bending genders

 I think I feel guilty about writing Boromir as always-a-cis-woman, even though barely anyone will read the fic and even though she doesn't have a romantic story-line going, because when I came into fandom  the tendency of gender-bending in order to write your ship safely heterosexual was just coming under critical fire and I absorbed it like a sponge.
So I can say all I want that to explore the ways in which the narrative would change, or how people would react, and whether the Fellowship is different and how and why (not), and what it means to survive and to survive when you're a woman, and what it is to be a woman who cannot slide into the sweetness of marital domesticity, and how to deal with barrenness and grief and mourning family everyone else is glad to see the back of, and...
And I can say all of that, and a lot more, and mean every scrap of it, and I still feel like I'm doing this to write het. porn and letting the side down and I should be ashamed of myself. I am, ohboy, to the extent of trying to self-justify with "at least it's not a Mary Sue self-insert" when I don't really think that's something to be ashamed of, either.
I'm ashamed and it's irritating me no end.