If shweta_narayan didn't already have you friended I'd have to send her over here.
Oddly, one of the better handlings I've seen of a character is a wheelchair is in Disney's Kim Possible cartoon. (It doesn't hurt that the character's mom is a robotics whiz and has tricked his chair out in drastically cool ways.)
And yes, I agree with what you said as fiction and also as real life. No one ever told me I couldn't be an engineer or a pilot or a rower or an SF fan because I was a girl, but my gender (and accompanying socialization) has definitely influenced my reactions in all those things as well as people's reactions to me. And I was probably the multi-thousandth in all those things, not even the second - but it's also not a progression, always. Rowing is well on its way to being gender-balanced but I don't think there are many more girl engineers than when I was in school twenty years (*) ago.
*The compression of time, even as you're experiencing it, is one of the odder effects of aging. Not just years but even days seem shorter now.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-07-29 02:43 am (UTC)Oddly, one of the better handlings I've seen of a character is a wheelchair is in Disney's Kim Possible cartoon. (It doesn't hurt that the character's mom is a robotics whiz and has tricked his chair out in drastically cool ways.)
And yes, I agree with what you said as fiction and also as real life. No one ever told me I couldn't be an engineer or a pilot or a rower or an SF fan because I was a girl, but my gender (and accompanying socialization) has definitely influenced my reactions in all those things as well as people's reactions to me. And I was probably the multi-thousandth in all those things, not even the second - but it's also not a progression, always. Rowing is well on its way to being gender-balanced but I don't think there are many more girl engineers than when I was in school twenty years (*) ago.
*The compression of time, even as you're experiencing it, is one of the odder effects of aging. Not just years but even days seem shorter now.