By David Futrelle
The lady literary world is reeling from the revelation that some doofus on Reddit will no longer read books written by women.
The official announcement of this new no-lady-book policy was posted earlier today on the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit.
Adding to the horror: it turns out that many of EMIYA18’s colleagues on the MGTOW subreddit also have “no books by lady authors” policies. (Except maybe that “Wrinkle in Time” book, that was cool.)
“I was like that even before MGTOW,” admitted TheDevilsAdvokaat.
A lot of women’s literature just seemed revolting. The attitudes, the ideas were nonsense and shitty.
There are very few women authors I have actually enjoyed; (So few I cannot even remember their names – I think there was one by a woman who wrote “detective” stories about a roman named Flavius set thousands of years ago). Most of them have weird notions of how the world works and males and females.
Obviously the good gentlemen of the MGTOW subreddit have much-less-weird notions about men and women and pretty much everything else.
Their “men” in particular seem two dimensional and seem to have no life or desire other than trying to please the woman in their life. Also, the most important thing in the book is a relationship between two people. It doesn’t matter if the entire universe is finally collapsing into a central black hole; the most important part of the book (And the most words) will be about some stupid relationship between the female protagonist and one or several men.
Yeah, I really hate that part in the Jane Austen book when the giant alien spiders are covering the earth in their radioactive webs and Emma is like, “Heathcliff, forget the spiders, I want to talk about us and that time you mansplained intergalactic time travel to me because tee hee I’m a girl and I don’t care, wait why am I talking to you, Mr. Darcy is much richer, bye boy, GIRL POWER!”
Ok to be honest I haven’t read any Jane Austen books.
Others agreed: Lady books are all about dumb lady things. “[M]ost of the time, feminine litterature is always about ma rights and ma vagina,” Maxentirunos sniffed. And he’s right: 60% of the time, feminine litterature is about vaginas every time.
And forget about getting any advice from a lady book unless it’s about tampons or something. “I can’t read anything written by a woman anymore about general life advice,” noted TopherOHoolihan.
Maybe if they are covering a specific topic okay, but if its supposed to be a book of wisdom- only men are wise
But it was a MGTOW Redditor called laptopdragon who took it to the next level, noting that he doesn’t even like hearing women talk.
I detest many womens voices on the radio.
especially the raspy, scratchy or whiny voices, and when they they say things:
like
you know
uhm
etc.
actually, it’s anyone with those shitty untrained lack of quality speakers that are on a speaking platform. fuck them and their agenda.
Damn those bitches and manginas pushing their insidious “like” and “you know” agenda!
In conclusion, all attempts by human females to communicate are bad. Happy Sunday!
I’ve done a bit of radio and it turns out saying things is a big part of it. Which is a pity really cause I thought getting Marcel Marceu on the show was a bit of a coup.
I wonder what their attitude towards books co-written by men and women are. The last piece of commercial fiction I read was Green Hair Don’t Care, the compilation of the first five issues of Snotgirl. It’s a collaboration between Bryan Lee O’Malley and Leslie Hung. Perhaps that’s a bad example, because the lead character is a woman.
Well, there have always been men like that, who won’t read books by women. That’s why J. K. Rowling goes by J. K. rather than Jo. Because boys won’t read books by women. Same with Alice Mary Norton (Andre) and C. L. Moore. But romance is a big seller, so at least some women don’t miss the boy buyers. It’s dumb to not read books based on the sex of the author, but stupid is as stupid does, I guess.
Who could forget the sweet, overflowing-with feels, romance of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”?
Yes what a bunch of fluff Shirley Jackson and Flannery O’Connor wrote.
Characters who do and say things are the worst. The best plots are when the protagonists are rocks.
I have read a few “chick lit” books where this is the case. The Stephanie Plum series comes to mind. However, are they really going to pretend like male authors always write three dimensional female characters who serve a purpose other than romance or sex object? Because no. It’s not just in literature that this is the issue. It’s all media After all, gamergate happened in part because icky feeemales had the gall to suggest that it might be nice to have video games that had female playable characters with traits other wears bikini armor and has physics defying boob jiggle.
I’ve seen threads like this one before, and I think it’s funny how women supposedly aren’t the serious thinkers and yet every single male poster struggles to gesture towards any “good” literature that’s not a bunch of stereotypes from the canon.
Self and pals here actually do spend time discussing business, investment, and economic ideas. And we do read non fiction related books.
Such as this:
https://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Guys-Room-Amazing-Scandalous/dp/1591840538
And not only did this woman write this book, she was the first to pick up on Enron’s cooked books.
I’m guessing you haven’t read Wuthering Heights, either, if you think Austen came up with Heathcliff.
Anyway, big surprise here. Men who hate women don’t want to read books by women. Why do they think women used to use male pseudonyms to get their work published for centuries?
Speaking of which, I wonder how many of these guys have read books by women without realizing it, because we’re sneaky and shit.
I will argue that Frankenstein is romance. Romance is not about just love story, it is about feelings and philosophy. I know it is science fiction but Frankenstein is also so much about what is human, what is love, what is family, what is acceptance – there is lots of evidence there to argue that it is “romantic”. especially since it is written in the time of romantics.
You monster.
What caught my attention when reading it was how emotional the men were. They would be sick in bed for months over emotional upsets, while the women just dealt with it.
TBH I think David referenced Austen & Healthcliff together on purpose.
So will this deter manosphereans from regurgitating that tenderly sentimental mushfest Atlas Shrugged at anyone within range?
This isn’t such an “outrageous” idea, nor unique to MGTOWs. Studies have shown that women who write plays are much less likely to get their plays read than men who write plays (who find it difficult enough to get their plays read, because theatres receive hundreds every year).
The story is that women write plays about women, and men write plays about ideas and action. People won’t go to see plays about women, or so the story goes. But…most theatre tickets are purchased by women. Plays by women sell more tickets and make more money than plays by men…but run for a much shorter time.
I wish the phenomenon of not reading things by “lady writers” was unique to MGTOWs, but as a “lady writer”, I have to deal with the problem all the time. I started sending my plays off under initials, even though my name is one of those that could be either. Initials scream out “male” to most people.
When the competition is blind, the odds are that “lady” plays will be selected approximately half the time.
Frankenstein’s Monster gets a sad when he figures out that people are repulsed by his appearance. So vain! Only an emotional feeeeeemale would write that. Then again, the rejection does lead to him killing people. Maybe he’s an incel hero? Must’ve been secretly written by Percy.
Looks like migtoes are going their own way…from expanded literary horizons and cultural and mental enrichment.
BTW, this…
…amused me no end, because all you have to do is switch out the genders of the authors and characters, and you get a common complaint by female readers about men writing women characters unconvincingly. Or something dwelling unduly on the lady’s boobage. Or both.
Mary Shelly hung out with Lord Byron quite a bit. I can’t help but think that her acquaintance with him might have leant some inspiration to that aspect of things.
Not to worry! Men are making them better by adding zombies and action.
Also, adding zombies and action to a Jane Austen novel is enough to make a mediocre white man the first choice to direct a major superhero movie (The Flash). Even though he has since dropped out, directors who are not white men are still trying to pry apart their rage-clenched jaws.
Iseult, I’m pretty sure Heathcliff is one of the main characters in Jane Austen’s Curse of the Time Traveling Space Spiders.
@Catalpa:
It’s the same in Shelley’s “the last man”, the men are super emotional (although in that book, as far as I recall, so are a bunch of women), in this very self centered way where what really matters isn’t some tragedy but how they feel about the tragedy. I also thought that maybe she knew a bunch of people who were like that in real life.
Oh good. When are you going to improve yourself?
Actually, reading a lot of self-help books sounds strange to me. It’s like saying “I mostly read Haynes car workshop manuals”. You’ve very soon read enough, and need to just get on and do the work.
Dunnoa, Moggie. I read a lot of Haynes manuals.
The infinite number of ways manufacturers can make a single, vital screw inaccessable to all but a professional contortionist who does gyno on the side is fascinating.
Hello.
Are my comments working this week ?
Hmm, in term of heroic-fantasy (or is it dark-fantasy ?), there could be the novels from Robin Hobb ? The Farseer trilogy and the following ones seem to have a large public.
Have a nice day.