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!
@Bina
Nice one! Sorry for the slow response, busy day.
While we’re recommending authors, Gemma Files (full disclosure – we know each other socially) writes entertaining, bloody, inventive fantasy and horror.
The Hexslinger books are about relationships AND about cutting a magically gruesome swathe across the Old West; several characters literally go to Hell and back for the people they love. There are also Aztec gods, tons of sex in variously-gendered pairings, and at one point, zombie dinosaurs.
Experimental Film: A Novel is about family, non-neurotypicality, ghosts, Canadian film history, things exploding, and lesser-known but incredibly ominous European fairy tales.
Yeah, David. Why wouldn’t you want to join a group that thinks Tom Clancy’s writing is superior to Flannery O’Connor’s? Geez.
Also, given that the objectively worst writer on the planet is Vox Day, you really can’t claim that male authors are automatically superior. You just can’t.
Well, not if you want to be taken seriously. That’s never stopped these chucklefucks before, though.
Those Whose Toes Are Miggy always claim to be going their own way, so…yeah.
Tsots, the lot (just for you, Bina).
I’m fairly certain their ideal work of fiction would just be a series of bullet points describing the plot without having to deal with all that silly emotion.
They are the manliest type of point after all.
weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee wrote:
Tom Clancy is a writer I have read one book of, and the reaction was never again. (His pro-republicanstance was looking way worse after Trump)
I am thinking bringing Voxy in it is kind of a cheat, because having him on any site of an argument makes that side look bad by default. (No argument that he is probably at last the worst writer, who is famous, what is worse his fiction or his non-fiction?)
It is funny that it will probably easier to define worst writer than best. (I would bet that if we ask here there would be a lot of names mentioned, and male or female will be completly irrelevant for many posters)
From your earlier post: I was not thinking about medicore plot with cardboard characters but of the few writers who really have interestings ideas but characters aren’t there strong suite.
And I would vote against watching bad movies a good one should be more fun.
Has anybody mentioned Angela Carter yet? I love her anthology The Bloody Chamber. All the stories are feminist takes on fairy tales or folktales – the title story is based on “Bluebeard,” which is generally read as a cautionary tale to inquisitive women.
Damn, I see the Blackadder quotes and Kate Beaton cartoons have already made their appearance, so I’ll add a couple things to the convo.
1) Where I think a lot of writers (of all genders) go wrong is seeing the relationship stuff as separate from the main driver of the story when it has to be intertwined. If you’ve seen
, it’s a solid war story right up until the love triangle brings the plot train to a screeching halt. Same could be said for the Star Wars prequels (although the main plot was dumb too).
Contrast that with
, where the love triangle was critical to the choices Rick and Ilsa made in the face of grave danger. There were high stakes involved in their reunion and when Rick has to make the decision to put Ilsa on the plane with Laszlo, he says rather poignantly:
One of the MGTOWs in the OP alluded to this and there’s a kernel of truth there. I’m not sure I entirely agree with that sentiment, as the character elements that relationships bring were clearly important in that film, but I think it captures the perspective issues when it comes to a lot of fiction: if your story is about a larger threat, there’s an urgency that forces plot-derailing relationship stuff to take a back seat.
Unfortunately, I think the popularity of the Twilight (and consequently the 50 Shades) franchise only solidified this misconception that this is a “thing” in women’s or YA fiction. While the issues with Twilight are legion, Lindsay Ellis, in her apology to Stephanie Meyer video is entirely right when she says that the backlash was entirely disproportionate and the problematic relationship dynamics were more of a post-hoc rationalization than the core of what the backlash was. The backlash was the same thing we saw Justin Bieber: that’s girly stuff and girly stuff is stupid. The fact that the characters are flat, the plot only shows up in the last quarter of the first book, the pisspoor writing and plot holes… all post-hoc rationalizations by and large. Me, I just wanted to know what it was this particular teen girl/vampire story that made it big. I’ve actually read my fair share of the paranormal erotic fiction genre (which isn’t that much of a stretch when you’re a furry like me) and there’s wayyyyy more engaging stuff out there. But I’m not going to put blame on the fans of Twilight or Stephanie Meyer for her work getting big. If there’s anybody to blame for cultural phenomena, it’s really the advertisers and marketers that throw things in your face every waking hour.
2) The idea that this is some kind of “women-only” thing is absolutely absurd. Plenty of men have written crap stories with shoehorned wish-fulfillment relationships that serve no character function and just derail the plot. They also have a nasty habit of substituting dire grimdark circumstance for character, as if the fact that Steve Scowlington, with his emotional distance and chiseled jaw, is able to rise to the occasion and shoot the threat in the face is all the character development you really need.
Steve Scowlington: He Shoot Things. While white.
Plenty of examples have been cited of women writing great works in genres that society has coded as “male” (particularly want to shout out the late great Ursula K. LeGuin and Octavia Butler in the sci-fi/fantasy genres). There’s also plenty of fluff written by men (looking your way RPO). Notice the disproportionate responses and analyze accordingly.
What sucks is that the romance genre is looked down upon by a lot of male and female readers, even by readers of other marginalized genres like SF/F, pretty much because it’s the only genre primarily written by and for women. The “female” fantasy of romance – getting a sexy, supportive lover while assuming a fulfilling role in one’s community – is dismissed as silly, even cringe-worthy; the “male” fantasy of action/thrillers – killing bad guys and screwing beautiful women in exciting locales – is held in much more esteem, if not actively celebrated by our culture.
In the virtue of pure honesty, I’m just going to say that I feel like there’s a big untapped market of horny teenage girls. Twilight hit that market pretty well and was accessible to the main stream. Along with the correct marketing it’s no wonder it was a success.
And I used to read these books as a teen myself, the typical misunderstood girl out of her element meets Gary Stu Mysterious Man who has an interest in girl for reasons. The closer she gets to Gary Stu, the closer she gets to a hidden world rife with danger and suspense. Oh, and she doesn’t know it yet but she’s different. She’s ‘chosen’ to have some unique power that makes her important.
But hey, not every piece of media has to be some deep introspection on the human condition. They’re fun to read and I don’t regret a single minute of it.
There’s also the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey and the novels of Ursula LeGuin, Mercedes Lackey, and Dianna Wynne Jones.
Patricia Highsmith’s stories include Strangers on a Train and the Talented Mr. Ripley.
Another interesting example is Julian Clare May, a female writer who was involved with comic cons for decades (she first chaired a con in 1952).
Other women were involved with sci-fi fan zines, newsletters, etc. long before the internet. They basically disprove the notion that fake geek girls are destroying nerd culture and comic cons.
Uh, j? Which books are you talking about? I haven’t seen any book recommendations on this thread that fit your description “the typical misunderstood girl out of her element meets Gary Stu Mysterious Man who has an interest in girl for reasons.”
While I don’t give a fig if MIGTOWs read my books, the fairly well-known bias against women writers who write in supposedly masculine genres is why my crime series will be published under my initials, like jk Rowling did.
I was talking about Twilight and other stories like them. Girl x Monster romance type novels. I wasn’t referring to any of the recommendations listed here at all!
I haven’t had the chance to sit with a good book in a while though.
Look no further than James Bond. Of course, Ian Fleming’s original character had vulnerabilities that were explored on occasion and there was a colonial sense of the “exotic” in a post-war Great Britain that was divesting its colonial assets, but Hollywood has kept it going for more than half a century now.
Yeah, it’s incredibly lame that more SF/F fans don’t make that connection. SF/F was (and arguably still is) considered pulp right alongside the Fabio-covered Harlequin bodice-rippers. The issue Harlequin had was the same issue I had with them: they were too chaste! I mean, c’mon, romance is the time to get explicit! Don’t skimp on the details of the climax, if’n ya know what I mean.
It’s easy for me to say that now, but I think that brings to mind a deeper problem: women’s sexuality is still heavily policed if not outright demonized. Sometimes literally. I play Diablo III a lot and the “Maiden of Lust” mini-boss is a demonic half-woman half-spider. And that game came out in 2010. So perhaps having a proactive sexual female protagonist wasn’t considered “marketable” in the 80s and 90s. It’s actually one of the things I appreciate about the paranormal romance genre: the subject matter offers women a parity often denied them in other genres, be it physical parity with enhanced strength or social parity with covens or werewolf packs.
I used to think I wasn’t into the romance (in the modern sense) genre, but since I started reading fanfic I’ve decided that love scenes are great fun when they take place between characters I like.
Thanks for the clarification, j. I hope you have a chance to check out some of the authors I recommended earlier – they write good stuff.
@Rabid Rabbit –
Probably unrelated, but your comment about Amber Tamblyn’s new book reminded me of two novels with evil female protagonists. Unfortunately for the MGTOWs, both were written by women…
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky – about a woman and her family’s journey from Russia to Germany. She’s stupidly naive in a lot of ways but also incredibly scheming. It starts when her daughter (whom she scorns and dislikes) is pregnant; when her granddaughter leads to a lot of black humour, but the stresses of emigration are shown pretty realistically, so I ended up feeling sorry for her at times.
The Coldest Winter Ever by Sister Souljah – this is more of a blockbuster-type… less realism… you could say moralistic, but I think the author’s doing something more interesting here. It stars a spoiled teenage girl named Winter from a mob family – a family member dies violently – she has to fend for herself… but doesn’t do so in an honest , non-betraying-people, non-violent way.
In the middle of the book, Sister Souljah herself shows up as a do-gooder voice of reason. Winter (and probably the author herself) proceeds to make fun of the in-book Souljah and cast doubt on her statements. For instance, book-Souljah talks about AIDS conspiracy theories (unlikely to reflect her real beliefs, as the book was published in 1999) and muses aloud that popular (imaginary) rappers might be, horror of horrors, bisexual. I don’t think this is just Souljah mocking her earlier self, though; I mean, I’m a white person from Canada here, but I think she’s commenting on tensions within the black American communities as well as what white people think about black people. There’s certainly the theme of racial profiling by cops and the recognition that Winter’s former wealth-bubble shielded her from the worst kinds of racism.
Anyway, yes, I recommend these books. Also Jane Eyre Vs. the Zombie Space Dinosaurs, Jane Austen’s underrated classic. 😛
Don’t miss its sequel: Jane Eyre and the Megathanatonic Spaceship of Doom!
Another Genere that often gets bad reputiton is the urban fantasygenere, often called only Twilightclones (Js post let me think about it, together with MrsObedMarshs post about romance), what isn’t true.
Someone should pick up a book by Seanan McGuire, or one of the Rivers of Londonbooks (male writer) to see nope, there is more on it.
And Seanan was once asked when (not if when!!!) one of her maincharacters would be raped. The answer never was awasome, even if the works can get dark.
Another writer I want to mention (even if I know here more shorter works) is Ursula Vernon.
I have seen two much people (okay teachers here) fight wars against books that are trivial (not good enough), and I always thought for kids it is good when they read, what is secondary. Analysing the content is of course important, but I have seen to much crap posted that showed that the critic had no idea about the work he critizised. (My favorite was when a schoolbook meant the SFstory could have easily transported to a western, so trash, somethink that is true for nearly everything)
Honestly, I like almost any genre better than romance–because relationships are not what interests me. It doesn’t make romance less difficult to write well than mystery or science fiction; it’s my taste in the matter.
Has anyone recommended Leckie yet? Grand space-opera.
C.A.Collins:
Yep, I did. TBH, I thought that Provenance was a little weak, but the Imperial Radch trilogy was terrific. It’s possible I’m judging the former too harshly, because I read it interspersed with Jemisin’s Broken Earth series, against which pretty much anything would seem lacking.
Romance: very much not my thing, but seeing it mentioned reminds me that writers are starting to talk about problems with racism within that field:
https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/980872293256544256
Oh, and while I’m in a recommending mood: I’ve just watched Hbomb’s latest video, on Lovecraft, and I really like how his work is developing. This was a very strong and heartfelt piece.
If any of you are thinking of getting into romance, I recommend Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, a review and blogging site. The site-runners and the community are sassy and stridently feminist – much like Mammotheers – and love recommending books of all kinds. Some of the reviews are a lot of fun to read; probably my favorite one is for Shayla Black’s Decadent. You gotta see it to believe it.
Popping in to plug P.C. Hodgell.
@Alan
Oh. Em. Gee!
Such outrage over long, flowery descriptions.
Funnily enough in light of what MGTOW say about the work of female authors, Wikipedia says this about Lady Chatterley’s Lover: