Blood, guts and girly gore?

[VydorScope]

Blood, guts and girly gore: Why do female authors write nastier and more violent crime novels than men do?

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/femail...ovels-men.html

What do y'all think?

[DarkScribe]

Because there is demand for it - evidenced by the sales figures - and because they can get away with it. They are writing - like most others - to get sales, make money; and this sort of thing sells.

If a man did it, he would very likely be pilloried. Not long ago another New York Times bestselling author, Chelsea Handler, wrote autobiographically and in depth about a prepubescent girl masturbating. At the time I thought that if a man did that, he would have crowds of angry women picketing his home and his publisher's premises. Sex and violence sell and woman are regarded as victims, not perpetrators, so they can write about it with impunity.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by DarkScribe

Because there is demand for it - evidenced by the sales figures - and because they can get away with it. They are writing - like most others - to get sales, make money; and this sort of thing sells.

So far as I can tell the writer of the article assumes that most readers of these books are women. If it sells, what does it say about the readers? Presumably they buy stuff like that (and Fifty Shades) for their own enjoyment.

[crich70]

I'm not sure they write books that are more violent etc. so much as we notice them more due to the fact that the author is female. I mean back during the Golden Age of Sci Fi for example it was assumed that both author and reader were more likely to be male and so the odd author of Sci Fi who was in fact female (like Leigh Brackett) tended to stand out I think. And probably the same thing is happening now with the violent or gory books. We expect violence and gore from a male writer like Stephen King for example (and yes I know he doesn't write crime fiction) and don't think anything of it, but a female author is different. We still have the double standard in terms of literature I think. We expect women to write more in the romance genre or chick lit than in violent crime fiction. Just my opinion of course.

[DarkScribe]

Originally Posted by crich70

I'm not sure they write books that are more violent etc. so much as we notice them more due to the fact that the author is female. I mean back during the Golden Age of Sci Fi for example it was assumed that both author and reader were more likely to be male and so the odd author of Sci Fi who was in fact female (like Leigh Brackett) tended to stand out I think. And probably the same thing is happening now with the violent or gory books. We expect violence and gore from a male writer like Stephen King for example (and yes I know he doesn't write crime fiction) and don't think anything of it, but a female author is different. We still have the double standard in terms of literature I think. We expect women to write more in the romance genre or chick lit than in violent crime fiction. Just my opinion of course.

Try reading a couple of those mentioned in that article and see if your opinion doesn't change. They are over the top violent and the sexual violence to beyond the depth that most male writers approach. I was familiar with a couple of them, and out of curiosity downloaded a couple more yesterday. The article is correct, gratuitous can applied to the sexual content and violence all of them. If you were to edit out most of the more explicit text, you would not have something that sold on story content alone.

[bigjantailor]

I don't know so much about the violence but when it comes to sex the girls have a secret depravity that would make most men blush. Women have this ability to keep what they have in their head better than men. A study I read in a great book called Sex at Dawn used Functional MRI to look a what turned on men and women. It found men were predictably turned on by the things express in a survey done before the experiment they had said would turn them on. Women on the other hand express on the survey very normal responses to what should get them going but during the MRI they were in fact turn on by a broad spectrum of sexuality express in the photo - far beyond what was found on the survey. It suggested two things: 1. women are better lier's. 2. women have a much boarder range of what is sexually arousing to them than men. Strange too was that gay men and lesbians both reacted to the test in a manner similar to men but with which preference was chosen.

Have fun, Jan