[ SECRET POST #3135 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3135 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[Supernatural]


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03.
[Floraverse]

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05.
[Star Trek: The Next Generation]


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07.


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08.
[Bryan Cranston: Breaking Bad vs. Malcolm in the Middle]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 045 secrets from Secret Submission Post #448.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0- too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

As someone who's found that women are doing better than the men in the writing department lately... You're a sexist. Swap "Male" with "Female" and see how it looks. Or "Black" or "Gay" or any group. That's a poor reason to refuse to read a book. You can always put a book down if you find you don't like it.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, no. Men are not discriminated against. Men have never been told that they should use a pen name or only use their initials and surname so that readers assume they're women. It's never been assumed that men don't have the imagination or intellectual capacity to be writers because they're men. A book isn't assumed by publishers, marketers, and critics to be special interest or tailored to a niche market just because the writer is a man. Refusing to read books written by men doesn't play into bullshit stereotypes used to excuse not publishing men's writing.

In short, it isn't the same thing if you swap in other demographic groups, because the situation isn't remotely the same, no matter how much various groups of disgruntled canines might whine.

[(Anonymous)]

"Men have never been told that they should use a pen name or only use their initials and surname so that readers assume they're women."

Never say never, anon. Daniel Abraham's publishers made him take a penname that featured initials when he decided to write a YA novel so that YA readers would assume he was female.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree that it's sexist to put all books by men into a category and prejudge them based on the gender of the author. I'm a feminist myself, and I don't agree with the the idea that "it's only sexism if it's also systemic." However, sexism that runs counter to systemic prejudice is not the same as sexism that plays into systemic prejudice, and to compare them as equals is problematic.

That said, if one finds that they usually prefer books written by female authors, there's nothing wrong with choosing to read mainly books by female authors. There's also nothing inherently wrong with saying you prefer to read books by female authors. There is, however, something sexist (and therefore kind of wrong) about making sweeping generalizations about all male authors - e.g. "Male authors just aren't as good as female authors," or, "Male authors can't write [subject]."

[(Anonymous)]

Replace man with Adam Sandler and that post becomes pretty Sandlerphobic dont you think?

[(Anonymous)]

ehehe

[(Anonymous)]

Swap "Male" with "Female" and see how it looks. Or "Black" or "Gay" or any group.

"ignore all societal context and pretend we live in a vacuum where these things are interchangeable! and swap them! case closed, SJWs"

[(Anonymous)]

They are identical comparisons, when we're talking about an individual refusing to read any book by an author who has some inherent characteristic she doesn't like.

[(Anonymous)]

Like sexism.

[(Anonymous)]

You're right, OP is being sexist.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Not refusing. Just usually not. If I get a rec, I'll try out a male author. I just wouldn't pull one at random out of a bookshelf.

[(Anonymous)]

The biggest problem with that is we don't really have a good term for for differentiating sexism that doesn't really matter with sexism that does.

It's like how people are utterly determined to take things like the Bechdel Test or the wage gap and instead of using them as tools to look at giant swatches of data and find trends they cherry pick one example of a movie that sucked where two women talked to each other, or one cashier they know who makes 10c more than a male cashier and wowzers, case closed, the things are utterly useless and debunked.

Every single day there are probably thousands who make a choice not to read anything by a female author. There are people making book displays of nothing but male authors. There are people who devalue entire genres of lit based on what sex most of the authors are. They segregate books into Authors and niche Female Authors. Men who do write for female-dominated lit genres tend to experience the "Glass Elevator" effect where they're seen as special and deserving of more recognition and get promoted faster, where as women in male dominated fields don't. Book lists are made of only men, people argue that famous women authors are probably secretly dudes using a woman as a false front for whatever mysterious reason makes the most sense at the time.

It's so common it doesn't even get noticed. A teacher did an experiment where they only taught male lit for a semester, and then only female lit for a semester. They've gotten dozens of angry parent letters about forcing their weird feminist agenda on the poor kids during each second semester, and not a single angry letter about excluding women during the first.

And most people here are shocked, SHOCKED, that someone would risk missing out on good stories by ignoring all male authors. Likely even if they mostly read stuff by women they still have checked out the Big Names in their genre, who are probably mostly male. I know I have.

And I'm no longer surprised any more when people brag to me about never having read Harry Potter because those are stupid kids books, but are quick to scorn anyone who hasn't read Lemony Snicket or Roald Dahl and only knows about them from the movies.

So yeah, it's in the sexism family. But it's a weird sort of sexism that's a bit akin to saying nudists are trying to destroy capitalism by refusing to partake in supporting the fashion industry.

[(Anonymous)]

But it's a weird sort of sexism that's a bit akin to saying nudists are trying to destroy capitalism by refusing to partake in supporting the fashion industry.

I agree with most of your comment and think it's well put. The one part I disagree with is your analogy. I feel that it makes sexism against men out to be a neutral act at worst or a positive act at best, when in reality sexism against men is a bad thing. It's just not quite measurable on the same scale as sexism against women.

A better analogy, IMO, would be that it's like the difference between bumping someone's shoulder, and bumping someone's shoulder when you know they have an injured shoulder. The first is kind of rude, like why not just edge over a little so there's room for both of you to pass each other? But the second is basically an attack: You know the person is already hurting, already vulnerable, and you knock into them anyway? What the heck kind of ego trip are you on that you can't move over a little for a person who's already been through the wringer?

[(Anonymous)]

In this specific case I think it's utterly harmless. There are instances of sexism against men that are very harmful, but in this case it's more like "I don't smile at blonds, only brunettes."

They're not leaving negative feedback, they're not telling other people not to read them, they're not saying they're worse, they're just saying they personally don't read them. And that's equated to an attack.

What's interesting is that it ties into studies that show many people do not assume that neutral is the default for women. If a girl chooses to continue not dating someone, even after he asks her out, that's an act of aggression towards him and he may be justified in retaliating with physical violence because she 'hurt him' and made him want to hurt her back.

But it's very fascinating that everyone here generally made two big assumptions, one that the secret writer was female, and that she was somehow doing something by... continuing in the state of having not read a book for whatever reason. I'm wondering if there would be the same sort of controversy if someone said something like "I don't read any book with a cover title in comic sans or papyrus"

[(Anonymous)]

In this specific case I think it's utterly harmless

In this specific case I think you're right. :)

they're just saying they personally don't read them. And that's equated to an attack.

Yeah, I do see that as a disproportionate and inappropriate reaction to OP's secret. I do not personally see OP's gendered fiction preference an attack. I have also not at any point in my comment(s) presumed OP is female. Although I admit I did presume it to myself, because yes, it did strike me as unlikely that a man would profess a strong preference for female novelists - and yes, that is down to sexism (which is a bit ironic, because I'm the anon from above who's father vastly prefers female novelists, lol).

I think OP has every right to her(?) preferences. I also think that the way she expressed her preference was reasonable. I do, however, think it's important to keep in mind that if the preferred authorial gender had been reverse, people would likely have been all over it about how sexist it was. And in the end I would have to disagree with those hypothetical people. Because though that other hypothetical secret would more than likely have come from a place of sexism, the OP would still have been merely expressing their preference. If we don't assume that OP's preference for female authors comes from a place of sexism, I don't believe we'd be right to assume a preference for male authors comes from a place of sexism either (even though, let's be real here, it probably does).

I gues I'm saying...hmmm. I guess I'm saying I don't believe in stacking the deck in favor of women within the sphere of feminism, despite the fact that the deck is stacked against us outside the sphere of feminism. Maybe that's overly conscientious of me, IDK; I just don't want feminism to start looking like it promises as "here's to the old boss, same as the new boss" outcome.