Alienating male (or female) readers? (sexism in YA reading habits)

Kriven, did you seriously try to pull out some evolutionary psychology? Really? The most bunk, idiotic, psuedo-science that really only exists to make the privileged feel better about their privilege? Really?

Do you even go here?

KateSmash said:

Kriven, did you seriously try to pull out some evolutionary psychology? Really? The most bunk, idiotic, psuedo-science that really only exists to make the privileged feel better about their privilege? Really?

Do you even go here?

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Who knows, he might whip out some mansplaining, too.

Ya know, Kriven, "science" once "proved" that whites were just smarter than every other race due to skull size. And that white women are just more attractive than black women. "Science" is often wrong when it comes to biased topics. At least, pop-science is.

thebloodfiend said:

Ya know, Kriven, "science" once "proved" that whites were just smarter than every other race due to skull size. And that white women are just more attractive than black women. "Science" is often wrong when it comes to biased topics. At least, pop-science is.

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You're right, but I actually dislike that way of putting it, because it feeds into the dismissal a lot of people feel towards science and the scientific method. ("Well, science once thought X, but was wrong, therefore evolution/global warming/HIV is just a theory and might turn out to be wrong tomorrow!")

"Science" doesn't "think" anything. Science is a set of tools for testing a hypothesis. And the problem with evolutionary psychology is not that it's putting forward theories that are later proven wrong, but that a lot of so-called "evolutionary psychology" is nothing more than constructing a just-so story to explain some observed behavior as an evolutionary adaptation, and then advancing this story as a "theory" with the same weight as, say, the theory of evolution or the theory of gravity, ignoring the fact that it has never even been tested.

But it's extraordinarily popular, because just-so stories are easy even for laymen to understand and have the convincing gloss of "common sense" to lend credibility to the credulous, and thus anyone can start spouting them as SCIENCE!

Statements like "every other animal on the planet behaves accordingly to their gender" and "Women are more capable of sympathizing with members of either gender than men are. That's hardwired right into our evolution. Women evolved to be social creatures, men did not. Women are biologically more available to a wider variety of stories and protagonists because of it." are not only factually incorrect, but scientifically gibberish.

thebloodfiend said:

Let's play bingo:

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I got two.

The fetishes for breasts and averaging.

I have no excuse for the former. I like boobs.

The latter is because I'm a statistician. (Which also means I understand the concepts of variance and standard error.)

Amadan said:

"Science" doesn't "think" anything. Science is a set of tools for testing a hypothesis. And the problem with evolutionary psychology is not that it's putting forward theories that are later proven wrong, but that a lot of so-called "evolutionary psychology" is nothing more than constructing a just-so story to explain some observed behavior as an evolutionary adaptation, and then advancing this story as a "theory" with the same weight as, say, the theory of evolution or the theory of gravity, ignoring the fact that it has never even been tested.

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And as a statistician, it pisses me off.

Personally, I have a really hard time buckling down and writing because all I want to do is have babies and call my friends to talk about my feelings and oh wait! Is that something shiny for my nest? *drops laptop and runs off*

Oh, my.

Maybe I can throw out some good points that go toward that side of the argument. If publishers insist on marketing books written about or by women with pink fuzzy high-heels and frou-frou cartoon drawings of women with little dogs, then maybe men might buy more books by men. That's not sexist of the male buyers And it does happen too often.

Or, there could be an argument that the market tries to appeal to women buyers (the majority) the same way the fashion and makeup industry does. The choices of product and marketing are both sexist toward women and don't reflect women accurately. Also, men don't line up to be put in the same camp. Good for them!

I think of toys when I think of those arguments. It's true that I didn't like quite so much pink, my God. That doesn't mean that girls and their likes are less than men, but it does mean that boxing women in as pink-crazy is not a good idea. And yes, it alienates guys from wanting the product. It alienates more females than we tend to admit, but that's where our social conditioning comes in. We think we're supposed to adore pink as little girls, in droves.

So it's possible that some of the choices really are like not wanting Barbie's Super Playhouse as a 7-year-old boy. Sure. But it's silly to say that fiction is quite as bad as all that! There is a better range of options out there.

Amadan said:

You're right, but I actually dislike that way of putting it, because it feeds into the dismissal a lot of people feel towards science and the scientific method. ("Well, science once thought X, but was wrong, therefore evolution/global warming/HIV is just a theory and might turn out to be wrong tomorrow!")

Women are biologically more available to a wider variety of stories and protagonists because of it." are not only factually incorrect, but scientifically gibberish.

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I agree. I should've just said "psuedo-science". It gives idiots who think "well, evolution is just a theory, so it may or may not exist" way too much leeway.

FTR, I'm not a scientist and I hate the science classes I have to take for my major, but understanding the difference between a scientific theory and psuedo-science bullshit that can't be tested isn't that difficult.

Scientists out there, what's your opinion of this book? My psych teacher recommended it.

thebloodfiend said:

Scientists out there, what's your opinion of this book? My psych teacher recommended it.

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It looks interesting. I haven't read it, but it seems to cover similar ground to Delusions of Gender. The latter is probably more science-y; Pink Brain, Blue Brain looks like it's aimed more at parents worried about what to "do." I suspect that Cordelia Fine is a little more confrontational about debunking the more egregrious evpsych myths. (She never actually calls it bunk, but she got some prominent evolutionary psychologists really pissed at her.)

I actually read more books written from a female POV than a male one. But then again, every single guy I know calls me a freak to my face. So, yeah. Anyway, I honestly think guys in general need to just suck it up. They're making the rest of us look bad. Quite frankly, you see nobody worried about the women who find themselves unable to read books because they can't identify with men.

And also, if I see one more of those "scientific" "arguments" about how men are callous creeps and women are their emotional waifish guardians or whatever, I'm going to scream.

A high pitched ragey scream.

And another also, actually replying to the OP, I think if you craft your work well enough it can appeal to both genders. So I don't worry about that part. Whether or not it will be marketed towards both genders is something else entirely...that's what keeps me up at night.

Eh. It's a funny thing. Women get told all of the time that they're "Overly emotional" and blah blah. I respond that men are "Under emotional".

At least according to the American psychiatry establishment, mental disabilities/disorders which revolve around deficiencies in empathy, such as Asperger's, autism, sociopathy, etc., are dominated by men; mood imbalances/disorders such as depression are dominated more by women.

This could be a cultural artifact, it could just be some natural variation in humans, it could be a bit of both--I'm not in a position to say which--but it remains that at least in my society (and probably yours) empathy is at least realized as a more feminine trait than masculine one.

And personally, I see that as something *good* about me, not something bad. If someone wants to attribute my skills at empathy and caring and being a generally decent human to selective pressures on my ancestors, that doesn't really bother me. I mean, I know that I like food because liking food has always been a useful evolutionary trait, but that doesn't make dinner any less enjoyable.

That doesn't mean we can't try to change ourselves for the better--society changes all of the time, and things we thought were completely hard-wired often turn out to be totally random cultural crud. Some folks used to think that some other folks were "naturally" inclined toward being slaves, after all, and now don't they look stupid. But I am wary of accusing others of being Bad People (ie, sexist,) when it could very well be that they are just not as awesome* as I am in the empathy department.

*I am trying to be amusing, not conceited.

LOLOLOLOL OMG I can't to some of the recent developments here. So I'll skip.

I largely agree with many of the points already made, so I won't rehash them again. I'll just address the OP. Here's my two cents: I don't particularly care if certain readers feel like I'm "alienating" them because I didn't write a book specifically catered to their tastes/biases/preferences. I wrote a book about a nerdy galvanist society girl who goes on an adventure and, yes, is attracted to a boy. I can't worry about the people who are going to glance at the cover/cover description and put it back down again. I can't write a universal book. So I write books that I adore and hope other readers adore, too. And if the bulk of those readers are teenage girls because teenage boys go "ew, a society girl protagonist," so be it.

I'm really, really not concerned about teenage boys not having anything to read, personally.

It always amuses me when anyone says that men write and read he-manly ass-kicking action stories because they aren't good at empathy or relationships. The vast majority of the great male writers of the 18th and 19th centuries would like to have a word with you.

If I had to compare one "classic" to Twilight, it would be Jean-Jacques Rousseau's endless obsessive romance La Nouvelle Héloise, which was immensely popular with both men and women in the 1700s but is almost unreadable, I would wager, by anyone of either gender today. Likewise, Pamela, the blockbuster novel of the 1740s? Female MC, male author, utter wish-fulfillment that seemed to work for readers of both sexes, creepy woman-in-peril rape fantasies and all.

At some point in the late 18th century, certain female writers started outselling men, and that may be where the present-day gender divide began. Male authors felt threatened, so they declared their work more "serious" and less romancey. Even so, they often had female MCs and relationship-driven plots (Anna Karenina, anyone?), or their male MCs were introspective and angsty, not Hemingway two-fisted types (see: Crime and Punishment). Even a recent classic like The Great Gatsby is more about relationships than it is about ass kicking.

So, anyway, historical perspective makes every era look a little crazy. It sucks that guys today won't read Jane Austen because they think she's a romance writer, but that has more to do with modern marketing than with reality.

I tend to write my female MCs cold and analytical, with romantic feelings they repress, and multiple agents have told me I needed to warm/soften them up and enhance the romance angle. I've done so, because that seems to be a real necessity in the current market (and sometimes it does improve the story), but I've tried to take my warming up in a Katniss Everdeen direction and not in a Bella Swan one. It makes me sad that taking those little steps toward romance (or having a female MC at all) could eliminate a male readership, but if that's how it is, so be it.

I worry more that my book won't sell because it has a male co-protagonist, whom I tried to make a pretty plausible teenage boy.

Fuchsia Groan said:

It always amuses me when anyone says that men write and read he-manly ass-kicking action stories because they aren't good at empathy or relationships. The vast majority of the great male writers of the 18th and 19th centuries would like to have a word with you.

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It seems a reasonable counter-observation, however, that there were a *lot* fewer authors being published and a lot fewer literate people in society in the 17 and 1800s--and on top of that, most of those folks were upper class or quite devoted intellectuals of the other classes.

Any time we're looking at a very small, non-random sample of a population, we can't claim that it is representative of that population as a whole. That Tolstoy wrote X or Hemmingway wrote Y doesn't tell us much about what the average person preferred in their narratives--if anything, the best-selling book of the 17 and 1800s was the Bible. So it seems difficult to say how much these "best selling" authors really appealed to the average population at all.

Today, a far bigger % of the population is literate, and literacy is less limited to certain social classes, so that itself makes me at least slightly more inclined to trust modern data more than the older data. Not that there aren't still cultural factors at play, of course--it would be impossible not to. But extrapolating from a small, non-random sample is risky business.

little_e said:

It seems a reasonable counter-observation, however, that there were a *lot* fewer authors being published and a lot fewer literate people in society in the 17 and 1800s--and on top of that, most of those folks were upper class or quite devoted intellectuals of the other classes.

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That's true. And maybe reading is becoming more of a female-gendered thing these days because men gravitate for some innate reason to visual and interactive media that didn't exist back then.

But I still think centuries of literature demonstrate that at least some men were (and are?) very interested in things other than first-person-shooter scenarios and 'splosions. Whether they were genetically different from the average dude, or more educated, or what, I can't presume to say. (My dad was the one who introduced me to Faulkner and other great writers, so I may be biased.)

But this is why I can't abide "All girls love romance"/"All dudes love Transformers and hate feelings" arguments. Exceptions matter, and they may be the ones buying books, since anyone who reads obsessively is something of an exception these days.

More importantly, books about feelings and relationships ... don't have to be romance. "Romance versus action" is a false dichotomy that comes originally from Hollywood, I would guess. A lot of action movies and romantic comedies are dumbed down to get the largest possible male and female audiences, respectively, because they're so expensive to make that they can't afford to have a smaller, more niche appeal, but I still see more variety in publishing (as in indie film).

I'll accept on average women have an advantage in the empathy department. But people aren't averages, and even if they were, that doesn't translate to men being inadequate at empathy. Of course, some people are. Both men and women. I am. But even inadequacy in empathy doesn't indicate a lack of interest in emotions, relationships, or a lack of desire to empathize.

kuwisdelu said:

Stop it. You're making me hard.

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Don't you know the rules, you can beg only when you are allowed to. xd

Kriven said:

You've got me wrong. The conspiracy isn't a feminist one, the conspiracy is to force men to stay in their beefy little box. It's a male conspiracy against other males.

However, I'm about choices. And if a guy wants to choose to stay in the beefy box, then he really shouldn't be hassled for it.

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But it begs a question, is his choice really a choice, or was it made for him without him knowing anything of the other side?
#
By the way, about the earlier argument of wanting to see themselves as the main character. It's not exactly a parallel, yet: a lot of male gamers playing MMORPG (multi-player online role playing games) do it using female characters. Others say they wouldn't do it because they "can't imagine themselves being girls." Some of the male players who use female characters give those characters male sounding names and insist they are to be referred to as "he" even in the company of strangers (they might even get insulted if you assume the player is female.) Others make up characters like story characters--different ones, with different histories. Anyway, it's bordering on offtopic, but it's interesting to see how people relate to made-up characters.

little_e said:

Today, a far bigger % of the population is literate, and literacy is less limited to certain social classes, so that itself makes me at least slightly more inclined to trust modern data more than the older data. Not that there aren't still cultural factors at play, of course--it would be impossible not to. But extrapolating from a small, non-random sample is risky business.

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It's also connected to the culture-related gender specifics. For example, Chekhov has a story in which the male MC says good bye to his love interest who leaves his town forever, and it goes like: we lost our strength when our gazes met, so we cried together, I kissed her wet face, she kissed mine, our love for each other drowned us both, and when I finally left and her train pulled away from the station, I went into an empty carriage and cried until my very heart dried up. It's not a direct quote, but it's pretty close.

But there we have an aristocratic guy who was brought up reading dark romantic poetry. Love suicide was considered poetic. Melancholy was considered more beautiful than the "vulgar" wedding-and-kids contentment. No one from his social group would consider him effeminate because of his tears and their reason. Now try to imagine a typical American teenager in that situation... and what his peers would say. Sitting with your hot girl in a pizza parlor with your arm around her shoulders--cool. Crying your eyes out because you lost your deep and true love and then possibly dying in duel over her honor--lolwhut, get help for yourself and a lawyer for her. Cultural stereotypes form the expectations that the readers then force on the characters.

Fuchsia Groan said:

But this is why I can't abide "All girls love romance"/"All dudes love Transformers and hate feelings" arguments. Exceptions matter, and they may be the ones buying books, since anyone who reads obsessively is something of an exception these days.

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I think the massive runaway success of My Little Pony among teenaged and adult men is slowly, but surely turning the tide on that, what with its most popular character being a book-obsessed, badass girl magician and all. It'll take awhile for the sarcastic cynicism of the 90s and 00s to wash away, but with any hope the New Sincerity will blossom to all corners of society, and teach every guy it's OK to like stories featuring girl characters.

Of course, there will always be little crypto-fascist twerps who only consume books to get cathartic escapist power fantasies and shun anything they can't use for wish-fulfillment (i.e. any main character who isn't a muscle-bound male with a hard-on for military tech, rigid traditional values, and meting out "righteous" justice) but somehow I don't think we'll be able to change that without fundamentally altering the human race.

A recent study on empathy found the genders were equal in accuracy in judging what an observed person was feeling--unless the women were first primed with an explicit expectation of female superior empathy, in which case they did better.

Windcutter said:

Sitting with your hot girl in a pizza parlor with your arm around her shoulders--cool. Crying your eyes out because you lost your deep and true love and then possibly dying in duel over her honor--lolwhut, get help for yourself and a lawyer for her. Cultural stereotypes form the expectations that the readers then force on the characters.

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You just reminded me of Feed (the YA book by M.T. Anderson where everyone has their brains directly plugged into the internet, not the one with zombies). It's a male-authored book with a male MC who starts out like the typical modern teen you're describing (complete with MTV vocabulary) and ends up more like the Chekhov hero, because of his experiences with a girl. It has a ton of attitude but not that much action.

Do guys read and like that book? Or, like most YA books, does it appeal primarily to girls?

I'm really curious about what guys read, so reading this thread has been educational even if it's sad to hear that some will shun a female MC. Myself, I tend to shun midlife-crisis male MCs in literary fiction, because I don't like reading passages where they drool over much younger women, so I do think we've all got our preferences we may not entirely be able to justify. I may be missing out on some really great books by Updike, Roth and the like because those passages annoy me.

Fuchsia Groan said:

That's true. And maybe reading is becoming more of a female-gendered thing these days because men gravitate for some innate reason to visual and interactive media that didn't exist back then.

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Innate? No.

Conversations about whether men inherently are more attracted to shoot-em-ups and women are inherently more attracted to weepy books about feelings are almost always teeth-grindingly stupid, because it's so evidently untrue. The history of literature up to the present day has included many, many male authors who write about feelings and introspection and romance, etc., and many, many male readers who read such books.

Are there gendered trends in reading habits? Yes, of course, just like there are gendered trends in clothing habits, but no one suggests that men have a genetic preference for pants and women have a genetic preference for floral print dresses.

veinglory said:

A recent study on empathy found the genders were equal in accuracy in judging what an observed person was feeling--unless the women were first primed with an explicit expectation of female superior empathy, in which case they did better.

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Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender talks about this a lot - in fact, "gender priming" has a significant effect on both genders in all kinds of ways. For example, women will typically perform about the same as equivalently educated men on math tests - unless you tell them beforehand that "women usually don't perform as well as men on this test," and then their scores drop. Likewise, men's scores will drop on empathy tests if they're told beforehand that men usually don't do well.

veinglory said:

A recent study on empathy found the genders were equal in accuracy in judging what an observed person was feeling--unless the women were first primed with an explicit expectation of female superior empathy, in which case they did better.

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That's interesting. It reminds me of the study where black kids did worse on standardized tests if they were in certain environments.

Fuchsia Groan said:

Myself, I tend to shun midlife-crisis male MCs in literary fiction, because I don't like reading passages where they drool over much younger women, so I do think we've all got our preferences we may not entirely be able to justify. I may be missing out on some really great books by Updike, Roth and the like because those passages annoy me.

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No, you're not missing much.

I shun midlife-crisis male MCs in literary fiction because why would I want to read about myself?

kuwisdelu said:

But even inadequacy in empathy doesn't indicate a lack of interest in emotions, relationships, or a lack of desire to empathize.

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That's a great point. It's far from all or nothing. And even the most macho, action-oriented genres have their moments of empathy, their intense bromances, what have you. (The Grey, for instance, is about Liam Neeson punching wolves but also about a bunch of tough guys in a survival situation who form emotional bonds. The hero even quotes poetry, for chrissakes!) It may be a different kind of empathy from what you find in The Help, say, but it's empathy, just the same.

Amadan said:

Conversations about whether men inherently are more attracted to shoot-em-ups and women are inherently more attracted to weepy books about feelings are almost always teeth-grindingly stupid, because it's so evidently untrue.

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As a female who would rather watch Punisher: War Zone than The Help, I agree. But I've learned over the years that I'm something of an outlier, so I try to give those who believe in those differences the benefit of the doubt, while insisting they recognize that gender trends aren't universal or immutable.

Honestly, I think the deal with boys and reading has much, much more to do with the social pressures AGAINST reading than whether or not they can relate to the books in the YA section.

From a very young age, males are encouraged toward outward, active activities. Girls are encouraged toward quieter, more passive pastimes. If a boy is not assertive and social and athletic, it's an issue for a lot of people, and they let him know that. I mean, even as a girl, I had a hard time growing up as a reader. If I wanted to go to the library and read during recess, people found me odd for it. It's worse for boys.

^ Generalized statements, all.

The issue really isn't that teenage boys don't read because they can't find any "boy books" in the YA section. The issue is that there's social pressure for them to think of books as something only pansies and antisocial losers (and girls) enjoy. That's why there's a sharp decline in the number of males who read ANYTHING AT ALL past a certain age.

ETA: Just wanted to reiterate again that I'm speaking in generalities and about the majority, not about individual exceptions.