Weird post here so I apologize in advance. I ran across a couple TikToks saying they do not read male authors. I’m just genuinely curious as to why that is?
I’m a 20M and I read whatever sounds good and I don’t pay too much attention to who writes them, I will if I like the book so much I want to read more from them. Is the writing from male to female so much different that people avoid reading from a certain gender?
Like I said I’m not trying to argue, just curious why some females feel this way.
by OkSomewhere3730
38 Comments
Might just be because they want to give female authors more of a voice, especially underrated ones, so maybe it’s a push to get them more recognition? Although I’m not sure why anyone would exclusively read from one gender long-term.
>I’m a 20M and I read whatever sounds good and I don’t pay too much attention to who writes them
what were the last 10-20 books you read? were they all by dudes by chance?
I don’t agree with them at all but I bet if you take a look at the books you’ve read the vast majority are probably by men. I do think they’ve taken the idea of focusing on women authors too far.
Women are probably going to be able to write books written from a woman’s point of view better than man.
I don’t follow any tubes but I’m guess it’s to help boost the profile of female writers?
For example, I read a shit ton of sci-fi books, but I’m not really aware of a lot of female authors in that genre. I kind of have to go out of my way to find women writers of that genre. (Jesus, how many times can I write genre).
Now, i don’t exclusively read women authored books, but I also don’t mind getting those recommendations either. I like to see women writing outside the romance genre, where it feels they’re pigeonholed.
I prefer to read women because I am a woman and have read plenty of male point of view and seen it in movies, etc. Reading women just is more fulfilling to me. Occasionally I’ll read male writers but I often get grossed out by the way they write sexuality even if I otherwise like them (see Murakami, Eugenides).
One reason might be balance. The popular “canon” of English literature is pretty heavily slanted towards men. I could see a reader, particularly a young one who has mostly read assigned books in school, realizing — wait a second, most of the books I’ve read in my life were written by men, maybe it’s time to check out some books I haven’t been exposed to by prioritizing women.
I am male and i can name several reasons often female writers write female characters better the same also happens with male authors. Also generally most authors have been white and male and they want to support female authors. Particularly because women read more then men. There is also plenty of men that refuse to read female authors. I make sure to seek out some female authors as well as POC every year not every book but getting different perspectives beyond white males is not a bad thing.
I only read romance written by women authors. Or at least I do most of the time. I just feel like it’s usually done better because it’s done from a woman’s point of view, which is what I will always be able to relate to more. Plus I’ve read too many books where a man wrote shit like ‘her breasts shrivelled with embarrassment’ or something similar.
I read male authors in every other genre though, especially for horror.
Also, booktokers usually read romance/contemporary/fantasy with romance/YA, etc. So it usually has a heavy element of romance, which means they probably prefer women authors for the same reasons as me.
Also I prefer female main characters, which most women write.
How many men read books by women with any regularity? I don’t have the statistics on hand but it’s not many – but because they don’t do it on purpose nobody is crying about masculinity run amok or something.
Of the 18 books I’ve read this year, 3 have been written by men (and they were very good!). I guess I don’t go out of my way to avoid male authors, I’m just not as interested in men’s perspectives.
I am making an effort to read books by nonwhite authors this year. And I’ve done the women only authors other years.
It’s just to get a different perspective. Or to see how perspectives intersect. Little reading challenges I give to myself.
I was once very into the canon and read almost exclusively male authors not as a choice but just out of habit. And some are still my favorite of all time. Making an effort to get more perspectives doesn’t change that. And, honestly, at this point (I’m old) I’ve read a lot of those books. If I hadn’t I wouldn’t be branching out.
No one is being pressured to do it. Read what you enjoy! Whatever book tickles your fancy. I assure you no one cares, in a good way.
A lot of the authors I read are men largely because I tend to read classics almost exclusively and there were obviously socio-economic barriers for a LOT of women to be writers, but I do try to balance myself out. You should read whatever you want to but I also think whatever you want to should be broad and not narrow.
A lot of men are just plain bad at writing women.
Over-saturation of male authors over the place mainly. Also a good number of male authors are unable to write women well (neither are many women either but at least theoretically you’re more likely to see a well written woman in a book by a female author even if it’s only the POV character. And when men goof writing female characters it’s really goofy at times, if not outright atrocious).
I find there’s a higher chance of “minor misogyny” in books written by men. I won’t necessarily avoid them, and it matters more to me in, say, romance than thriller or horror based on what kind of brainspace I want to be in while reading and how “believable” certain aspects of an FMC’s characterization need to be for me to be on board with the story.
In practice, the difference for me is that I’ll pick up (fiction) books by women without researching, but I tend to read books by men almost exclusively based on recommendations or after some amount of reading critical reviews.
1. In my experience yes there can be differences between male and female writers, but even so there’s still no reason to avoid male authors all together, that’s just dumb. (Note: I’m female).
2. Don’t pay attention to lame TikToks
I’m female and I can’t imagine limiting myself in this way. My favorite author is male and I wouldn’t miss one of his books for anything. There are also plenty of female authors I enjoy.
I don’t exclusively read books written by women, but I have found in recent years that I tend to prefer books written by women.
I also realized that growing up, most of what I read tended to be written by (often white) men. I do definitely make a point to seek out some more diversity now, and I’ve found a lot of new favourite authors that way.
It’s also made me realize the extent to which I used to just look past poorly written/non-existent women characters in the books I read when I was younger. I am much more discerning in my taste now.
There are still a lot of male authors that I like (e.g. Simon Jimenez), but I can fully understand why someone might want to focus on reading books by women.
It’s partly a social media thing- Controversial or extreme stances get more engagement, positive or negative it doesn’t really matter.
I think there is value in intentionally reading women and minority authors, like I’ve mostly read books by white men and if isn’t close.
As much as the principle *feels* misguided initially, making a point to only read women for a couple of years may not even bring your ratio to 50/50, especially if you like the classics or sci-fi and fantasy.
I guess the question is: is reading diverse authors more enlightening or entertaining?
I don’t know. There’s reason to think so, but I haven’t noticed feeling much difference.
Every single book I was assigned to read in high school was written by a man but no one ever questioned that. In all seriousness, I think women got tired of male authors sexualizing, fridging, and Mary-Sueing female characters and just decided to stop reading them. I recently read a biography of Cleopatra that was written by a man and every chapter had references to her breasts and hips and appearance EVEN THOUGH THE AUTHOR ACKNOWLEDGED WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT SHE LOOKED LIKE BECAUSE EVERY IMAGE WAS DESTROYED AFTER HER DEATH! I doubt a female author would have included those comments, which just grossed me out and took me out of the book. Obviously there are plenty of male authors who write women well but why bother taking the chance to find out? I go out of my way to read female authors, authors from other countries/religions/lifestyles/etc and I think every person’s viewpoint has merit and value but at the end of the day, reading is entertainment and people like what they like.
I’m a woman who follows bookstagram and booktube pretty often.
Last year and the year before that, 98% of the books I read were by female authors. Some of it was on purpose, but mainly the genre that I was more interested in had more female authors. Recently, I’ve been really into noir and classics so I’ve been reading more male authors.
>Is the writing from male to female so much different that people avoid reading from a certain gender?
Depends on the type of book.
I’m mostly a horror reader, a genre that has traditionally been overloaded with male writers. Because of that, I go out of my way to read women horror writers– their stories have a much different tone and are generally more nuanced and interesting, so I’m richly rewarded for it. It’s not that I don’t read male horror writers at all… I just read far fewer of them.
I’m a female, and a majority of the fiction I read is written by women (90%). As I’ve aged (elder millennial here), my tolerance for hearing stories where women are one dimensional characters is very thin. It’s incredibly frustrating to read a poorly written female character written by a man, mainly because they have been so prevalent in my early reading life.
I also think there’s a preference here, in the same way that people are attracted to certain things. I’m interested in the stories told by women, I’m not really interested in the stories told by men.
As a converse to that, about 80% of my nonfiction reading is male. I’ll read 6 fiction books and one non-fiction book a month.
The types of books I like to read read are significantly more likely to be written by women.
The books I tend to read often feature a woman heavily or talk about the plight of women. As you can imagine, more women write books that heavily feature women and talk about the plight of women.
I also find that some male authors cannot write female characters without applying the male gaze. It’s very much so “I breasted boobily into the office”.
Male gaze. I can tell when it’s a male author without looking most the time. The way women are written usually varies from an an eyebrow raise to me setting the book on fire. I swear to god if I ever have to read the words “perky breasts” used unironically to describe a woman who is just standing there in a book that is not erotica… like why.
There are circles of male readers that outright refuse to read anything by women. always have been. just because it’s a woman, I’ve never seen a single one point out a reason why.
I read books by both male and female authors.
What I’ve found is, that each side has their own shitty authors and amazing authors.
If some people shut out one gender entirely, they are missing out on some really good reads.
But that decision is entirely their own to make.
I don’t really know how to feel about it. But then, it doesn’t really affect me – I read books that sound interesting to me, regardless of the various demographics of the author wrote it. Other people may read books only be specific kinds of authors for political reasons, or just because they find it harder to relate to stories and characters written by people who they don’t share characteristics with. It seems a bit extreme to me to brush aside an entire gender – especially if they don’t do so for other mediums, like movies, television, video games, etc – but like I said, who cares, people are free to do whatever they want. None of my business what anyone reads except for me.
These people might rarely enjoy books by men or perhaps when they were younger read far more books by men than women or maybe don’t even like men and may be avoiding books written by men for any of those reasons. I would urge these people to read at least a few books by men (as I would urge people who rarely read books by women to do so) if only because I think a varied reading diet is more interesting, and I do think there are a number of books written by men that have very interesting stories, important themes, beautiful writing, etc. Also there are a number of demographics of male writers that are underrepresented in the canon and in publishing, such as men of color, transgender men, and immigrant men. That being said, the most I can do concerning someone else’s reading is make suggestions. It’s ultimately up to them to read what they want.
As a booktoker and a woman myself, the books I’ve read this year, ~70% have been by women and ~24% have been by men (the rest were by non binary folks or coauthored by both men and women). I don’t purposely avoid books by men, I simply tend to be more interested in books written by women than by men. That being said, my current TBR (books I own but haven’t read) is ~48% by women ~47 by men (with the rest again being coauthored, by non binary folks, or in the case of one set of ancient myths, straight up unknown) which is *much more* even. And of my favorite seven favorite books this year, 3 were by men and 4 were by women, which again, is much more even.
Fwiw I consider myself a fantasy reader and I tend to avoid most popular fantasy series written by men (ASOIAF, WoT, Shannara, etc) bc honestly they just sound so boring to me ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Why is Booktalk the be all end all?
Don’t you have your own opinion? Try it. Then decide if you like it.
ive read enough things by men.
NEXT! we’ll see what women and others have to say
There are so many reasons why a person will want to read a particular type of author. I have a few friends who are avid readers and some choose to exclusively read female authors, authors of color, and/or authors from the LGBTQ+ community but each of them have different reasons.
IMHO the primary reason I seek out specific demographics in authors for the books I read is decades of under representation. I’m female and old enough to be retired which also means I’m old enough to have been assigned books for literature classes with very limited diversity about 90% of the books I was assigned to read were written by white males from Western culture. I was introduced to a single point of view.
Now that I’m older I understand that publishers will only publish what algorithms show are selling or likely to sell. So, for the past several decades I’ve been voting with my dollars. I spend money on brands, businesses, authors and artists that are underrepresented in the market.
I’m not going to spend money on crap, I’m spending money on things I would have normally purchased, and I don’t go without things because I can only purchase from a company that is majority controlled by white males (I wouldn’t have a computer or smart phone), but when I have an abundance of choices, I tip the scales towards those that have had the scales tipped against them historically.
Perhaps some day things will feel equitable and people won’t feel the need to actively seek out a particular demographic. Also the I don’t see gender usually means you also don’t recognize inequity.
I spent 7-12th grade reading majority white male authors, then another 4 years in college reading even more white male authors. Some were great, others bland, all were written without considering the female reader so when female characters act or say things unbelievable, it takes me out of the story. Now that school is over, I’ve purposefully chosen to read majority female authors and it’s made me a lot more engaged and excited to read books I know will handle female characters and their struggles, emotions, thoughts a lot better than books written by men who may not have done their due diligence instead of writing what they think women are.
This post got me thinking about the books I had to read in school. Out of four years of high school, ONE book was by a female author (To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee) Nobody thought twice about the fact that we were being forced to read almost exclusively male authors. It makes me wonder what the reaction would be if it was almost all female authors instead. Certain types would probably picket the school.
I think it’s this sort of thing, along with many other reasons, that makes some people search out female authors.
I want to recommend you read *The Second Sex* by Beauvoir to learn more about this
I personally find it ridiculous, but it’s up to them who they read. As a long time reader with an open mind I find that I organically end up with books by both men and women and authors of varying ethnicities and ages. I’m far more interested in an individual than their categories. My favourite authors are favourites because of who they are, not because of their gender or race.
There is this thing I learned in writing class and it is one of the first choices to make for your story. Do you want it to be a window or a mirror. Basically do you want someone reading your book to be able to relate to and embody the characters as themselves in the narrative like looking in a mirror. Alternatively do you want your characters to teach the reader something about being a different gender culture et. Like a. Window. I think the reason women read women is because mostly the books and
authors mentioned here are read for entertainment , when people want to relate to a character that is like them if not living a much more interesting life. Women read women because they are safe , pleasant and enjoyable to them. Nothing wrong with that. Also I’d like to add that just anecdotally from the my job at a library the men tend to read more non fiction than men. And as most of booktok I have seen deals with fiction men might be under represented there.
It’s impossible to read every book, so one has to narrow their choices down some way, don’t they? If someone were to want to only read mysteries and no other kind of story, that would be a similar choice. Or someone who only wanted to read nonfiction instead of fiction. Why is it only a problem when someone wants to only read books from a single gender of author? Why can’t that person just be allowed to separate their reading choices in the way they see fit?
In my personal experience (although and entire subreddit is dedicated to it, so I guess it’s not just me), male writers are very risky because of how often they write women terribly. I haven’t read many books by men because of this, but the ones I have read have indeed been subject to this criticism. There’s either weird sexualisation of the female characters, they’re poorly written or poorly talked about or shoved into the background, or there’s straight up violence towards them in the book (usually sexual violence). I recently had to DNF a book by a male author because every other chapter there were very detailed scenes of women being raped and humiliated and it began to feel like a bit of a fantasy from the author. Even when it’s not severe like that, the female characters will often be talked about with disrespect by either the characters or the narrator or both. It’s not pleasant to read about someone like yourself being treated or viewed this way.
It’s not just the women thing though; I don’t mean offence to anyone in saying this, but I find male writers are more likely to drone on in their narration and write boring books. Women just write more of what I want to absorb.
I honestly couldn’t tell you if I read more women or men. I remember titles and covers and only ever look at the authors name if I want to read more of their work but will still forget their names.