Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

I wrote this in response to a comment left on the LJ version of "I can do things," and I thought it was worth putting in its own post. I've added some clarifications and expansions in italics.

Commenter:

I don't understand this part... Are you trying to determine for yourself that your life is interesting despite being a woman? Or just putting together a case to debunk the notion that women generally have less interesting lives than men?

If it helps either way, I'm a dude and my life is boring ass. I can list ten women easily whose lives are more interesting than mine and whom I envy. You would be on that list.

Neither, and you've got the wrong meaning for interesting. I'm not talking "interesting times" or "climbing K2" but the things which society values, and "things women do" aren't on that list. (Though thank you for the compliment!)

It's why Harry Potter is about Harry Potter and his friends Ron and Hermione, rather than Hermione Potter, the Girl Who Lived, and her friends Ginny and Harry. (And why I couldn't think of another Gryffindor girl in the trio's year.) It's why 90% of movies (or more) have male leads (and why movies starring women are "chick flicks.")

It's why having Toph and Katara being lead roles was so important: aside from their being brownof color, (the importance of which I don't wish to minimize, because it's very important, but it's outside the scope of this mini essay) they were both female characters. It showed girls (and boys) that girls can kick ass, too. That there's more to female characters than sidekick or romantic interest. Even Azula was an amazing character. ATLA has five female characters, who each have personal goals and personalities that don't revolve around getting a boyfriend. That's so incredibly rare. (One could argue the Mai-Zuko plotline, or the Katara-Aang, or any of Katara's crushes, really, but let's be honest here: it's part of being a teenager, which these kids are. Katara's main goal is not to marry Aang; it's to stop the Fire Lord from taking over the world, with a side order of revenge.)

These are things which nobody explicitly says, except when they do. "Girl stuff" is icky and bad. Boys are told "don't play with girl toys," for example. Even without that explicitness, when girls grow up in a society that favors male lead characters, that doesn't put female characters in lead roles in books or movies because boys won't watch them; when girls see themselves relegated to the sidelines -- if they're visible at all -- in favor of boys' stories, we learn that we're less important. That our stories are less important. That we don't matter.

And that's why I'm doing this: to teach myself that, yes, dammit, women's stories matter. MY story matters. And to provide an example, if anyone finds it.

One of the problems with meeting people via the internet is that you get to read some of their most personal thoughts, and support them through hard times, and congratulate them in times of joy, but your knowledge of that person only goes back to when you first said, "OMG, I love your fanart! Can I friend you?" (Oh, the days of small-lj, when there were only a few hundred thousand users.)

I've never really thought my life has been particularly interesting. Whether that's true, or because I've internalized the notion that women's stories, women's lives are less important, I don't know. But I'm going to sit down and go through my life story, in varying levels of detail, because I need to confront my inability to do introspection head on. And maybe convince myself that my story is, if not interesting, then at least important, because I am a human. I'll admit up front that some of the posts will be locked, and others are likely to be filtered. Some things I don't feel up to broadcasting to the world.

And maybe, if I have a list of the high points, I'll be able to find something for my author bio.
( The last 34 years in a largish nutshell )

It was really hard for me to type some of that. Parts felt like bragging.

So, there's this spec fic writer I met through the Outer Alliance (who, as it turns out, lived up the road from me but just had to move to Raleigh.) She had a reading at Chapel Hill Comics, and another gal from the OA came up from Charlotte. We chatted some, I thought she was cool, and we're twitter buddies now. She's the gal I'm going to ReaderCon with.

So Jaym wanted to organize an NC writer's meetup, because there are, like, a million of us here, and she made a blog post about it. I left a comment with my preferred day.

Then in my facebook this morning, there's a friend request from the other person who commented. I was like, wait, is that ... holy crap, it is.

A girl I was BFFs with in middle school, who moved away suddenly in 7th or 8th grade, and I heard from once or twice afterward, found me through a comment on a blog post. After 20+ years. Man. The internet, it is mighty.

I'm growing slowly convinced that at some point, all geek(ish) circles overlap. Or writerly.

So, with the 90-minute commute I've had the last month or so, I've been going through my CDs and listening to ones I haven't in ages, or just don't listen to enough in general.

Yesterday it was Pretty Hate Machine, which I played the hell out of in high school (that and the Downward Spiral.)

Sitting in my car with Nine Inch Nails blasting out the speakers, it was almost like I was 16 again. I could see why the younger me was so drawn to it, and look at that little bit of history like an interesting rock I picked up off the ground. I mean, damn but Trent Reznor spoke to my teen angst. (What? I had angst as a teen! I just never really thought I did at the time, I guess.)

Is that what people who associate X with Y feel when they experience X again? It's a completely new thing for me.