What is in your view a "man's writer" or a "woman's writer"?

Hi, I don't have a reading thread here but I've read many of yours for years and occasionally participated in various discussions, so I hope it's not too cheeky of me to start a thread here.

(I considered Book Talk, but it seems too huge and amorphous, and I really like "the gang" here.)

Going to the question, it's the sort of thing I *think* I know what others mean by, but I don't think in those terms myself, and when I try to define them, I find I run into all kinds of difficulties.

So I'd love to hear others' opinions--are these phrases meaningful to you, do you apply them, how, what are the examples... anything and everything.

Good question, and one that I have wondered about for years. I mentioned this kind of gender divide to an avid reader I know, and like me, she saw a clear division, not along gender lines, but some more mysterious appeal.

Avoiding the more basic genre division clichés, I'd like to suggest that there are certain books like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, A Confederacy of Dunces, Catch-22, and Robert Stone's books that appeal more to men I know, but not to me or many of the women I know. It can't be that their characters are mostly male, or that they are doing 'manly' things--because if that were the case, I might be adding all the books off my reading list that cover war, exploration, and any number of other (traditionally) male endeavours. So, for example, Patrick Leigh Fermor's books don't qualify, nor do those of Pat Barker. And Cloudsplitter? I can't remember a single female character in the book, but it is not a 'male' book--it's too absorbed in relationships? Is it that easy?

I'm not sure I could as easily pick out woman's writers--possibly because I am a woman, although I don't know. Is it easier to pick out books that appeal to the opposite gender? And what of transgendered authors?

First, I don't think of authors as being for women or for men, but I do think books can be directed at men or at women. Some authors seem to write only one kind or another, but most, at least to me, seem to write in the middle.

I also think that the markers change with genre and reading community.

From discussions in the science fiction community, I've found that young men tend to disdain books where relationships and character growth are more important than action and plot and many women prefer the opposite.

From my research involving women romance readers, it seems that the key is high drama. They don't really care about plot (though they generally like the standardized happy ending) or character growth (though they tend to want to man to be revealed as being emotionally invested in the woman's health/safety/independence/etc.). What they really want is to experience the characters interacting in such a way that they reach the heights of ecstasy or the depths of despair or other emotional highs or lows, preferably multiple times per story.

My lgbt book group just threw around the idea last month that gay male books might be about how to construct relationships amid all the sex and that lesbian books (especially those set pre-Stonewall) might be about how to get to sex after forming relationships. However, that was pretty off the cuff and perhaps a reaction to reading Sarah Water's Affinity and Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, where sex came late in the books if at all, close together.

As a genderqueer writer I have always tried to write for the middle. My fanfic was never "romantic" enough for the women I was hanging with at the time. My gay male erotica needed some prompting from gay friends about how important the visual is. I do tend to emphasize the work needed to achieve a relationship, rather than assuming they just arrive unannounced at your department store counter. For whatever any of that is worth.

In summary, I think the reason it may be hard to put one's finger on what it is, is that even your own expectations may change by genre??

Personally, I really hate putting either writers or readers into gender-based boxes. I don't deny that one can do it, or even that there is, in a broad kind of way, some validity to it. But that doesn't stop me from hating it. Possibly because I myself never seem to fit into any such boxes. E.g., I am female, but, to consider ipsoivan's examples, I loved both One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Catch-22 immensely.

I think it depends how the question is phrased. If the implication is that all authors are either for men or women, I would hotly dispute that. I'm not suggesting that was the original poster's intention, but it seems to be how the question is often posed. To do so is decisive, not to say stupid. There are probably some books that appeal largely to a male audience, as there are some books that have a predominantly female readership. That's is not the same as saying that there are some books that appeal to all women. To do so is lazy and reduces us all from individuals to a cipher. I'd rather use some chicklit as fire lighter than ever wish to read it.

I don't really care what gender an author is, not who they think they are writing for. To my mind it is my reading experience that is more important. So I shall decline to consider the question any further on the grounds that I feel it to be irrelevant to my reading.

>1 LolaWalser: when I try to define them, I find I run into all kinds of difficulties.

Yeah, they don't admit to clear boundaries. I suppose for me it isn't an indication of the gender of the author (although I admit that's usually a forgone conclusion) but instead says something about the scope of their work. If there is anything "universal" about it -- if I think the writer is trying to say something about what it is to be human, then I don't think of them as either a man's writer or a woman's writer, no matter what they are writing about. Virginia Woolf, F Scott Fitzgerald...even Jane Austen...none of them come across to me as a woman's or a man's writer.

But if the writer seems wholly caught by questions of "what it is to be a woman" or "what it is to be a man" to the exclusion of all else -- if they wallow in it, actually -- so that they have nothing to relevant say to anyone of the opposite gender, or just aren't interested in the opposite gender...then I'm more inclined to think of them as a man's writer or a woman's writer. I think of Philip Roth as a man's writer for this reason--I just don't think he's talking to me. Is even interested in talking to me. And I pile a host of authors who write about women's friendships and mid-life crises into the category of "women's writers" for the same reason (although, to be honest they are in no way talking to me either.)

But still, the closer I look, the less distinct the boundaries appear, which is how it should be, I guess.

So many excellent points, so little time to do them justice, but I want to say at least a little something so y'all know I'm following...

Oh--one thing--the immediate reason for this thread was someone using the phrase "man's writer" to me the other day, implying my criticism (of the presumed "man's writer") stemmed from gender difference. And I remembered once more that I had no idea WHAT the thing means, whether there some general consensus or not, whether it's possible to define it in some way that could be useful for communication, whether one thinks in those terms or (like me) does not.

>2 ipsoivan:

It can't be that their characters are mostly male, or that they are doing 'manly' things--because if that were the case, I might be adding all the books off my reading list that cover war, exploration, and any number of other (traditionally) male endeavours.

Trying to identify categories that might apply in constructing the distinction (man's vs. woman's writer), I'd say you mentioned the following: (1.) subject, (2.) genre and (3.) gender of characters.

And I agree, it's not at all obvious that any of the above straightforwardly implicate the gender of the reader.

she saw a clear division, not along gender lines, but some more mysterious appeal.

I know this is vague, but would (4.) "attitude" work, at least partly? Opinions, assumptions etc. permeating the text without necessarily being directly expressed? Would the "mysterious appeal" concern more the general attitude of the author, however vaguely perceived, or what the characters are shown doing, their actual behaviour?

>3 aulsmith:

You bring up something that seems to me extremely important--that it's possible the phrases mean different things in different contexts. But are they still related somehow, these various meanings? If the context is genre, the application seems simple--a "man's writer" would be the author writing for a male audience and "woman's" for female. Incidentally, in that case, is it ever imaginable that a woman could be a "man's writer"? Somehow I feel that those who think the phrases are meaningful would baulk at that--that the author's own gender is essential in making their work "gendered".

But in the context of, say, "high" literature it becomes more complicated, even if we take in account the historical dominance of male authors and readers (i.e. for most of the time any written literature existed, it was, as far as we know, made and consumed mostly by men.) Or--could I be wrong, ARE male (and female?) authors in general STILL writing only for people like themselves?

And if so, the question is, what exactly is the quality in their writing that is (or is perceived as being) gendered?

>4 bragan:

I feel pretty much the same, which is why it nags at me every time I happen across it.

>6 southernbooklady:

About authors "speaking to us"--as soon as I get their words in my hands I feel the author is speaking to me, in fact, ONLY to me, in what could turn out to be the most important conversation in my life (you never know...) Roth did speak to me, with The professor of desire when I was a teenager and Portnoy's complaint in my twenties, as did all other "dead white men" whose work I read, I got something out of all of them, even if it wasn't, perhaps, what they'd might expect.

(And there is also the matter of total human experience, for which I always had the most ravenous appetite, my greatest hunger--to feel everything as everyone, to be every voice, every instrument, every character, every life... Nihil humanum a me alienum esse puto...)

I had an idea: perhaps a "man's writer", at least in some contexts, is a euphemism for a "misogynist's writer"? (A "woman's writer" would then be defined as someone who does not flaunt the same attitudes that appeal to misogynists--not necessarily a feminist writer, just someone lacking the tone of disparagement that goes with misogynistic representations.)

I think the expressions 'man's writer' and 'woman's writer' are neutral, but with slight alterations in the tone of delivery and/or context could be used to praise or damn the writer in question. I would use either term simply to mean a writer who is generally not read by men (in the case of a 'woman's writer') or, alternatively, by women (in the case of a 'man's writer'). Off the top of my head I would expect that to be based on, in descending order of importance in attracting readers, subject matter, style, attitude.

I don't think it matters. People are not all the same. Like a series of Venn diagrams there are areas where we overlap, but I don't want everyone to be in my circle, nor do I want to be confined within anyone else's.

Sorry for the long post. We're in an area that touches on things I've been interested in for a long time. So I think I might be going off on tangents. Last paragraph might make the most contribution to the overall discussion.

>7 LolaWalser: Incidentally, in that case, is it ever imaginable that a woman could be a "man's writer"? Somehow I feel that those who think the phrases are meaningful would baulk at that--that the author's own gender is essential in making their work "gendered".

It was exactly in the context of this question that the data I have about science fiction readers came up. A number of women writers who write "hard science fiction" (which is generally defined as by authors who "get the science right") were having a very hard time being perceived as hard science fiction writers, even though their day jobs are in the sciences and they were writing well about scientific topics. So this panel was put together to try and figure out why the male readership of "hard sf" wouldn't adopt these writers. After a few false starts, a young man in the audience admitted that he didn't want to read about all that romantic stuff and he assumed that any book with a woman's name on it would have that kind of stuff in it, so he never read books by women.

So, I think that you're right. People who think in these categories want a man's writer to be a man and a woman's writer to be a woman. However, I have to say that it is not the author's gender/sex that is essential, but their presumed gender/sex. Many people who have XX chromosomes, some who self-define as women and some who don't, very successfully write gay male erotica under male pseudonyms, and there are similar cases in other genres, including George Eliot in mainstream literature. So I think there's something about reader expectations and perceptions going on here as well.

And if so, the question is, what exactly is the quality in their writing that is (or is perceived as being) gendered?

There were some studies done in the late 1970s/early 1980s about women's narrative style. I skimmed a couple of them for some studies I was doing the 90s, but I got the impression that nothing had quite gelled in that area. The rise of the queer studies penchant for talking about both gender essentialism and gender as a cultural construct simultaneously have muddied the waters even further.

The assumption that I've worked on for my studies of various kinds of writing is that people exist in aesthetic communities where there are unwritten cultural rules about what makes a book "good." Writers who want to be read by those communities have to adapt those rules either naturally by belonging to the aesthetic community or by learning the rules from the outside. I think this thread might be trying to ferret out those rules for people you perceive as being a woman's writer or a man's writer. So far I've heard:

- a man's writer isn't concerned with women as qua women but as people who have certain kinds of interactions with men.
- a woman's writer concentrates on the experiences of women, though men may have important roles in the book and be fully realized characters.
- a man's writer would be perceived as being gendered male; a woman's writer as being female.

Carry on.

>9 aulsmith: I think your final three points do get to the heart of things.

In the genre fiction I read (crime and noir of various kinds) I will avoid a new book by a male author I've heard nothing about, because the assumption is that there is a high probability that the book will show no interest in motivations or character development, and that the women inside the covers will be dead, some variation of harpy and/or the sex toy. Most male authors, it must be noted, have more robust inner lives and can imagine women-as-people, but when you get that other kind, it's an unpleasant shock. I do think these writers are writing with only men in mind as their audience; they are writing the books they want to read. They are a man's writer.

As for a woman's writer, I suspect (and I am open to and would welcome disagreement) that since women exist in what still to some degree a male dominated world, they have an easier time writing male characters as people as a matter of course.

>7 LolaWalser: I had an idea: perhaps a "man's writer", at least in some contexts, is a euphemism for a "misogynist's writer"?

I have to admit, I never thought about it in those terms, exactly, except insofar as misogyny is sort of the default setting in our society, so anyone who doesn't question it is in some degree misogynistic.

I suppose I am always asking myself, "What is this author saying? And who is this author talking to?" -- perhaps it's a hazard of years spent reviewing books professionally. But there are times when I am quite positive that an author in no way imagined someone like me reading their book.

>10 RidgewayGirl: I will avoid a new book by a male author I've heard nothing about, because the assumption is that there is a high probability that the book will show no interest in motivations or character development

I've been thinking about it and I have to admit, I'm not at all likely to make an assumption about a book based on the (perceived) gender of the author. I am, however, prone to making snap judgments based on the cover of the book.

I do think it is a little crazy that young man just didn't read writers with female names because he assumed they would be romance-y.

>11 southernbooklady: I do think it is a little crazy that young man just didn't read writers with female names because he assumed they would be romance-y.

If he had been alone, I'd say it was him, but the other men in the room weren't jumping up to disagree. In fact I don't remember a single man saying anything like "I read hard sf by anyone who writes it." There was the definite feeling in the room that this was an area where only men knew what they were doing and nothing we were going to say at the panel was going to change their minds. (Which doesn't mean some of them didn't go out and read some of the authors who got mentioned, and therefore changed their minds.)

I'm not going to add anything, but I'm really, really enjoying the conversation.

Very interesting discussion...

In my late teens, I had more than one librarian (especially new ones or just transferred from other cities or desks) remarking that I had taken a book from the wrong side of the bookcase (SF and Romance were in a single bookcase, SF on one side, Romance on the other side) - this was at the times of paper cards, when they had to verify that what you wrote as checked out is what you are leaving with. It was a common idea that women do not read SF and female authors don't write it (so when a publisher published The Snow Queen as part of a World SF series, my library kept shelving it on the romance side of the bookcase and the rest of the people I knew that read SF (all male...) refused to even entertain the idea of reading it for a while.

That's a bit away from the original topic but it was a symptom of an almost full separation of what you are supposed to read - boys read Karl May and Emilio Salgari, girls read - I cannot even remember what I was supposed to read, I was too busy reading the boys' books. :) Then it moved to SF/Romance and downhill from there. But my generation grew up with librarians and teachers hammering into our heads that certain books and authors and genres are not for the other gender).

Nowadays it seems to be more genre related than author related, especially with the usual circle of friends that I talk about books with - but still there is a very distinct separation of what a woman would be good in writing or when a book is targeted at women... or at men (as if women cannot like books where you have a battle after battle and men cannot appreciate books with a bit of character building)...

>12 aulsmith: There was the definite feeling in the room that this was an area where only men knew what they were doing and nothing we were going to say at the panel was going to change their minds.

It suggests a kind of intellectual timidity. As if these men have very specific comfort zones they are afraid to stray from.

>15 southernbooklady: Oh, yes, big time. I think it's part of the asperger's spectrum personalities that are prevalent in the field. They have trouble with social interactions, and reading about complex social interactions is probably almost as bad as engaging in one. They usually grow out of it, but not generally until their thirties.

Hmm, I wonder if some of the kind of hardcore misogynistic writers (like, say, Hemingway) had some kind of autism spectrum disorder? Of course, in Hemingway's case depression and attendant narcissism explains most everything.

And if so, the question is, what exactly is the quality in their writing that is (or is perceived as being) gendered?

There was a "study" or such floating on the internet a few years ago where it asked you to insert a paragraph of your writing to try and predict whether you were male or female. I think it was attached to someone's thesis or other but I thought the concept was interesting. Could you indeed predict someone's gender just via what they write? For me, the answer is "no" but I liked the idea behind the research.

When I added my text it predicted that I was a man, which I'm not. Then I tried adding the text of several famous authors and it got a lot of those correctly but of course, it missed a few. It seemed like it was equating verboseness with female while short sentences were attributed as male. In any case, it was a fun experiment and I'm sure as more people entered their writing samples, the data became even more interesting (although I've never seen associated data or results).

Anyway, fascinating conversation everyone.

Glad to see you have started a thread, Lola. I have been wondering where you were hanging out.

Joining this conversation rather late, but this is a subject that I have puzzled about. Last year there was some discussion on my thread about whether or not Moby-Dick was a man's book. I would have said that it was. But there are many women — myself included — who love it. Was Melville a man's writer? One could make a case either way depending upon one's point of view.

In the last few years since I started paying attention I discovered that I read hardly any books by women. In 2014 I read 5 women authors out of 63 books. This year I am way ahead: 2 out of 7! There are another 10 on my TBR for this year. The imbalance is entirely unconscious.

Of course I wonder why this is. Candidly, I cannot come up with a reason that applies across the board, except that in both the realm of fiction and that of nonfiction, I am more interested in ideas and action than in emotional concerns. And the books I gravitate to just happen to be mostly by men. Aside from fiction, it may be related to subject matter. I do not shun women authors out of hand. It just works out this way. I mention all this because I am a women, yet I gravitate to male writers — including Hemingway! I am not sure there is a good answer to the question

Are all these male-authored books that I read by "men's writers"? I don't think so. Too many women read them as well. My tendency is to think that the answer is in the eye of the beholder. Each person relates and reacts to each writer one encounters based on one's life experience and attitudes. It may be an unanswerable question.

>16 aulsmith: That's an interesting idea. We do see things in more nuanced tones as adults than as young adults, so that would make sense.

Hemingway was not misogynistic in his earlier writings (or not more so than society expected at that time) by became more and more macho as he aged. I've seen this in other authors, a slowly developing rigidity that happens to some people as they age that affects some men by causing them to cling to outmoded gender roles.

> Good post Poquette. I think you've nailed it.

>18 Poquette: I am more interested in ideas and action than in emotional concerns. And the books I gravitate to just happen to be mostly by men. Aside from fiction, it may be related to subject matter. I do not shun women authors out of hand. It just works out this way.

I'm often in the same situation. I think it reflects a couple of hard truths -- more books are published by men than by women, so you are simply more likely to come across male authors. In nonfiction, men still dominate in many areas of scholarship ("ideas") -- if you're interested in Shakespeare, for example, you'll be reading texts by men...unless you are specifically interested in women in Shakespearean drama. Then you start to run into the female scholars.

Then too, if you are interested in history, in "action", that remains mostly a study of the things men have done, because men were mostly in the position to do them. I've been reading quite a bit about the American Revolution, for example. And despite the occasional nod towards the few women who could be said to have had a voice, (Hello, Abigail Adams) it is really a male story.

And more insidiously, there remains the prevailing assumption that to write about men is to write about humanity, whereas to write about women is to specialize. That is really, really hard to shake. I feel like I've internalized it and must fight constantly to be aware of it.

>19 RidgewayGirl: I'm not sure what you mean when you say "early." Farewell to Arms is probably the most misogynous piece of writing I've ever read. Most misogynists just leave women out; Hemingway actually killed one.

>22 aulsmith: A Farewell to Arms is the most misogynistic piece of writing you've ever read? I could lend you a teetering stack of books, written recently enough that the authors really should have known better. No, it's not a feminist novel by any stretch, but especially given the culture and time he wrote it in, not outside of social norms.

Which brings up an interesting question. What is the most misogynistic novel you've read? I nominate The Human Stain by Philip Roth for that particular distinction. Catherine may have been overly compliant, but she wasn't an illiterate dairymaid eager to have sex with an elderly crankpot. And how about Roth's treatment of the termagant university professor, whose only aim in life was to make Roth's alter-ego suffer unjustly?

>23 RidgewayGirl: I was much more careful in my selection of reading material after I got out of school. I've never read Roth and don't intend to.

I think you mean Faunia in The Human Stain, which I loved immensely and didn't find anything overly hateful in it. If the "termagant" had been a man, you could equally complain that there were no women with real power in the novel. Either way, Roth takes it on the chin. And I found Faunia's character to be way more nuanced than you seem to be treating it here. She chose to be what she is to escape her husband who was losing his grip due to PTSD. Her illiteracy was just a ruse. To me, she was playing Coleman just as much as he might have been playing her.

I'm finding this conversation fascinating, but don't have a lot to add. I do read a lot of books by men, and I do find that some of them don't present women fully (but some of them do) , but I tend to agree with Suzanne >18 Poquette: that a lot of it is in the eye of the beholder.

For what it's worth, I hated The Human Stain and I've read and enjoyed a lot of Roth (and also not enjoyed some of his work), but I don't recall whether I hated it because it was misogynistic (I definitely thought it was racist). I would nominate The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson as most the misogynistic (and overall offensive) book I've read in recent years .

I moved the most misogynist book discussion to http://www.librarything.com/topic/188575, because I think it's a distraction from Lola's main point.

Though Lola's question in post 7 is still relevant.

For me, I think a man's writer would at the very least ignore women if not downright misuse them.

However, not all writer's who are misogynist are men's writers. Thurber's work (I don't know about Thurber) used misogyny for humorous effect, but I think in some ways he's also mocking the machismo thing.

Not sure this helps to conversation any, but if i had to start a definition...

A man's writer writes for men, and includes a heavy focus on subjects touching on or relating to male fantasies on sex and power, and neglects female fantasies of the same. I don't imagine misogyny is necessary, but there will be a neglect of woman except as they fit in as objects of or foils to sex and power. A woman's writer would be different in that the work would be targeted for women and include a heavy focus on subjects touching on or relating to female fantasies of sex and power, and neglect male fantasies of the same.

I would say both are useful but vague terms that can be loosely tossed around, presumably as criticism.

>28 dchaikin: I like your attempt at a definition, Dan, but I don't think female fantasies are typically of sex and power; from my probably narrow viewpoint, I think they tend to be more about relationships and emotional concerns. Other than that, what you say rings true.

ETA — This would seem to apply more to fiction than nonfiction.

It wasn't my intention to kill the thread. Apologies...

>30 dchaikin:

No need to worry about thread killing! Talk is a very small and quiet forum, as the internet goes (actually, talk forums such as this one seem have become a relic...)

I started catching up on the thread, thinking all kinds of replies to posts, didn't have time to finish, and now I must try to reconstruct my train of thought/arguments.

>11 southernbooklady:

That "who is this addressed to" question we keep running into hides some point of difference between us that keeps nagging at me but I can't seem to articulate. Let me try expressing it this way--while I understand "being addressed to" as a matter of fact (say, a medieval monk writing for an audience of his likes), the thing itself is ALSO as a matter of fact, a repository of information accessible to anyone, even--speaking of the monk--someone as remote in circumstance from him as, say, myself.

Of course, "accessible" in some aspects--assuming the reader is literate, understands context etc.--inaccessible perhaps, in some other--assuming, say, insufficient education, misinformation, error... but I cannot construe gender as a theoretical, essential obstacle.

I have to admit, I never thought about it in those terms, exactly, except insofar as misogyny is sort of the default setting in our society, so anyone who doesn't question it is in some degree misogynistic.

I asked that (is a "man's writer", at least in some contexts, is a euphemism for a "misogynist's writer"?) because of the context in which I'm typically confronted with that question--every time it's because I remark on a writer's misogyny. So it would seem to follow that misogyny is, at least sometimes, a pointer that X is (is called) a "man's writer".

I'll come back to this, I'm sure, because it's one of the most troubling aspects of the problem to me--it implies that men, writers and their audience, are expected to be casual about misogyny, tolerate it, and even LIKE it.

A parallel to race helps to show how odious this attitude truly is. But because it concerns women (remember that verse of John Lennon's?), hey, what's the big fuss. Boys must have their woman-bashing fun.

>13 avaland:

Hi, Lois!

>14 AnnieMod:

Regarding the practice of taking on pseudonyms, initials, hiding sex, it's hard to escape the conclusion that female authors suffer from being perceived as incompetent to render male (i.e. "universal") experience and lacking the authority to impose their vision on male readers.

>17 lilisin:

I think I remember that... cute game but meaningless, it's so easy to think of male writers with "feminine" characteristics and vice versa! It's also telling that people are prejudiced by mere names--very different reactions when told "Andre" or "Lin" are male or female!

>18 Poquette:

I think we can't ever underestimate the influence of the environment on us, the whole complex set of circumstance that means--history, social conditions, social conditioning. I've concluded long ago that we are all raised as misogynists, i.e. actively and passively depreciating women and everything pertaining to women. This is not to deny the effect of personal taste--but is taste formed completely outside external influence? I can't believe so.

I think we have similar reading patterns, Suzanne, but I know that in my case, it's not just the effect of a preference for certain type of non-fiction, or a completely "innate" preference for Western classics. I was raised with a definite intense worship of "the Western canon" and--what wonder?--concomitantly showed a conscious reluctance to read and like female authors. (The first female author I felt was respectable to like was Marguerite Yourcenar, not by chance frequently described, in the past at least, as a woman who wrote "like a man".)

Anyway, I don't wonder that many women read books by men; practically only books by men are promoted as great literature. And the dead old guys especially accumulate advantage with every passing century, as their work and reputations reverberate in secondary through n-th level commentary and ever tighter cultural enmeshment. Can't understand Renaissance painting without a grounding in the ancients and the Bible; can't understand anything post-Shakespeare without Shakespeare etc.

But I think there's room for adding to our experience without sacrificing the sense of lineage.

>27 aulsmith:

Now there's a name one doesn't see so often these days: James Thurber! :) He did write (and draw) quite a bit on the "sex wars", didn't he? Although maybe they weren't called that then. I agree that--at least from what I remember--his shtick seems to be entirely of the times, like the "golddigger" movies, blonde philosophies etc.

>29 Poquette:

If I understood dchaikin correctly, he didn't mean that every woman would have fantasies of sex and power, but that for those who do, these would be different from such male fantasies.

>28 dchaikin:

If I got that right, I agree. There's a clear conflict between a "typical" male fantasy of seducing as many women as possible, and a "typical" female fantasy of seducing THE man of her dreams. It's not just that they are different fantasies, they are completely antagonistic.

>34 LolaWalser: I believe that Thurber actually invented the idea of the sex wars in a series of cartoons called The War between Men and Women. At least that's always the first thing I think of when I hear the term. (The second being Kit Reed's wonderful Songs of War

>33 LolaWalser: I've concluded long ago that we are all raised as misogynists, i.e. actively and passively depreciating women and everything pertaining to women.

It wasn't until my second time through this thread that this statement finally got through my misogynist conditioning! It is a wonder I am able to acknowledge it! Sadly, now that I have really thought about all this, I can only conclude that you are right.

I suspect younger generations of women have escaped this conditioning — at least I hope so.

>36 Poquette:

Wow, I must pickle and preserve that post o' mine for future generations--it took me more than twenty years to come to that realisation and I'm still fighting it! :)

I'm not sure that it can ever be completely eliminated or escaped (at least, until/unless we achieve some future relative utopia).

>35 aulsmith:

Interesting. Thurber's popularity (contemporary at least) is a bit of a mystery to me.

>37 LolaWalser: This is huge! You have managed to break through the invisible shield. I am still reeling! You may have seen all that discussion on my thread about the dirth of female writers represented in Michael Dirda's collection of reviews, Bound to Please. Reading through that again I can feel the denial. Yikes!

>37 LolaWalser:, >38 Poquette:
And then in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, this happens: http://oinks.squeetus.com/2015/02/no-boys-allowed-school-visits-as-a-woman-write...

Outgrown it? Maybe in another generation. Maybe not.

>39 AnnieMod: Sad. So sad.

>38 Poquette:

No, I'm sorry to say I'm so behind on Talk I haven't seen some threads since January. (I'll try, but the next two months are shaping up as still pretty hectic!)

Maybe I'm off the mark here, not knowing the tenor of that discussion (and apologies if so), but in general, from what I saw of your reading, Suzanne, your preference for classics ancient and medieval more than suffices to explain the preponderance of male authors. IMO, it's not the dearth of female authors per se in one's reading that's so interesting (let alone automatically suspect or objectionable in some way)--only the reason why. And the answer can be trivial (say, very specialised interests), or, well, not--in which case one may discover all kind of intriguing things... But it only matters if one is interested in posing the question in the first place.

>39 AnnieMod:

I try to console myself thinking about the unprecedented access to information nowadays. No matter what we do to kids, they are much more likely to become aware of alternatives than we were.

Dearth -- I knew "dirth" looked funny.

I heard about that school incident on Book Riot, Lola and just shook my head at the entitlement it's instilling those boys. That their time is special and they don't have to pay attention to girls' stuff. That girls' stuff is a waste of time and something they shouldn't bother with. Nice. If it was the Wimpy Kid author, you can bet all the kids would have been in there.

>39 AnnieMod: That that conditioning is still supported by parents and schools is depressing. My son loved Shannon Hale's graphic novels about an ass-kicking Rapunzel and her sidekick Jack as much as my daughter did. He'd be upset to be discouraged from attending that assembly. Considering how hard it is to inspire children to enjoy writing anything, it's a failure on the part of that school to miss that chance. It's no wonder, is it, that male authors often (and, yes, it is often) have trouble writing female characters, whereas female authors are adept at writing male characters. Men aren't regarded as a special, separate group.

Incidentally, I learned the acronym WMFUN for the first time this week. It stands for White Male F-Up Novel, and I've read more than a few of those.

i just stumbled on this thread and am looking forward to reading everyone's thoughts. this is such an interesting topic and i've often wondered what "women's writer" or "women's fiction" even means. wanted to say, though:

>6 southernbooklady: But if the writer seems wholly caught by questions of "what it is to be a woman" or "what it is to be a man" to the exclusion of all else -- if they wallow in it, actually -- so that they have nothing to relevant say to anyone of the opposite gender, or just aren't interested in the opposite gender...then I'm more inclined to think of them as a man's writer or a woman's writer.

i am really interested in gender and can be really interested in a writer's thoughts on "what it is to be a man" - i don't think that someone who is tackling those ideas isn't speaking to someone of the other gender or is excluding readers with that kind of focus. but you go on to say that you don't feel like philip roth is talking to you, and i completely agree that there are writers (i haven't read much of him but feel the same way from what i have read) that just aren't concerned with whether or not the opposite gender is listening. if i was standing in front of him hemingway wouldn't have talked to me and maybe that's at least part of why i couldn't be less interested in what he has to say. but, as you also imply, i am also not so interested in women writers who aren't talking to everyone. anyway, i'm trying to say that i think it's more nuanced. that, for me at least, it's less about their talking about those questions of gender and identity and how society holds that, and more about if they're *actually* talking about those issues. because those are issues for everyone. how they are approached might not be for everyone, though.