Hmmm. On the one hand, I agree with you completely about the usefulness and importance of role models for girls and young women, in both real life and the media. I also agree with you that (most) stories lacking any female characters are annoying and absurd. (I read a nonfiction history book a while back, published in... let me check... 1997, which really got to me on that level. Sure, guy, maybe the limited roles of women make them largely irrelevant to your thesis, but they were still there, and at the very least you might remember you're writing about men with wives who got arrested two days after they did. Three women mentioned in the entire index, and two of them because he was quoting from their contemporary accounts. Sheesh.) Uhhh... where was I?

Oh, right. I agree with you about all of that. However, it really gets my back up whenever anyone, anywhere starts making assertions about gender and its importance to identity or personality. My gender is not all that important a part of my personality. It's really, really not.

I would rather read about or watch a male character who I have something else in common with than a female character who I don't, because gender is very, very, very low in my hierarchy of significant commonalities. I just don't want that character to be living in some sort of weird men-only alternate universe.

(Note, this is Cee speaking. Dee, if she ever actually used the journal, would agree with you 100%, with the exception of the sex. Speaking of which, I haven't addressed that, but I'm running low on time, so never mind.)