[Lush]

Lalwende pointed out that this for many people, this is a give-and-take kind of situation. A lot of shallow writing has accused LotR in particular of being a 'sexist' book. Therefore, it is natural that some people should react vehemently, or dismissively when women are brought up in almost any critical context.

I also think that there is a lot of juvenile appropriation of the Fellowship out there. When Lalaith wrote "but there couldn't be any females in the Fellowship because the girls at my high school hate getting their clothes dirty," this resonated with me. I think LotR is on the cusp of serving both the literary voraciousness of discerning readers, and the needs of children who are just beginning to delve into this "good yarn" and all that it has to offer. I think this seeming duality often leads to problems of perception, wherein gender is twisted and assumed to be something it isn't.

I have my own reservations regarding Tolkien's dealing with gender, and sometimes Tolkien the man does blend with Tolkien the writer in my understanding, though I would not dismiss the gendered aspects of his work outright because of the letters Raynor helpfully quoted. But the more I look at fairy-tale, and the more I look at the all-male Fellowship, the more I become convinced that this particular entity is, in itself, more gender-neutral than it appears on the surface. All of the bonding, camaraderie, and shared responsibility, in my opinion could have easily occured within a mixed-gender setting. Tolkien did not choose it to be so, and while that is his prerogative, I do not see the gender of the members of the Fellowship to be a commentary on gender in and of itself.

Am I making myself any clearer? Or should I wrote more during daylight hours, on a clearer head?