(no subject)
One of my favorite series of books as a kid were the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede. It had everything that tickled my early adolescent fancy-- a princess who could kick ass, a sassy witch, talking cats, a "techno-geek" magician... oh yes, and dragons. There were a lot of those.
One of the things that really got me excited, though, was that the proclaimed King of Dragons-- who was said princess's good friend-- was actually female. When one of the characters was confused as to why a female dragon would take the role of king and not queen, the princess offered this explanation: "'King of Dragons' is the name of a job. It has nothing to do with gender."
Needless to say, this blew my young mind as well as got me thinking "well, why not?" After all, it doesn't seem to be written in stone that a king has to be a man-- it's just sort of implied, as far as I can tell. But still, why should a king always be a man? We're pretty progressive and open-minded now-- isn't it time to do away with those types of gender roles?
I'm sure you guys have figured out by now that I'm going somewhere with this. You're right, and so I'm sure you can imagine how utterly ecstatic I was when I read this particular story. Just... that is absolutely awesome. Hell yes.
One of the things that really got me excited, though, was that the proclaimed King of Dragons-- who was said princess's good friend-- was actually female. When one of the characters was confused as to why a female dragon would take the role of king and not queen, the princess offered this explanation: "'King of Dragons' is the name of a job. It has nothing to do with gender."
Needless to say, this blew my young mind as well as got me thinking "well, why not?" After all, it doesn't seem to be written in stone that a king has to be a man-- it's just sort of implied, as far as I can tell. But still, why should a king always be a man? We're pretty progressive and open-minded now-- isn't it time to do away with those types of gender roles?
I'm sure you guys have figured out by now that I'm going somewhere with this. You're right, and so I'm sure you can imagine how utterly ecstatic I was when I read this particular story. Just... that is absolutely awesome. Hell yes.