Do you read books by authors of your own gender?

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Mine are mostly male, for the same reason (science fiction.)

Yes, in my sci-fi period (I change the genre I read from time to time) it was the same (I like a lot Vance and Heinlein -the first ones-)

[Ea]

Something completely unintentional (at least from my side ) seems to be happening in this thread: it was never questions about any particular reasons why one or the other - simply; what happens to be the gender of the authors you read and how does it relate to your own gender? It's my general impression that people choose to read stories with elements and themes they like to read about, or perhaps they like a certain style or genre*. It shouldn't necessarily follow that there is a need to justify one's selections - yet there seem to be a need for some posters to justify themselves.


* That's the way I choose books to read - obviously I assume everyone else do the same

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by recluse

Bottom line: most women can't write horror and they can't write noir.

none or most of them can write noir? What did Patricia Highsmith write?

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Ea

Something completely unintentional (at least from my side ) seems to be happening in this thread: it was never questions about any particular reasons why one or the other - simply; what happens to be the gender of the authors you read and how does it relate to your own gender? It's my general impression that people choose to read stories with elements and themes they like to read about, or perhaps they like a certain style or genre*. It shouldn't necessarily follow that there is a need to justify one's selections - yet there seem to be a need for some posters to justify themselves.


* That's the way I choose books to read - obviously I assume everyone else do the same

Same for me, in the same way I don't look at the cover, I don't look at the author thinking about male/female, only if I know him/her, if I like his/her work and so on.

[Maggie May]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Or at least, written by people using female pseudonyms....

It's quite possible some of the books I read are actually written by men using female pseudonyms. That doesn't bother me one bit. It's the storyline that attracts me in the first place. But I do know for a fact that the majority of my books are written by female authors. I accept fully the point you're making.

Slan

Mag.

[jhempel24]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Same for me, in the same way I don't look at the cover, I don't look at the author thinking about male/female, only if I know him/her, if I like his/her work and so on.

That actually plays a rather large factor on me buying a book or not. I may or may not read it if it's on the darknet due to the fact that it's being acquired free, but there is a much better chance of reading it that way.

[FlorenceArt]

I think there might be a confusion from the start, between what we think we do and what we end up doing in reality. Your poll questions, Ea, refers to what we think we do and why we think we do it, so it's only natural that most of us replied there was no bias in their choices. No voluntary or conscious bias, that is.

The truth, of course, is harder to pinpoint. Let's take romance for instance. Women like romance, and romance books are written by women for women. That is the accepted truth, and of course if everybody believes it, it becomes a factual truth, which reinforces the subjective truth. And being written by and for women, it is, naturally, not serious literature, maybe even not literature at all. (Which is true of many of those books, I'm sad to say, having myself a taste for romance, though I hate to see some of the horrible products that are sold as such). And on the other hand, it's perfectly all right for a woman to write romance books on her kitchen table while dinner is cooking, but a woman who takes herself seriously as an author and aspires to write "real" literature is quite another thing. Conditioning from birth will make sure that very few women will even consider that kind of ambition, and then they will have to struggle to be accepted in the literary world.

It doesn't matter much why we think we end up choosing a book. Many of the choices we do are conditioned by collective decisions that are biased (starting with what books are made available and how they are presented to us), and even our personal decisions are probably much more biased than we realize.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

I think there might be a confusion from the start, between what we think we do and what we end up doing in reality. Your poll questions, Ea, refers to what we think we do and why we think we do it, so it's only natural that most of us replied there was no bias in their choices. No voluntary or conscious bias, that is.

Huh? I sincerely tried to state them in a manner so that they didn't.

Edit: Oh, well. Language is a difficult one. I'd better leave the thread to its fate then

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

none or most of them can write noir? What did Patricia Highsmith write?

Psychological thrillers maybe. It was not noir. I would say that Sara Paretsky writes noir.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by tompe

Psychological thrillers maybe. It was not noir. I would say that Sara Paretsky writes noir.

Ok, hard for me to tell the difference, because I rather read cozy

[TGS]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

But the poll questions were "prefer to read books by X." Could this conflict here possibly be over subtle differences between the structure of English and Danish? (I see you and Ea are both in Denmark.) In English, saying that "I prefer books written by men" is pretty unambiguous in meaning that "the reason I chose these books is because a man wrote them"-- it is a statement of deliberate choice.

The two sentences "I prefer mostly books written by men." and "Men write most of the books I prefer." do not mean the same thing in English, though I image in the structure of some languages (maybe Danish, maybe not) they might.

I don't want to hijack the thread with a discussion about semantics*, but to give a counterexample Xanthe (apologies to Xanthe for quoting without permission) says:

I don't buy or read books specifically based upon the author's gender - that is immaterial to me.

But having said that, I'd say that the majority of my books are by women authors, mainly because they are the main writers of books that have a strong romance element, be they mystery/suspense, paranormal, fantasy, scifi or just general fiction/romance - which I enjoy.

Now, let's assume for the sake of argument that Xanthe is a woman, then the poll response

I'm a woman and prefer to read books by women authors

would seem to be appropriate in the circumstances - in which authors are not chosen because they are women, but they are chosen and they are women.

*Incidentally, although I live in Denmark I am a native British English speaker, so I don't think it's an issue about Danish/English. It might have more to do with my cognitive linguistics background - I don't see words have having determinate, fixed meanings, but rather as instruments that people use to intend to mean something. And I understood Ea to intend to mean something like "do the authors you tend to read happen to be women, or men, or do your choices show no real tendency either way", not "do you specifically choose to read male authors, female authors or is there no clear pattern".

[tompe]

Originally Posted by nguirado

I don't read books by women. Sometimes, I'm tempted- I almost picked up Pride and Prejudice before settling on Middlemarch-but I always end up with a guy book.

Maybe this was irony but George Eliot is a woman (Mary Anne Evans).

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

.... Let's take romance for instance...romance books are written by women for women. ... it is, naturally, not serious literature....a woman who takes herself seriously as an author and aspires to write "real" literature is quite another thing.

I'm not understanding the point here.
It seems you took romance 'for example', and then argue that it's because romance is primarily written by females that stops it being taken seriously.
I think you could look at any number of genres, and show their authors aren't taken seriously. SF is an obvious example (although most of the writers there are male).

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I'm not understanding the point here.
It seems you took romance 'for example', and then argue that it's because romance is primarily written by females that stops it being taken seriously.
I think you could look at any number of genres, and show their authors aren't taken seriously. SF is an obvious example (although most of the writers there are male).

Yes, you're right, there are a lot more things that come into play. I wasn't trying to suggest that the only factor for judging the literary value of a genre is whether it's predominantly written by female or male authors. I was trying to show that there is a feedback loop that is created by and feeds prejudices. If everybody believes something about the differences between men and woman (for example, men like action stories, women prefer romance), then it becomes true. There are many kinds of prejudice and not all are gender related.

What I was trying to show is that in the simple act of choosing what books we read, we are influenced by, and in turn influence, very complex social mechanisms. We may think we are unbiased, but that's not really true. And again, this doesn't apply only to gender issues.

I'm sure my point is not becoming any clearer, but maybe that's because I don't think clear-cut opinions are very useful in this kind of debate.

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

There is romance in 'The Blind Assassin' and 'Oryx and Crake' iirc.

I haven't read them yet, but based on "The Year of the Flood", I'd be VERY surprised if the romance was of the "Heaving Bosoms" sort!