Recent comments in /f/books

katietatey t1_j4qigqd wrote

Reply to Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

It might be the genre.

I used to be the same and then I made a point to read more female authors and I've found several I like a lot. Toni Morrison and Yaa Gyasi are 2 that I particularly like. I've read 5 of Toni Morrison's books in the past year and loved each one. Also they are only like 200-300 pgs so not a huge commitment, maybe try one.

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walking-the-ashes t1_j4qicmc wrote

Reply to comment by nyet-marionetka in Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

"A very sexist framework where women are some mysterious unknowable other" is exactly the reason behind the lack of good female characters. Both men and women have been largely influenced by this idea for thousands of years, so it's still widely present in books written by authors of both genders. Authors do write female characters as "too female" in a stereotypical way. And this is why I don't find them believable.

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GoogleyEyedNopes t1_j4qgzax wrote

Reply to Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

Do you like female authors and protagonists better when the author and character genders are aligned? (Female author + female protagonists)

Male authors are often critiqued for writing thin, or unrealistic female characters in their novels because of a lack of shared experience. Is the same true of Female authors writing male characters? Maybe, when you select a book with a male author and a female protagonist, you're disappointed by an unrelatable female lead. And when you select a book by a female author, with a male protagonist you're disappointed by that writing as well?

Maybe you're subconsciously preselecting your way into disappointment. Just a thought.

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CaraDune01 t1_j4qex82 wrote

Reply to Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

I’m the same way to an extent, and for me I think it’s just that a lot of times female protagonists don’t match with my life experiences so they don’t feel relatable. Could just be that they’re badly written.

However I also read a lot of sci-fi, which tends to have more male than female authors I think. Men are rarely good at writing women well, IMO, so that could be coloring my opinion a bit.

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Hour_Squirrel_4914 t1_j4qev0x wrote

Reply to Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

What type of genres are you reading? Are you reading male and female authors with male and female main characters in the same genre? It's not fair to say Clive Cussler's books are filled with confident & adventurous characters, but Edith Wharton only wrote only miserable, whiny, rich women, therefore men write fun characters I can relate with while women write about a bunch of boring drips. Make sure you're giving fair play to the writers and characters.

Also, I'd recommend staying away from "female empowerment" books if you're feeling this way because they will only solidify your bias. Those are the one genre, I, as a woman can not relate to at all. The broad generalizations, sweeping judgements, and useless affirmations do nothing for me because women are INDIVIDUALS with different life experiences, struggles, triumphs, personalities, etc. We can't just be put into one box, told what our problems are, and then given non-specific platitudes to solve them.

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Grace_Alcock t1_j4qef9d wrote

Reply to comment by out_cyder in Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

I think that may be the problem…there’s a whole genre out there of women writing thrillers with pretty nasty female characters that a lot of people just love (Gone Girl and its followers). If you were fairly young and thought that was representative of women writers and women characters, you might get the wrong impression.

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nyet-marionetka t1_j4qd2o5 wrote

Reply to comment by walking-the-ashes in Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

>I think historically there's still much more misunderstanding of female nature compared to male one. That's why male characters are subjectively more universal and flexible and make a better vessel for a wide range of writers' endeavors.

This is weird because you seem to think that women don’t know themselves and are incapable of writing stories about women, because their own identity has been masked from them. On the other hand, male characters are completely accessible and women can write about them easily.

I think that there is nothing unique about men versus women, and they’re basically all people. So saying “people can’t write women” is incoherent to me. A person might have difficulty writing a particular type of character (like I think I’d have a hard time writing a very self-conscious and approval-seeking person, because that’s not me), but globally not being able to write characters of one gender only works if a person is operating within a very sexist framework where women are some mysterious unknowable other, and is much less likely if the author is that gender.

Based on your previously stated preferences, I’d suggest the Broken Earth trilogy and The Library at Mount Char.

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demiurgent t1_j4qb60y wrote

Reply to Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

There's a bunch of really good reasons mentioned here, but there's also the possiblity that you grew up reading only books with male protagonists - or the ones with female protagonists featured some form of abuse that you weren't comfortable with - and now you're retreating to the safety of what you're used to. It happens.

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walking-the-ashes t1_j4qb2oy wrote

Reply to comment by nyet-marionetka in Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

I never said that every female character ever written is stereotypical. I said among what I've read, which is a totally different thing. There must be some good female characters out there, but I personally haven't seen one, to my regret.

I also never said that woman can't write female characters. The fact is that among authors I'm familiar with, female included, there's a preference to write male characters.

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Choice_Mistake759 t1_j4q85nq wrote

Reply to Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

>On the other hand, I cannot relate to female characters at all, and I often find their decisions and thoughts hard to understand. Somehow, I find male characters way more relatable and both of my favorite books have zero female characters in them. Can anyone relate?

I do not like particularly a lot of romance, rom-com heroines. But not liking to read about women characters or books written by women, it is a bias worth examining. Women are 50% of the world, and I think anybody of any gender who disclaims reading about, or things written by 50% one of the genders (whether their own or the other, or any variant) is missing voices, experiences.

And you know the meme "a girl not like other girls?" (Sadly there are quite a bit of girls not like other girls, not that they hang together), if that is your thing it is, but it is a quite narrow place to be.

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aliquotiens t1_j4q73p0 wrote

Reply to Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

Internalized misogyny, most likely.

Although it’s possible that the books you’ve tried written by/for/about women mostly aren’t your style. I dislike entire genres that often have girls and women as protagonists, like romance and most of the newer fluffy/fanfic style YA books.

Or you could just have encountered a lot of very poorly written women characters. That’s definitely a huge issue in literature. Though I find it’s most often male writers who struggle to write female character that are at all believable or fully developed.

I’m a woman (though I have autism and feel more non-binary/gender neutral than I do feminine) and I don’t find a lot of female characters ‘relatable’ per se - but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying plenty of fiction written by women, and books with female characters.

Some of my favorite fiction writers who are women: Ursula K LeGuin - Madeleine L’Engle - Margaret Atwood - Toni Morrison - Zadie Smith - Agatha Christie - Octavia Butler - Willa Cather - L.M. Montgomery - Dodie Smith

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