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!
For those interested in reading it, here’s the original post by McGuire where she first discusses the ‘when not if’ of having her female characters raped:
https://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/470626.html
I can’t find the link for it, but she did do a follow-up post where she said under what circumstances she would write such a story involving her female characters. Short answer: not in a series meant to be fluff and entertainment, but in a story where the rape would be treated seriously like it needs to be.
Malitia: YES re: Harry Potter and class privilege. So glad not to be alone in feeling this way!
I don’t know whether anybody except Alan Robertshaw reads my very occasional comments. If anybody who does is a Jane Austen fan, I’d like to recommend the recent book “Jane on the Brain,” which explores attachment theory and social neuroscience and illustrates the concepts by showing how they are demonstrated in Austen’s novels. Enormous fun with a bonus of serious education.
Having read the rest…oh, my, lots of great recommendations. (I was going to recommend Tanya Huff, but I see I’m not the first. Her “Blood” series is perhaps the only vampire stuff I’ve loved, and “Summon the Keeper” with wizarding cats…. oh, and the far-too-obscure “Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light.”)
FWIW, I love Bujold (Vorkosigan, not the fantasy), Hambly, and so many of the authors mentioned. And one of my proudest accomplishments is reading a Tiptree story at age 14 and saying, “hmm, that’s obviously a female author writing under a male pseudonym,” Amusingly–NOT ironically–the story was “The Women Men Don’t See.”
Violet, I will write to David for info; seeing your comments, I would like to read your novel. (You can also drop me an email, though this is not my real name and I rarely check this email account.)
Siri Hustvedt can be great fun, but I am ambivalent about some of her ideas on gender.
@ Natasha
Hey, nice to see you back. Yeah, I really enjoy your posts; I’m sure lots of other people do too though. But I always learn something from you.
I’ve just been reading the reviews of Jane on the Brain. It’s a great idea, and very pertinent to both the current subject matter of the thread, and I think generally for analysing that ‘reelz not feelz’ thing that crops up a lot. It seems it’ll be a good primer for responding to those “We’re logical; you’re just emotional” arguments that are a big thing amongst certain people and groups.
Cheers for the heads up.
@Natasha Whilk
I’ve just checked out reviews of Jane on the Brain and am ordering it now. Thanks for mentioning it – it looks fab 🙂
@Mrs Obed Marsh
Seconding Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber (although all her fiction is brilliant). She was taken from us far too soon.
Just re-read The Women Men Don’t See thanks to your mention, @Natasha – thank you for that welcome reminder! It’s even better than I remembered. Her unreliable narrator is just so well, so meticulously written. Ugh. Brilliant.
@jo
Huge virtual squee to you. I love Julian May and think that her mind book cycle that includes The Pleistocene Exile quartet deserves to be a lot better remembered.
Adding recommendations for Kage Baker and her immortal art preserving cyborgs.
Thanks to everyone else for the recommendations. I’m on my way to amazon to browse them. The fatigue of chronic illness has me in its iron grip today, so that is a good activity for me.
Happy Fourth to American mammoths and a general shout out to all. I love reading all of you and for every post I wrote there are at least three other responses that only get composed in my head. Y’all make me want to have conversations.
@Auntie Mame
Thanks! You too.
I started reading May’s books after I learned about her place in comic con history.
They’re awesome! I will look into Kage Baker as well.
I’m a little late, but while we’re exchanging recommendation, I’ve just finished reading a short story collection by Yoon Ha Lee called conservation of shadows. It’s mostly weird space opera-ish and it’s very, very good.
Her Machineries of Empires trilogy is also very good, a weird universe in which people battle using maths, geometry and calendars.
And if these people think women authors are only able to write about feelings, they should check out Cassandra Khaw. Here is a free short story of hers that chills me to the bone (pun intended) :
https://www.tor.com/2017/07/26/these-deathless-bones/
The ending of the third episode of Seth McFarlain’s space comedy/ drama The Orville, ‘About a Girl’ is about this exactly!
Bortus and Klyden are both male from the all male species, the Mochlan. They have an egg hatch and are shocked that the child is a daughter, which according to Mochlan society is seen as a birth defect. Bortus arranges to take the child to his home planet to be surgically altered, after which his husband Klyden confides that he too was born a female. Captain Ed Mercer disagrees with their decision to have the child surgically altered without consent and a typical ‘Star Trek’ style trial ensues in which Mercer tries to prove to the Mochlan court that females are equal, if not better than male.
At the end, he tracks down the most popular Mochlan poet who turns out to be a female who lives as a hermit!!
I wish Seth McFarlane would stop.
Re: female authors, I’m quite liking the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (Her Raksura series is fantasy but lessmy cup of tea; also she has other books I haven’t read). MGTOWs will be happy to know the protagonist isn’t a woman and is deeply uninterested in having romantic or sexual relationships (or any sort, really) with men.
Stop what?
@ Hendrake –
I believe Yoon Ha Lee is a transman though.
With regards to romance, I long considered Anne McCaffrey to be in many ways a romance writer who just liked using fantastic or SF settings. Including pushing the edges into softcore porn a couple of times. That said, I’ve read some of her straight romance as well, like Year of the Lucy. Granted, McCaffrey has some of her own issues with portrayal of women.
Ursula Vernon’s stuff is also great. You can tell that this is someone who thinks through all of the weird little implications of how the fantasy world works. And then will include things like oracular slugs. It’s difficult to have entirely self-consistent absurdity, but she manages.
@Natasha Whilk:
I loved Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light. Then again, I first met Tanya Huff back when she was still writing short stories as ‘T.S. Huff’ due to the previously-mentioned issues with women writers getting overlooked. I was actively picking up her stuff from the first novel.
(Gate of Darkness, Circle of Light also has one of the best ‘artist complaining about the cover’ stories I ever heard. The original cover was supposed to be of a scene from the story that involved a police car running into a unicorn. Since the artist wasn’t local to Toronto, where the story was set, Tanya Huff took a lot of pictures of the standard Metro Toronto Police car design at the time to send to the artist. When she saw the final cover, the police car was perfect… but the unicorn was wrong. The unicorn in the story was small and somewhat goat-like with heavy fetlocks that could be actually run over by a big car; the unicorn on the cover was this giant rearing Arabian stallion that would probably have left even a police car undrivable after impact.)
@Katamount:
I’ve read most of the original Fleming. (My grandfather had a complete collection of everything Fleming wrote. Yes, including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.) And yeah, Bond was pretty much an alcoholic womanizing sociopath kept on a short leash. One of the reasons why some people like Daniel Craig as Bond is that he’s a lot closer to the books than Roger Moore ever was. (Moore was largely still playing The Saint and calling him Bond.)
Note: I’ve known Kelly and her wife for years and I think they’re awesome people. Proof of their awesome: when marriage equality came to Canada, they had Storm and Rogue of the X-men as wedding toppers on their cake.
If you’re interested in a different sort of horror, may I recommend Kelly Robson? Link to one of her latest short stories is below. I’m not a horror fan, but Kelly’s a great writer – just won her first Nebula.
https://uncannymagazine.com/article/what-gentle-women-dare/
@Moon_custafer
You are right. I did a swift search about him and the site I found misgendered him.
I am so very sorry. I should have double checked.
@Surplus
Making tv shows, thinking he’s competent to address queer issues, thinking he’s competent to address any social issues whatsoever, trying to be funny, talking…
Thanks @jo. Kage Baker is a lot of fun.
Thanks @handbrake and Victorious Parasol for links to stories. Just as an aside the Tor site is amazing. Lots of free stories and rereads of classic series. Always a fun place to visit.
@Dalillama: So, I take it you didn’t like The Orville?
Thanks for the replies, guys. (I am a New Yorker, albeit expatriated to Boston, and “guys” is a gender-neutral form of address n my idiolect. If it offends anybody, please let me know, and I’ll do my best to use ither language.)
@Alan: always good to see you.
@opposablethumbs: You’re very welcome. And now I want to go re-read all of Tiptree.
@Mish: Excellent! If you feel like writing anything about your reaction to “Jane on the Brain,” I’d be interested in hearing it.
@Jenora: Thanks for reminding me of Ursula Vernon’s name. I’ve been meaning to read since hearing her speak at a con, but had forgotten. And hurrah for another Tanya Huff fan! I hadn’t heard that cover story before.
Oops, tried to edit and posted twice. David, could you kindly remove the first one? Thanks.
@Hendrake:
No problem – I’ve just been reading his blog lately, so I thought I should say something.
@Surplus
The premise, as described previously by commenters here, fills me with red rage. My reaction to the episode synopsis above cannot be described on this blog. Regardless, I’m not going to waste any more of my life actually watching McFarlane’s latest screen excretion.
@Natasha Whilk – We must both be East Coasters, though I alas am really exiled to the semi-rural high desert of the intermountain west, because I too use guys as a gender neutral term.
For others, I ordered the Coldest Winter Ever and am looking forward to it and am going to look up the Orville. I also found a free read of Tiptree’s The Men Women Don’t See and Tiptree is just as amazing as I remember her.
I once had a boss who yelled at me for not reading enough male authors. It was weird because as a reader I am utterly unbiased. I will read anyone who tells a good story or presents interesting facts in an elegant way, but that is when I learned that not reading women – or I imagine anyone not correctly raced or gendered – is still a thing. More for us I guess.
@Dalillama: My recollection is the premise was “diverse bunch of progressive-ish people flying around in space”; in fact, pretty much “Star Trek: The Next Generation with the serial numbers filed off and somewhat more humor”; but perhaps my recollection fails me. It has, after all, been the better part of a year since any of it aired.