But why would that be so? What, specifically, would they not find interesting that you’d classify as “women’s lit” enough to qualify? I guess, what I’m asking, if literature is meant to talk to the human experience, why do you think some men would avoid books classified as women’s lit? Why are the experiences of half the population of the world not worth categorizing just as literature (and I’m not saying you’re saying that, of course, just curious why you think it’s been deemed so by publishing and academia)?
I, personally, don’t think this of all men, but I do agree that this is the underlying assumption about the classification. Same with, say, African American lit, or even speculative fiction genres (sci-fi/fantasy, romance, noir, etc).
I’ve seen this also with books called “Young Adult”. Just because your protagonist is 17 or 19 doesn’t necessarily make the book only for that age group. Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone looked to me at first like a typical YA paranormal romance … and then totally blew my mind in the third book.
From the result on Amazon, I’d say the three books below, among many others, would qualify as things you could reasonably conclude wouldn’t appeal to many men, and thus could reasonably be marketed and classified being written for women. There are other books in that category on Amazon, like those by Jemisin, that I really don’t think you could reasonably categorize that way.
So romance? Isn’t that already it’s own specific genres? And is it maybe just straight men who wouldn’t find these books of interest? Would some gay men enjoy them, even with a woman protagonist (of course, there is probably a strong gay romance genre as well)? Or could a straight man not also enjoy the sexuality in the books, even if they are from the woman’s POV?
But what about something like this?
Marketed at women, but the only thing that seems to make it “women’s fiction” is that it was written by a woman and has a woman as the protagonist. From the description, I see what I would consider pretty universal themes.
And of course, all of these are categories cooked up by the publishing industry, based on some assumptions about human nature, including that men won’t be interested in things either written by or about women. So I don’t have any answers here… just questions.
There was an interesting experiment I read about years ago (can’t find an Internet reference, sorry) where they had people read some random Bush and Kerry speeches while in an MRI, but with the speeches randomly attributed to the two. The interesting part was that a significant number of people who were anti-Kerry experienced a rush of pleasure when they read something they disliked, as long as it was attributed to Kerry, and vice versa for those who disliked Bush.
This pleasure was completely absent for the other combinations.
In other words, there’s quite a number of people who, on some level, enjoy being enraged by bad behaviour, as long as it’s by the “bad guys”. My guess is the brain rewards observations that confirm your priors of someone being “bad”.
Anyway, ever since then, I’ve noticed a contingent of people who drift deliberately into situations where they can witness “bad people doing bad things” just for the little hit of dopamine. I’ve heard the term “outrage junkies”, and will confess to being a little susceptible to it myself as I read the odd Libertarian blog.
What would you say would be the male equivalent? Either a specific book, or author, or general plot line. Something that could be categorized as “Men’s Lit”.
I’m fascinated by the underlying cognitive biases of this kind of reactions. I’m in the impression that I don’t have such biases, but of course I can’t be sure.
It seems more a Tribalist designator, the right wing “not PC” crowd that just happens to get outraged themselves when you push the right, shiny buttons.
Well yeah, I certainly have some cognitive biases. What I mean is I don’t feel like I have the ones that would give me the impression that such-and-such category of population is more represented than it actually is (or express itself more than it actually does).
Last i checked women were kindof part of the human race and history is going to have a lot of noteworthy women on simple fact there is a lot of history.
I’m more amazed there aren’t MORE awesome women out there that we know about.
Edit: And i blame the fact a lot of male dominated societies tended to relegate women to the tasks of kitchen and kids. Yes yes the division of labor, but it is rather telling that the wider power of negociation and commerce were male dominated.
I’d always looked up to hatchepsut. Became Pharaoh, and opened a bunch of trade routes rather than made war.
