Who reads epic fantasy?

[rachelmanija]

This post was not only prompted by a remarkably stupid NY Times review of the "Game of Thrones" TV series, in which the reviewer thought the story was a polemic against global warming, claimed that women don't like fantasy, and further claimed that women do love sex, so the sex was gratuitously crammed in to please them

Comments

[asakiyume]

That NYT review was *so* stupid; the woman so clearly had been compelled to watch and review it, that it made me wonder what the parameters are for a reviewer, at the NYT and elsewhere. It seems pointless to have someone who has no interest in or sensitivity to the genre review something. If you think that liking Lord of the Rings is a kind of deviance, you are not a suitable reviewer. Recuse yourself!

Or maybe someone was holding a gun to her head.

I think plenty of women like epic fantasy. I was waiting to pick up my younger son from a flute lesson, and there was a girl there, about 13, waiting for her music lesson. She was reading one of the books in either the Wheel of Time series or Song of Ice and Fire series (honestly, I can't recall which it was), and when I asked about it, she was completely with it. ... Which is to say, young female readers are still picking up these sorts of books too.

[rachelmanija]

Definitely, many women like epic fantasy. What I am curious about is if there's a gender split at all in readership, and if so, what it is. Like, what if 70% of all readers of epic fantasy are women? (I think that's the percentage of fiction readers in general.) Then what's the point of hiding female names, or selecting male authors for the huge promotional push?

[asakiyume]

Good question/point.

[sarahtales]

I guess there's women with internalised sexism to cope with: I've seen a lot of people on the internet recently wondering 'why male writers are less sexist and overall better than female writers' (face*palm*, which is not to say that female writers can't be sexist) and of course, internalised sexism springs up everywhere. A good friend, and one of the smartest women I know, once casually said 'Guy writers are just better than girls' and I was so very taken aback and I sat there staring for so long that the conversation had moved on before I could respond.

[rachelmanija]

ACK.

Yes, internalized sexism is a big problem. There's also this horrible recursive knot in which some people are outright sexist, some have internalized sexism to relatively unconscious degrees, and some people are not sexist (or at least are conscious of their internalized sexism and so not acting on it), but no one knows who is who.

And so even the theoretically not-sexist people think that the sexists are a substantial portion of the market. And so female authors voluntarily write under male or initialed pen names, publishers decide that the men will do better anyway and so promote them more, readers decide that the authors they never heard of can't be much good, etc.

It is similar to the phenomenon which makes me both pleased and astonished that an obviously black Sin is on the cover of even one edition of one of your books.

[sarahtales]

There's also this horrible recursive knot in which some people are outright sexist, some have internalized sexism to relatively unconscious degrees, and some people are not sexist (or at least are conscious of their internalized sexism and so not acting on it), but no one knows who is who.

This is so perfectly put I am bitter I already sent off my guest post on 'everyone who writes outside the fake default world is punished, but it's worth it' because if I hadn't, I'd be asking you if I could steal it. And of course, replace sexism with many another ism, and it still works perfectly.

I hear you in re the pleased and astonished! It's why this is the first cover ever to be my default icon. (Look what I got oh my gosh can you believe it everybody look

[rachelmanija]

Where's the guest post?

[sarahtales]

On www.gayya.org, but though it's sent off it's not up til Wednesday.

[mme_hardy]

A few years back the Times forced one reviewer (was it Kakutani?) to cover a Nora Roberts novel. She could not have made her revulsion at the concept clearer if the review had simply read "I have scrubbed my fingers with alcohol, but I have been unable to remove the taint of popular women's fiction."

[asakiyume]

That really seems the height of pointless, to me. If it's a tiny town paper with only one reviewer, okay, but the New York Times?

[mme_hardy]

But see the GoT thrones Rachel linked to. At least some of the Times reviewers think of themselves as guardians of "high" culture and draw their petticoats away from any contact with the "low".

[asakiyume]

--which link? (Sorry if I'm being dense and missing something obvious--I see the link to the Strange Horizons thing on percentages of reviewers, but not something on Game of Thrones.)

Silly Times reviewers.

[mme_hardy]

It must have been in her last post? NYT review here. Quoting:

While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.

[asakiyume]

Right! This is exactly the article I was talking about! Totally got my goat. She was treating the whole genre as if it was a disease, and furthermore, a disease that only afflicts half the population.

[nihilistic_kid]

It was Elissa Schappell (Kakutani always picks her own books) and during that mid-2000s phase when the Times literally announced it would be reviewing more "potboilers"...clearly misunderstanding the term.

[mme_hardy]

Actually, it was the Janet Maslin I was thinking of, but it's not as disdainful as I remember it to have been.

What are these guys' qualifications? Well, they must be struck by love at first sight and instantly become both fascinated and faithful. Their old girlfriends must not exist. They mustn't have moods or make trouble, but when trouble appears they must always be on hand to help the heroines out of it. And they must not gloat when the feminist independence that puts in at least a token appearance here simply melts. Despite Sophia's obvious feistiness and the appealing, tough-talking manner Ms. Roberts gives her, when she gets a chill, she'd rather wear Ty's jacket than her own.