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 never see anyone mentioning Tanya Huff in these recommendation threads, so I’m just going to add her name here. She’s a great Canadian fantasy writer. Her wife, Fiona Patton, also writes fantasy, but I’ve only read short stories from her so far.
Just glancing at the books I can see on the shelf near me, I have Tanya Huff, Mercedes Lackey (solo & with James Mallory or Larry Dixon), Anne McCaffrey, Enid Blyton, C.S. Lewis, Gordon Korman, N.K. Jemison & Masaru Emoto. Plus a bunch of educational books for the kids.
It’s almost like I read stuff that’s interesting and/or funny without caring about the genitals of the writer.
You just answered your own question:
They don’t ever – ever – want to be put in a situation where they might be forced to work to interpret a text, or have to examine their ideas and assumptions. That is why it’s not enough for them to simply avoid media they don’t like – they want to eliminate the possibility that they’ll ever encounter something that isn’t easy for them to understand, or that doesn’t validate them and their worldview. And then they have the gall to call people who want to experience challenging stories “politically correct” and “irrational.”
@J
Definition of romantic
1 : consisting of or resembling a romance
2 : having no basis in fact : imaginary
3 : impractical in conception or plan : visionary
4 a : marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized
b often capitalized : of, relating to, or having the characteristics of romanticism
c : of or relating to music of the 19th century characterized by an emphasis on subjective emotional qualities and freedom of form; also : of or relating to a composer of this music
5 a : having an inclination for romance : responsive to the appeal of what is idealized, heroic, or adventurous
b : marked by expressions of love or affection
c : conducive to or suitable for lovemaking
6 : of, relating to, or constituting the part of the hero especially in a light comedy
More female SF/fantasy authors:
Sydney J. Van Scyoc
Judith Tarr
Katherine Kurtz
Nancy Springer
As somebody else has pointed out, “Flavius” is almost certainly Lindsey Davis’ Falco series, which is great—though I fear that the redditor in question may have missed the subtext where our cynical, manly hero is actually a ridiculously soft touch and for that matter an equal partner to his wife, Helena. Also personally I find Falco to be not quite as good as its successor Falvia Albia series, which is very much about a female detective.
Does D C Fontana count? She’s more known for TV stuff; but she also wrote books.
Um, does this little self-important puke think his declaration is of consequence? To anyone? Somehow, I think no author, male or female*, will miss him.
*Well, if he’s into the self-help books, maybe Dr. Laura will miss him. She’s quite sympathetic to misogynists, and one herself.
Just a little bit of a joke since I wouldn’t find doing it on anyone’s grave to be romantic personally, especially my own mothers.
Everyone, please do not check out any authors that Victorious Parasol recommends!
Especially Barbara Hambly!
You may find yourself scouring the interwebs for entire series (something you haven’t done since Discworld).
You may have to physically force yourself to put down the novels so that you can get some actual work done.
You may miss your train stop because the damn book is so damn good.
You may refuse to communicate with your family so that you can read.
This is for your own peace of mind 🙂
Barbara Hambly is full of win and joy.
I stopped reading Norman Mailer because he was all “mah penis”.
Quote marks around a word that’s not actually being quoted mean “so-called.”
So this MGTOW doesn’t actually think that female authors’ books seem fake.
Apparently EMIYA18 is an undercover feminist tweaking the Men [who claim to be] Going Their Own Way.
J-
Me neither. I also find it extremely disrespectful to have sex on anyone’s grave and having sex on her own mother’s takes it to a whole new level. Not something to be commended for.
Ooh, bad news, Mammotheers: EMIYA is no undercover feminist. He added this addendum:
Real compassion from MGTOW? Hahahahahahahahahaha!
There aren’t enough hahas in the universe to adequately convey my skepticism.
Oh, shit, I knew I forgot something! The blog has been operating for 8 years now and we still haven’t gotten around to the abusing or the abandoning portion of the plan! Jeez, I guess women just can’t do anything right. /sarcasm
Yes, I feel terrible for betraying men by suggesting that maybe refusing to read books by women is ridiculous baby behavior. I should join the MGTOW revolution and join up with the dudes who literally tell me to kill myself, that would be so much better than those evil women who abuse me by supporting this blog and donating to it and posting most of the nearly 728,000 comments that have been posted here since I moved the blog to wordpress.
But, but Dave, don’t you want their kindness and compa…..Sorry, I can’t do it. If they think they’re even slightly compassionate, they’re even more delusional than I thought. I don’t think the majority of them would know what compassion was if cuddled up to them.
Did someone mention Nancy A. Collins? A dark, very dark treat. Don’t forget to read Wild Blood if 1) you like (or fear, same thing actually) were wolves and 2) you wondered about Cuchullain (seriously).
And if you’re concerned about vampires and ogres and cherubims and assorted Pretenders hiding in plain sight, the Sonja Blue books are for you.
(VAMPS and Golgotham are good, but more teen stuff. Nothing wrong with that, but very different from the earlier books)
same
See also DH Lawrence. I’ve tried to read several things by Lawrence and I always end up throwing the book across the room while shouting “OH FUCK OFF”
@YV
It is about a young prince (11-12, our hero) whose kingdom gets destroyed by invaders who kill all his family (except his baby brother) and settle his country. So he becomes homeless and gets involved with a street gang to survive, and by the time he is 20 he is a full on criminal who is desperately hiding his real identity as it is a short cut to getting himself and his now early-teens brother killed. Eventually he becomes a ninja, by training with a female ninja (our heroine; they aren’t exactly ninjas in the book obviously, but I’m not able to draw the diagrams necessary to explain the backstory, so we’ll call them ninjas).
The ninjas are from a third country (not the invaders or invadees) which is run by a religious cult. The ninjas themselves are taken when very small children and indoctrinated with all sorts of religious rubbish as well as becoming excellent at martial arts (mostly because if one is developing a spectacularly skilled human weapon, one needs a way to control it in case it starts getting ideas. Enter: A VENGEFUL GOD!). So our heroine is also trying to escape a fairly horrific past only not sure how because she is basically a cult escapee
TL:DR – it’s about sword fighting, corruption and the nature of freedom
I wrote it about 10 years ago. I really should get on with writing something else.
@Nequam: Yeah I’ve read that comic too and I thought it was funny even though I don’t agree with her interpretation of EB! 😀
@Mish
Mwahahahaha!
@ violet
You may recall that in the “Lady Chatterly” trial, the prosecution barrister famously asked “Is this a book you would want your wife or even your servants to read?”.
What’s less well known is that Gerald Gardiner, the defence barrister (who was considered a bit of a showman) was heard to remark, just loud enough for the jury to hear “I’d be more worried about my gardener reading it”.
ETA:
The Chatterly trial does have a bit of relevance to the subject material of this thread.
The judge offered the defence the opportunity to invoke an old law that allowed for an all-male jury in cases unfit for the delicate ears of ladies.
The defence though wanted as many women as possible on the jury. They thought the prosecution’s paternalistic attitude would alienate and annoy them. They even used their right to pre-emptive challenges just to get an additional woman on the jury.
@Alan Robertshaw
I’d be even more worried about Gerald Gardiner reading it. (Snort.)
I read that book when I was fourteen, expecting something revealing. What a snooze of a book for fourteen-year-old me!
@ Kat
It’s funny you should say that…