Quote:
Originally Posted by ardeegee
No, it isn't. To "choose books written by men", you have to choose to not to read books written by women even though there are books in your chosen genre written by women. Unless you are choosing books because they are written by men, the fact that they happen to be written by mostly men is incidental.
For instance, I read books by China Miéville even when I assumed that China Miéville was a woman (I'd never heard of anyone named "China", but it sounded more like a woman's name than a man's name.) The fact that China Miéville turned out to be a man was utterly irrelevant-- as it would have been if China Miéville had really been a woman.
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I would say that "choose books written by men" can mean either "choose books because they are written by men", or it can mean "choose books that happen to be written by men". You didn't chose to read a book by China Miéville because it was written by a man, but you certainly did choose to read a book that happened to be written by a man. Many people have reported in this thread that, on checking their bookshelves they find that they have chosen books that are predominantly written by one gender or another - but few of them set out to read only male, or only female authors.