Some Men Don't Read Female Authors...

V.S Naipaul, author of the legendary book “A Bend in the River”, once stated something along the lines of the fact that female writers are overtly emotional and so their writing is not as good as men’s writing. Since then, there has been a massive discussion about men who actively do not read female writers due to the fact that:

they don’t want to be seen with a book written by a woman in front of their friends

• they find female authors to overtly emotional and romanticist
• they don’t want to hurt their own masculinity by doing so
• they do not like the whole notion of intersectional third wave feminism and believe that all female writers write about that

Well, I hope they have fun missing out on books like “The Bloody Chamber”, “Frankenstein” and the entire “Harry Potter” series plus many more.

However, nobody discusses the opposite. I have personally heard actively by listening to people talk in bookshops that men do not read female writers. But I have also heard that some women actively avoid reading books written by white men. They actively avoid these authors because:

• they are intersectional feminists who read primarily books on that subject
• they believe men have more or less ‘had their day’ when it comes to literature - yes, that is a quotation I actually heard
• they actively want to reduce the income of men through not buying their books

When it comes to women writers though, the richest author of all time is actually JK Rowling and so, the fact that white men have been earning the most money in literary history is just entirely inaccurate. But they should have fun missing out on books like everything by Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky and obviously, J.R.R Tolkien.

I would now like to explain that limiting your reading of authors to a particular sector of authors is hurting your own cause. If you are one of those people that does not read certain groups of authors due to a political bias, I want to now teach you why this is actually completely counterproductive and why you should give all groups of authors a chance.

Question: “What kind of person says ‘I don’t read [insert political/gender/racial/cultural etc. group here] authors’?”

Answer: Of course, this would be a person who has an agenda behind it. No regular, normal person without any strong agenda would actively avoid any authors. I am one of them. I don’t actively avoid any author. Mostly, I don’t care what colour or gender or culture the author belongs to unless I need to know it in order to understand the book. If so, I will read a bit about it on the internet beforehand. There’s nothing wrong with having an agenda, but you should not allow it to cloud your vision and you definitely should not make it your main personality trait.

Question: Why do these people with an agenda [usually] read?

Answer: These people usually read in order to gain more knowledge for the basis of their own agendas. I think we all know about feminists who are all pretty obsessed with authors like Roxanne Gay and Judith Butler, etc. This is a prime, but not the only example. There are people on the other side who are obsessed with authors like Douglas Murray and I know, it seems odd that anyone would bother reading Douglas Murray but they exist. The people with an agenda as a part of their personality are more likely therefore, to read things around their own agenda in order to educate themselves further.

Question: So, Annie, what’s the problem?

Answer: The problem is that if you have an agenda and refuse to read the opposing side simply because they do not agree with you or you do not agree with them means that you are not educating yourself at all. You do not read the opposing side and therefore, cannot develop an informed opinion about all sides of the argument. Your education will always have the hole of not being aware of the opposition that is actually out there and when it comes to your own opinion and agenda, it cannot develop any further than you agreeing with yourself.

In conclusion, if you are not reading certain authors of certain groups because of your political agenda then please think about how this is actually really counterproductive to developing and reinforcing the education around your own opinion.