I've begun reading Stephanie Meyer's Twilight. Yes, the megabestseller; your Promiscuous Reader will read almost everything. Aside from the irony that the heroine/narrator announces at the outset she she's not "what anyone would call verbose" -- at the beginning of a 500-page book! -- it's going well enough. But something occurred to me.One of the early warning signs of gayness, everyone agrees, is feeling different from other children from a very early age. This is even cited as evidence for homosexuality's being somehow inborn. But Bella tells us right away that she didn't fit in, that she'd never found a place where she belonged. The Twilight books are huge bestsellers. Many thousands (millions?) of young women identify with Bella and her alienation. Many thousands (millions?) of readers also identified with the alienated, isolated Harry Potter. So what's unusual about feeling different? If anything, it's a sign of being just like everybody else.
(Image credit -- the whole story is posted there. Click on the image above to enlarge it and make it more readable.)
