Recent comments in /f/books

Wickedjr89 t1_j4rs1gb wrote

Reply to comment by Wickedjr89 in Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

I used to be the "not like other girls" stereotype, which is not a good place to be. It's problematic. Sure, it's because I wasn't a girl and didn't have the words to say that. But now that I got that figured out I understand things a lot better and it's important to read/look at all povs and ultimately, we're all human. Whatever our gender is or isn't, we're human. We have the same emotions, the same feelings.

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Wickedjr89 t1_j4rrimv wrote

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

I used to feel the exact same way. But at 30 I found the words to describe the gender confusion (that I had no idea was related) I had my entire life and realized i'm a nonbinary trans guy and at 31 I learned i'm autistic. Kinda explains it all to me. But of course that doesn't mean you are autistic or trans, I don't mean to imply that. Just saying I could relate to having felt that in the past, including when I was 21 (i'll be 34 next month), and what ended up being my reason as to why lol.

Granted I wouldn't say I didn't enjoy books with female protagonists, I just couldn't understand them as well. Of course now I read a variety, men, women, nonbinary.

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lookingfordata2020 t1_j4rqadr wrote

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

Yeah this used to be then I realized in a trans man💀 On a more serious note though, you say you read thrillers and gore, I don't read this genre but I would ask myself these questions:

  1. Are there substantial women characters in your novels in the first place? Or are they reduced to stereotypes and/or trauma?
  2. How are the women characters usually written?
  3. How are the men characters usually written?
  4. Are there traits, or maybe one particular one, in the men characters that aren't in the women characters or vice versa?
  5. How are the woman characters treated? For example is there simply to get murdered? If so, it would be hard to relate to her because her entire being is reduced to the murder.
  6. How do the protagonist think of women around them? For example in the book Maurice, the titular character hates women.

I don't know what the answers are because I don't read this genre! Maybe you just have a personality that isn't typically assigned to women in the genre, you read. You didn't ask but the most relatable woman character to me is Jo March in Little Women.

Edit: It might also be worth examining if you relate to women and womanhood in real life.

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Grace_Alcock t1_j4rmd57 wrote

Reply to comment by PyrexPizazz217 in Why don’t I, as a woman, like books with female protagonists? by out_cyder

And I hate Gillian Flynn’s novels. I’m a woman and don’t find her characters remotely relatable or even particularly interesting or realistic. They seem heavily stylized to me. So clearly it’s just a matter of taste. If OP doesn’t like this particular genre, it certainly isn’t representative of all female authors of characters. It’s a very specific genre.

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Usual_Ad_730 t1_j4rkwgt wrote

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

Because they suck!

Women in literature and film definitely cannot be complicated. They are single note good at everything they have to do. There is never any learning curve. They are just good at everything. I hope it doesn't need to be said that that is not how anything works for anyone, including women.

Women can never be strictly monogamous. They always have to be in constant love triangles and rectangles trying to figure out which hot guy she has to bone. I hate to be the one that brings this up, but that is hardly how it works in the real world. Both women, and men, usually have one target whom they want to get in bed. There is nothing wrong with that!

Constant wokeness, rather than having an actual personality.

Women in fiction are absolutely horrible! No wonder everyone, including women, hate them!

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Choice_Mistake759 t1_j4ri5ht wrote

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

> I'm just really straight.

English is not my native language, not sure I understood. You relate more to main male characters because you are attracted to males and not to women? Even in horror books, not even romance novels? You only enjoy reading about main POVS characters you would be attracted to?

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pghgal85 t1_j4rgh40 wrote

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

I am f(37) who loves historical adventures, historical fiction and historical fantasy. So much so that I attempted to write my own. I showed my writing to my uncle (who's been publishing books for years), and he said "If I hadn't known this was written by you, I would've thought a man wrote it."

It's been seven years. I'm still not sure how I feel about that comment.

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GFVeggie t1_j4rd6gy wrote

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

A lot depends on how well the book is written. Most of my life I was a romance fan, but not the gooy, silly female ones.

When my marriage was breaking up I recovered murder mysteries. My favorite author was Connley. I read some Sandelforth but his books seemed to repeat themselves.

Now I am a huge fan of books about women during WWII in Europe. I look for ones based on real events. I have read some excellent one and some really stupid ones. I won't bother with the authors of the stupid ones again.

Those books all have women doing unusual, for them, and important things. These women were doing men's work while the men were away fighting and dying.

Two of my favorite are The Rose Code and The Girl With No Name.

Very different books Rose Code is about the female codebreakers and the The Girl With No Names is about a young German Jewish girls who is put on the Kindertransport and her life in England after that. both are good for different reasons

Though none of them fall under the category of horror unless you consider what Hitler was doing horror.

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absurdactuality t1_j4rbc18 wrote

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

In terms of gender I did have somewhat of a preference when growing up, although I can only see this in hindsight really. I never picked up or dropped a book based on the gender of the author or protagonist, but I did find that written women were much more relatable than written boys or men.

When I was younger it would be something like Matilda, or the Inkheart series. When I was older It was a lot of YA like the Hunger Games series, or The Mortal Instruments series. While I never turned away from books written by or lead by any one gender I did usually come away with, if not positive feelings, then neutral feelings about the protagonist when it was girl/woman.

When it came to written men, I found that I had a hard time relating to the boys/men in books. This sentiment is growing less true as I age, and didn't necessarily impact the verisimilitude of a book. I didn't, and often still don't relate to men as much as I do women.

The most relatable character, in terms of my own gender, that I read when I was younger was Holden Caulfield. Not in exactness, but more in his thought process. It was the first time I read a boy that was closer to my experience. He thought about girls, but he had other anxieties besides that occupied him. He overthought everything, and he had problems that dogged his thoughts stemming from very real things and others not so real. I haven't read the book in ages so I can't be any less vague, Sorry.

As for yourself, I'm not sure. We read what we find, or what we look for based on our preferences. Maybe the sphere of reading you're searching just doesn't have many well written women. Do you have any tittles you mind dropping in the reply?

I'm not sure if I gave you the discussion you're looking for, but these were the thoughts that came to mind after reading your post.

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boxer_dogs_dance t1_j4rayfp wrote

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

I would offer Elizabeth Moon's female characters in Deed of Paksenarrion and Vatta's War. Also, David Weber and Terry Pratchett are men who wrote female protagonists who are very interesting to me.

I don't read a lot of horror, but both romance and horror can be genres where the females are the opposite of heroic and I like to read about heroes.

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