So I wanted to post this in a feminist sub but they are all dead and you need to be checked in order to post bc of trolls, so I’m posting it here.
Does any one else have a problem with casual androcentrism in so many books? With that I mean books that have like 70-90% male characters, the main character is a man and you know this is shit. Because they contribute to the fact that about 70% of all fictional characters are male and of all main characters. Of all the heroes and antiheroes, of all the characters that are actively doing, thinking, and women are just supposed to feel represented even though they are not. Feeling accurately represented makes people more confident and happier bc you feel you’re worthy of representation, and the world systematically denies that to women and then you have a book before you that contributes to just that. How do you deal with that?
Because that one book isn’t the problem. The author could have chosen more women but they didn’t, but probably the reason was ignorance and not malevolence. Still, you’re reading it and it’s hurting you and the world. Do you completely shut that out and enjoy it anyway or do you only read books that have >=50% women and the word “humandkind” instead of the word “mankind”?
For me, especially for contemporary books, when the male authors really could have known better but they don’t it is really hard to enjoy these books. I was reading The Martian with my bf and we ended up downloading the pdf and rewriting it to have the main character being a woman. Now it’s doable for me, otherwise it was just to hurtful to see this horrible disgusting androcentrism in action as a perfect example in this book over and over.
But am I overreacting? My ebook reader is away for repairs right now and I had to pick up a physical book 😀 I took Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close out of the shelf and unfortunately, it has the same problem. It would have been so much better and fairer if the curious and intelligent kid main character was a girl and the dead and super intelligent and completely worshipped parent was a woman, too. Basically all the characters’ genders reversed. But it isn’t. This man didn’t think of that or didn’t care that women are underrepresented as is and he is contributing to that, even though it would have been so easy for him and it would not have changed the book otherwise AT ALL. Now this physical book I can’t rewrite with PDF programs and it’s also a lot of work 😀
What am I supposed to do? How can I enjoy something even though it is clearly contributing to a horrible thing? Anyone who relates or has respectful and empathetic thoughts is appreciated.
Edit: I do not feel it is that easy to find books by women like for example The Martian (which is apart from its androcentrism great in science communication and the likes). But that y’all say it is is great, and makes me hopeful, then I’ll just keep looking. :)And of course I’m reading books by women, but I’m just now starting that progress and I kept coming across all those \[men writing men even though women also write men\], bc of my bf and all the old books I have from before I knew what androcentrism was.
by Interferenzbrille
36 Comments
there are so many books out there i think you should be able to stock your TBR with nothing but books about women. have you tried female authors?
Have you tried not reading books written by men about men and for men? That’s where I’d start.
I mostly read books written by women, so I don’t experience this much. I’m sure there is bias in the industry toward stories about men, but I also think a lot of people are more likely to write about people like themselves, so if you read books by men you’re more likely to be reading about men in their books.
I can’t remember the last time I read a book that didn’t have a female MC. We are obviously not reading the same content. Also, “humankind”? Just let that go. That word is centuries old, it’s not an intentional slight against women. If you wrote a book with only neutral and “inoffensive” language it would be unreadable because it would be unrealistic. Or you could potentially write it as an experiment the way psychologist BF Skinner wrote Walden 2 as his treatise for communal living. I wouldn’t call Walden 2 a huge success though. Actually now I’m curious about it, so maybe I’m wrong. I really wouldn’t get hung up on individual words though. You can read and understand a word and its use without letting it shape how you view the world.
I read a book recently whose MC was a crow, and he was male. Does that count?
Don’t expect books written by men for men to appeal to women.
Read books written by women for women.
There are plenty of books written by men and women that have near equal perspectives from each gender. I think you’re applying a very narrowed view to a very broad subject.
I don’t read romance for this very reason.
Your position genuinely concerns me, and it has nothing to do with books…
there are so many books out there — why are you choosing books that don’t fit your criteria in the first place? it’s not exactly a bad thing that men write about men — no representation is better than poor representation.
do you need recommendations for books that are about women? what work have you done to find them?
These days I think there are a lot more women authors and their work is getting plenty of spotlight in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Literature.
Has this historically been a problem in literature? Absolutely. It’s way too soon to say the problem is “fixed” but there’s nothing to complain about these days, women are getting published, marketed, hyped, forwarded for awards, etc. and the problem is completely avoidable by reading a blurb about any book you’re interested in.
Is this a troll post? While books for most of history have tended to be more male centric, there are plenty of great books with women characters written by both men and women. I didn’t realize it until I actively started thinking about my reading habits but I had been reading mainly books written by men for a good portion of my life (i’m a guy). I started to make an effort to be more diverse in my reading selection. Be more selective when choosing a book. Then you can read books with the protaganist of whatever gender you want. Hell, there are books where the gender of the main character is ambiguous. Or in the adorable Monk and Robot books (Have only read the first so far) the main character is non-binary. You’re acting like male characters are being forced on you when you’re the one choosing the books that you read.
I do not encounter this problem because I mostly read books by women authors with women or nb main characters. I do not have any trouble sourcing these books. Good luck!
This is your brain on Twitter
What genres do you read? I read pretty widely and work in a library. I can probably help you out with some recommendations.
Murderbot is the closest to a male protagonist I’ve read recently. My one simple trick? I predominantly read female authors. Not only do they write more women representation, they usually do it better because they have lived experience with being a woman.
Publishers will push and publish what sells. If we want to change the landscape of available, published novels we need to find the authors we like and hype them up. Buy their books if you can, check them out from your local library if you can’t (and have access to that). Recommend them to people. If you liked them talk about them so more people who might like it can know about it.
There is no change without action.
If I recall correctly, I think women make up a majority of the book buyers (at least in the US), and many of the channels that lead to books becoming popular are run by women, so I’d wager that publishers would actually have a bias towards publishing books that appeal to that market.
That is a relatively recent trend, I suppose, so the number of books published before, say, the 1970s, are likely going to have a male-centric slant.
Pretty sure you’re a troll, but in the spirit of helpfulness, try expanding your horizons.
Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant and Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia are both very good and might appeal to you.
You’re completely overreacting and this rant is absurd.
Authors can write about whatever and whoever they want. If you want more “representation” then go write an original story with the characters you want to see out in the world.
More importantly, I think you should actually be honest with yourself about why you want to have more stories about women. There are plenty of stories about women, so this ”women make up half the population yet they don’t have representation” is bullshit.
Do you simply want attention and something to complain about? Are you falling into today’s culture of glorifying victimization because it makes you feel special? Or, is there genuinely an aspect of womanhood that you’d like to shed light on and explore through a creative medium? If so, what about the experience of women do you want to discuss and share? And hopefully it’s not how “oppressed” women are because that narrative is old, boring, and not true in modern Western society.
Gender swapping roles in a book like what you did with The Martian isn’t doing anything for female representation because that story was written from the perspective of a man. It’s kind of like how Disney is race swaping their princesses… If anything, it’s more insulting to make swaps like this than actually having to put any thought, effort, or creativity to bring to life the stories that you claim are missing from the narrative.
I agree that media and books in general still have work to do in regards to representation but I think you are massively overreacting in a way that’s harming your ability to enjoy something that’s meant to be a fun hobby.
Why not just read books that have women characters? I don’t really understand why you keep reading books all about men when what you want is to read about women. It’s really not that hard to find books with women as the main characters and as the majority.
This post just reads like r/im14andthisisdeep
Bad formatting, nonsensical premise, and bizarre assertion that “If these male authors had just used the words she/her for their main characters these books would have been so much better”
Why are you polluting this subreddit with silly identity politics garbage? There are enough subreddits already plagued with that as it is, this one is about books.
FYI In old English man was a gender neutral term. Mankind refers to all men, no matter what their sex or gender might be.
The term for a male person was wer.
English is full of artefact words, where related meanings have changed around them. For instance we still use the term werewolf, despite the aforementioned wer having fallen out of use in recent centuries
It’s 2024, there are more female authors out there than at any point in history. If you’re still reading 70% male characters, that’s a skill problem on your end.
So I’ll make a suggestion if you’ll have it. When I started seeking out books about women I thought it would be a tough venture but it was fairly easy. I started with Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower” which follows a female main character and has an incredibly relatable female voice. N.K. Jemisin writes from a predominantly female perspective in her Broken Earth Trilogy. I’m currently reading Adrian Tchaikovsky’s (chaikowski?) “Children of Time” Trilogy and I think he writes both male and female characters in a way that is significant and contributes to a complex and ever-changing perspective of human nature and gender relations (but I’m not through the series so if it ends like shit A) no one tell me and B) don’t come at me, I’m not endorsing, simply appreciating what I’ve seen so far as good work).
Additionally, I had a discovery that you may relate to or find interesting. I was growing tired of reading your “traditional male success” story from a male perspective like many do. I took a feminist literature class and while it was enlightening, it was mildly infuriating because we focused very little on all of the AMAZING literary works of the authors and hyperfocused on the role of women in the novel compared to how western literature has been for centuries. From then on I’ve focused mainly on seeing how persons contribute to the story, what questions about personhood that the author is asking, and what that author thinks personhood actually is. I’ve found this significantly more rewarding than focusing on how an author is depicting manhood or womanhood.
I’m also not super convinced that “womanhood” depicted in some feminist literature is a good metric by which we should view womanhood. You might find that this distinction between man and woman (especially in some popular literature or “classics”) is sort of a shifting, wibbly target that no one hits very well. Some people, however, depict personhood in a way that is valuable and relatable, thereby peering into the *human* condition and offering us a peek. Food for thought I suppose. Hopefully you find what you’re looking for!
This feels like a problem in search of forced support. You choose what you want to read. I would say it’s on you realistically.
I’m honestly (well, only a bit) sorry for not having the patience to read the whole post but I gather the complaint is that books haven’t a reasonable percentage of female protagonists. Certainly I’ve little doubt that percentage is far from the RL percentage of women but from the other replies here it sounds as if matters are improving.
Dunno, my reaction to the sex of a book character is like that of my reaction to a RL person’s sex: I immediately notice it just as I would notice other physical characteristics like hair colour and voice timbre and then forget all about it. What difference does it make? Yes I suppose it would be mght be nice if novelists fought sexism by reflecting RL stats (though it would be much nicer still if men treated women as, incidentally female, equals in real life) but whether they do or don’t has nothing to do with the quality of their books which is surely all that matters.
Yesterday someone was looking for romance books that understood the male perspective. Today you’re having a problem with books that are not necessarily romantic, but have a male perspective.
Everyone – gender, sex, race, ethnicity, religion, age, disability etc. – deserves and wants books that are for, about, and understand them, and not all of them are going to be for everyone else.
I recognize there are some books that really hit with a masculine crowd and some of them I like and some I don’t. I also recognize there are some books that really hit with a feminine crowd and some I like and some I don’t. I read books with different religions, different races, different socioeconomic backgrounds, etc. That’s reading for me. Pick up books that represent you if that’s what you want to read. I think I have 6 books checked out right now and 1 is by a man with a male MC. It’s not hard to find books with female characters by female authors that are geared towards women unless you start narrowing it down by other characteristics (again – race, religion, etc.).
If you’re struggling to read a book simply because it features a male protagonist I don’t see how that is an issue of the author. I’m a male and I have read plenty of books written from a female perspective and don’t have a problem with it, in fact I quite enjoy it. Books are supposed to place you into the perspective of different characters, both male and female. If you want a book written from a female perspective then there are plenty of options readily available. The whole world doesn’t have to cater to your views.
I pretty much don’t read books by men anymore. It’s not a hard and fast rule or anything, but there doesn’t seem to be much overlap between books I feel like reading and books written by men.
I will sound ignorant, but I’m a mid 30s dude, I feel like I’m well read and educated, taught for 5 years before having kids and having to go into the business world. Super far left Liberal on most things.
But….. I had to google what this term was.
Especially when what it seems like women authors are dominating the market recently and some of my favorite classics are by women (Brontë sister, Louisa May Alcott) this seems like bait?
Ugh.. is there nothing rainbow hair feminist won’t complain about.
EDIT: I understand you may want to find books that fit you. But this was a bad way to do it. There are lots of books out there I’m sure if you look you can find more. Or ask for suggestions in a more amenable way. Flys with honey and all that. Good luck.
This is ridiculous.
Point one; you could get some good engagement and recommendations from a place like r/witchesvspatriarchy.
Point two; Martha Wells, Lois McMaster Bujold, Anne Leckie, Anne McCaffrey, Diane Duane, NK Jemisin, Yoon-Ha Lee, T Kingfisher, Amur Lafferty, Sarah Gailey, S L Huang, Kat Howard, Kate Elliot, and that’s without me even trying.
Be more deliberate in your choice of books and authors. There are many, many woman authors worth reading and plenty of books about women. I did an informal experiment a few years ago where I resolved to read only books by woman authors for a set amount of time (for me, it was a year). I encountered authors whose work I never would have read if I had stuck to what was most recommended by mainstream outlets or considered “classic.”
I think you just learned the word “androcentrism” and you’re trying it out.
I don’t really care? Honestly I’m looking for good characters and a good story, don’t really pick a book already pissed about the main character’s genre.
That being said. You made me think about it and odly enough most of the books I’ve read lately are women-lead… And they’re mostly military Sci fi which you’d think would be a sausage fest.
To name a few (some pretty unknown, I like reading cheesy shit).
* Vatta’s War.
* Honor Harrington.
* Cassandra Kresnov.
* The Chronicles of Promise Paen.
* The Expanse (not women led per se but ton of amazing women characters that take turns as the center).
* Anita Blake. Here the author does a freaking amazing job telling the story of a capable woman while still making you know how over her head she is… Too bad it eventually turns to just porn.
* The Lost Fleet. Main character is a guy but the secondary main character is a woman and she’s not there to just look pretty.
Honestly I just think there are way too many books out there to worry too much about it.
Then write your own damn book
The fuck are we supposed to do about thousands of years of literature? Burn enough books so that the male/female ratio evens out in the world library? Ban men from writing books?
God, what an obnoxious post.
I would suggest _Foundation_ by Isaac Asimov. It has a plethora of interesting, well-rounded and multifaceted female characters.
My advice would be to seek out the kinds of books you want to read, and don’t feel like you have to stick with a book if you aren’t enjoying it.
Have you read A Memory Called Empire? It’s great.
I’m going to assume this is a troll post. The general problem of men being over-represented should not be so troubling to a person that they are unable to evaluate and enjoy works independent of that social context.
This ideology is a cancer upon art