Lush, you seem to be making this as difficult as possible, but maybe it's just for the sake of encouraging more posts. If that is your intention, then you have succeeded.
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Originally Posted by the phantom
No matter what type of book the human is in, a human is a human and male and female are male and female and thus real world rules apply to humans in books unless the author says otherwise.
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Originally Posted by Lush
What rules in particular are these?
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Stuff like humans have two eyes, two ears, two legs, two arms, one mouth, one nose, they bleed when you cut them, the males are larger, the females bear children, etc....
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But if we are not to treat a Balrog in a literalist fashion, why should we treat the gender of the Fellowship's members in the same way?
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Balrogs don't exist. Males and females do. That is a big difference. I can't explain it any simpler than that.
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I just think people ought to step back from their regular points of reference when addressing fairy tale
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No, that should not be the general rule. People should step back from their regular points of view only when addressing a particular thing within the fairy tale that is itself fantasy.
If Aragorn sits down on a chair, it is a chair as it exists in the real world. It doesn't matter that it is a fantasy story in the case of a chair! Fantasy doesn't mean that we need to reconsider everything we know, it just means that the author has added things that we don't know.