Yes, I know well the "Rock music is of the devil" stuff as well as the "fantasy and scifi and possibly fiction in general is of the devil" stuff and the "women should be quiet and never voice their opinions and should want a husband and babies" stuff. That was the community I grew up in too.
I didn't realize I was bisexual within the past couple of years (although I'm still somewhat more attracted to men, though that may change since I'm only just discovering that part of myself). I didn't even realize that it was okay as a woman to be sexual at all (in spite of a very active fantasy life) until college.
This resonates a lot with me. Scifi and fantasy totally saved me. Although, I grew up with scifi. My dad used to read Heinlein juveniles and watch Star Trek and Star Wars with me. But once we moved to the more conservative, fundamentalist community and I started going to an awful school full of bullies (both peers and adults) and hyper-conservative viewpoints where my questioning nature was seen as bad, stories were the only way I got through. Reading and making up stories in my head about the things I read and watched were the only way I survived. The crap I went through didn't matter because in my head I got to be a Jedi or a Starfleet captain.
I didn't exactly have access to a vast range of things since I was in a country with very little in the way of this sort of stuff and in a community where you didn't read it at all. So what I had was the Star Wars EU, Heinlein, Tolkien, and a few other random things (mostly classics and therefore mostly male-centric). But reading was still my lifeline. And it didn't even occur to me in my fantasies that I couldn't be a Jedi or captain or wizard or whatever even though women weren't those things in the actual books (though Mara Jade and Leia were totally my role models).
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I didn't realize I was bisexual within the past couple of years (although I'm still somewhat more attracted to men, though that may change since I'm only just discovering that part of myself). I didn't even realize that it was okay as a woman to be sexual at all (in spite of a very active fantasy life) until college.
This resonates a lot with me. Scifi and fantasy totally saved me. Although, I grew up with scifi. My dad used to read Heinlein juveniles and watch Star Trek and Star Wars with me. But once we moved to the more conservative, fundamentalist community and I started going to an awful school full of bullies (both peers and adults) and hyper-conservative viewpoints where my questioning nature was seen as bad, stories were the only way I got through. Reading and making up stories in my head about the things I read and watched were the only way I survived. The crap I went through didn't matter because in my head I got to be a Jedi or a Starfleet captain.
I didn't exactly have access to a vast range of things since I was in a country with very little in the way of this sort of stuff and in a community where you didn't read it at all. So what I had was the Star Wars EU, Heinlein, Tolkien, and a few other random things (mostly classics and therefore mostly male-centric). But reading was still my lifeline. And it didn't even occur to me in my fantasies that I couldn't be a Jedi or captain or wizard or whatever even though women weren't those things in the actual books (though Mara Jade and Leia were totally my role models).