Was it more her situation that spoke out to you?.... Now if I was always alone, had a diverse set of skills that were largely self taught, and didn't trust easily, I would say I'd relate more to Rey.

Of course, it's true I grew up as an orphan living hand to mouth using my wits and talents alone to wrest an uneasy existence from a harsh environment, unable to trust anyone around me until one day...

--No, that's not my story.--

Look, the relatable bit in Rey's story is the same as the relatable bit in Luke's. It's the hero's journey part. The hero's journey is a metaphor for what happens in everyone's life. It's the story of going through adolescence as we all do. It's the story of growing emotionally from a child to an adult. It's about stepping away from the safety and certainty of childhood into a sometimes dark and dangerous world where you have to sort out who you are and what your role is. That's a story that's relatable to everyone.

Given that, I would have thought the details of identity of that hero wouldn't matter that much. But, apparently, I was wrong. Filling that role with someone who shares my gender ended up mattering a lot to me. I was as surprised by this as you are dismissive of it.

Aside from the hand holding bits and Finn asking if she has a boyfriend, her gender was rarely a matter that came up.

I'll admit that sorting out what the gendered bits of her story is a bit of a puzzle. It's not something that they are pointing out all the time. She certainly isn't relating to her challenges in a way that would differ from a male hero. Her gender doesn't feel like it's on her mind at all.

That in itself seems pretty relatable. I don't go though life with my femaleness at my core and in my mind. I'm a person. I go through life as a person and don't generally think about my gender until other people bring it up. I do things much like other people. So that's something that makes this movie work for me.

At her core she thinks of herself as a person primarily and not a woman. That may sound like an odd thing to focus on, but for female characters in movies their femaleness is usually kind of essential to why they are there.

I like Leia a lot in the abstract, but it's pretty clear the reason George Lucas stuck her in episode IV was to get Luke motivated to save her and give him a reason to put the story in motion. -- "Who is she? She's beautiful."

Rey isn't in this story because she's a woman. She's in this story because she's the hero. Me too. I'm in my story because its my story. So that's great by itself and is a nice change.

That said, her gender does resonate with me, and it's difficult to sort out why. I think probably a lot of it shows up in her relationship with others. Which is kind of true for my life as well. Gender doesn't really have much meaning for me, outside of the way it distorts my relationships with others.

And gender does affect Rey's relationship to the other characters and to the audience. There are a bunch of things in there that feel familiar. A couple that work for me are over protection and underestimation. I can't say what everyone's experience of their gender is like, but having people relate to me in a weirdly over protective way or having them strangely and without good reason underestimate me feels very much tied to my gender and I suspect it show up for a lot of women in the lives. It's a frustratingly constant presence in my own life.

Over protection is a pretty significant part of Rey's story. Finn spends the whole movie trying to protect, to rescue, and to save Rey, even though it's apparent from the getgo that she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself and needs no rescuing. Make Rey a man Finn's age, and this seems laughably ridiculous. It works only because of gender, just as it shows up in my own life because of gender.

Underestimation is also a significant part of Rey's story. Kylo Ren grossly underestimates Rey throughout the film. Even as his estimation of her ratchets up, at every step of the way, he's always one step behind in terms of awareness of who he is facing. Every time he screws up, it's because he has underestimated her, and each time he realizes this he has a bit of a "Fuuuuuuuuuck..." expression on his face. This relationship is extremely familiar to me as well. That initial condescension coupled with surprise and realization is exasperatingly familiar to me as well.

And finally there's that piece that shows up in a lot of female fan response to Force Awakens, all the stuff about Kylo carrying Rey off, tying her down, violating her, forcing an intimacy upon her she does not want, all the while offering her a combination of condescension, "I can take whatever I want," and solicitude, "Don't be afraid. I feel it too."

The guy's a creep. And dealing someone who thinks they can creep on you, is pretty much a universal female experience, instantly recognizable and emotionally potent.

If I thought about it harder, I'm sure there would be other things about her "situation that spoke" to me that find their root in gender. I have to say I didn't walk out of the film thinking, wow, look at all this gendered content that is relatable. These sorts of things work as an undercurrent and it takes a bit of effort to tease them out, but I suspect these are just some of the things that make that character so readily identifiable.