Quote:
Originally Posted by Ea
A discussion here about men and women authors and male and female readership made me curious about whether people primarily read authors of their own gender.
So taking into account both the gender of the authors you read in general - as well as your favourite authors - is there a bias towards a gender, and is it the same as you own?
Edit: I think I should add that the questions are about what gender the authors of what you read happen to be, and not if it's a conscious choice on your part.
At first I thought, yes, I read more women authors than men, but when I looked at my book case and calibre library, and also trying to add my favourite authors to the equation, I think I end up with roughly half of each.
I am adding favourite authors to the question as it also says something about what we like. For example, one's favourite author may not necessarily have written a lot of books and hence won't feature largely with regards to amount. |
The problem is the question you are asking and the way the poll questions are phrased do not mesh. You ask about the bias we have about the authors we read and the sex of the authors and then in the poll questions you ask what we prefer. So what we have here is really a question that doesn't fit the poll. Really, the poll should be started over in order to get proper answers. I would answer differently if the poll matched your question. I am male and I read mostly male authors. But, it's not that I prefer to do so. It just turns out that way. So the bias here is towards male authors. But I do not "prefer" male authors to female authors. So really if the poll question was something like "I am male and I read mostly male authors", I would have voted for it. But when you say that I am male and prefer male authors, that's just wrong for the way it is.