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Comment by gvjddbnvdrbv | Hacker News Reader

You should read UKLG's Earthsea. They are objectively quite simple books (targeted at teens) but they are fantastic.

As a side note in my opinion this series is an example of how the current phase of thinking someone has to be of a group to understand the group is wrong. The female author brilliantly captures a young male's journey towards a strong, compassionate, brave and very masculine manhood with all the mistakes along the way. As I grew up (and indeed still grow up) I often reflect on what Ged would do at different phases of his growth. So essentially the female UKLG is guiding me in my life. (Or maybe men and women are even more similar than I'm accounting for and a young woman's journey is just that similar to a man's).

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> the current phase of thinking someone has to be of a group to understand the group is wrong.

> Or maybe men and women are even more similar than I'm accounting for and a young woman's journey is just that similar to a man's

You're almost there; the point is not that you have to be in a group to understand a group, but that because of the power structure some are much more visible and celebrated than others. A female writer is more likely to be able to see what the male journey is like (due to thousands of examples) than a male writer, who is in turn more likely to project his own prejudices than actually find out what it might be like.

(In turn, there have been a number of literary fights lately about white female authors doing terribly bad racial stereotypes of their nonwhite characters...)

> You're almost there; the point is not

I take issue with this statement. It's essentially a variant of the No True Scotsman. I constantly see the OP's statement asserted, in various contexts, by various parties, in the same way he worded it.

I don't doubt that you've seen a more refined version of it. "People" are a fairly heterogeneous bunch, and when it comes to race/gender stuff I constantly see nuanced (whether or not agreeable) arguments filter out from academic circles into the general public and to activists, where they're distorted or simplified.

You're absolutely welcome to raise a more refined version of the argument and point out where it's more valid - I think that's a healthy contribution to any discussion. But you don't get to unilaterally assert that the version of the argument that is constantly being put forward ... isn't being put forward, or isn't "the real" argument.

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