a head hunter what I was hiding....Pauline you silly man I almost said.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27023992
Anyways enough of that. When you first started reading books or later when you really got into reading...who were your female heroes or heroines in literature and who did you want to be?
hugs
Pauline xxx
April 18, 2014 1:07 AM BST
Moll Flanders - strong woman, fought against the odds and beat the system. The eighteenth century is a gold mine of female literary heroines - though Moll was created by a man (Daniel Defoe) xxx
April 19, 2014 4:20 AM BST
Brunnhilde, from Wagner's 'Ring' Cycle. >(:-)
April 19, 2014 2:20 PM BST
Gertrude Bell, St Margaret Clitheroe, Margaret Thatcher.
I know they are not characters in fiction, but their lives were more fantastic than fiction.
This post was edited by helen wade at April 19, 2014 2:22 PM BST
April 24, 2014 2:50 AM BST
There's a book 'The Privilege of the Sword' by Ellen Kushner that I love. The heroine in that is trained to be a swordsman. It combines my boyish desire to be Zorro with my girlish desire to be...well girlish. I'm also an admirer of Alice from Lewis Carroll's books. I often quote the line about giving herself very good advice (but very rarely following it) as a personal mission statement.
I never went the whole route and grew a beard, but I did have a moustache for several years and both my masculine and feminine side are in full agreement that it was a mistake.