Link: https://lithub.com/how-ursula-k-le-guin-channeled-her-environmentalism-into-fiction/

In the 1960s and 1970s, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote speculative fiction shaped by her interests in environments and ecologies, her pacifist anarchist feminism, and her anti-Vietnam War activism. A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), one of the great fantasy novels and still a widely read classic of young adult literature that helped define the category, is about a young wizard coming of age, learning to control his powers, and trying to understand all his relations, including plants, animals, the earth, and other people.

I grew up reading a lot of her books, and I think I related to them in as straight, white male a way as possible. I don't know how many times I read Wizard of Earthsea and kept imagining Ged as white, even though he was brown. [I'm not alone, either, in Tales of Earthsea, an animated movie, Ged is white.]

I also remember reading a gender bender called Found Wanting where an adrogynous character becomes a woman at the end. I was both disgusted and betrayed, because I hadn't picked up at all on that the character was just adrogynous, I just assumed they were male. I was also pretty typically deep into my gender identity back then.

And I'm pretty sure I read Left Hand of Darkness, but I have no memory at all of any gender stuff. Probably just went right the hell over my head.

I think the temptation an author might have is that "my work is going to change people's minds", but I think the best you can practically hope for is to provide stories for people who otherwise wouldn't have stories, wouldn't have themselves reflected, and that can be a powerful thing.

She's one of my favorite writers. As a young girl who loved science fiction, I felt I had to deal with some level of misogyny or a complete lack of female characters in everything I read.

Ursula was my savior, because even though many of her novels center a male main character, the view of the world is balanced and nuanced. What I'm saying is I don't feel put in a box and degraded when I read her stories as opposed to some by very notable authors.

Strange that you didn't pick up on that in Left Hand of Darkness, it was fairly central to the story. Might have been a long time ago. All the characters are either disgusted or fascinated by the main character because he's a man all the time and not just when he's horny. Impregnated women are like the peak ideal body for them.

You're right that stories need time to settle, to let their nuance sink in. A good author knows how to show you their ideas. She did an excellent job of it.

One of the few things I've never forgiven myself for is how lost I got in the most superficial wish fulfilment that fantasy novels had given me as a young white boy. People complain how insidiuously AI writes youtube videos to flatter their audience, but that's exactly how this genre operates.

I don't need to tell you the script, but it always goes like this: unremarkable modest boy witth no real skills to speak of eventually grows into an extremely powerful and respected member of society after saving the world and getting the girl. The end.

I know Joseph Campbell can pretty it up and make it some deep internal journey and all that horseshit, but I read it because I wanted to be strong, important, and special, and wanted being a boy to be my ticket to that.

LeGuin probably realized that the guys at Del Rey, raised on Robert E Howard, weren't going to publish a book with a female lead, so she started with male leads so dopes like me would buy it.

Maybe it's time to revisit LeGuin and see what I missed that was staring me in the face the entire time.

AI really does take our biases and double down.

What you describe is one of the big reasons I could never get into fantasy when all the books recommended to me feature women as evil authorities or love interests. Except George R.R. Martin, may he live long enough to complete his series. Either way, I can see how those tropes are unhealthy for any young minds.

If you followed the sad puppy/hugo award controversy back in... 2015ish? (I don't want to look it up) it signals just how biased the genre has and can still be toward women. Neil Stephenson caught shit for Seveneves (another great book that centers women.) But I ramble...

Le Guin holds up, and she's the kind of author you can read over and over, getting a different kind of story every time.

You might find Carriger's The Heroine's Journey useful. Really shows that the Journey is a thing, and how to do it. A useful--well, not antidote, as the book isn't trying to overthrow Campbell. Just good to get a different form out there. She even goes into interweaving hero's and heroine's journeys.

What? Why do women need a journey? They just need to realize that they are the prize!--Joseph Campbell

I did see a video on that book and am excited to read it.