[Lush]

Hiya d. I'm posting this at a zillion words per minute, seeing as I'm stuck in the library again and I really want to go home, so if it makes zero sense don't hesitate to let me know.

I think it is fair to say that Tolkien probably never intended for women to have been part of the Fellowship. But what I was talking about is a general sense of the lack of importance of gender when it comes to the Fellowship's story. Thousands of female readers respond powerfully to the bonds between the males in the Fellowship, and I daresay that most of us can identify. As I wrote in my original post, I honestly don't care if in the 'real' world outside the page Tolkien was a man, who served in a war with other men. His own life and his own experiences and his own intentions can only take me so far. I don't doubt their importance. But, as I've already written, the process of reading and experiencing the book belongs to each individual reader, and cannot be taken away from us. Personally, the "maleness" of the Fellowship does not register with me anymore. I pay very close attention to gender specifics and the way they apply to the females that come up in LotR, but never to the males. Perhaps Tolkien would have never wished for me or someone like me to identify with members of the Fellowship. As Raynor pointed out, his views on women seemed to have been quite, *cough*, specific. But the story of the Fellowship has impacted and inspired me in such a way as to render his own views on gender and gender roles to be inconsequential to a reader such as myself.