Gendered Reading

[sartorias]

The other day I got a letter from someone who wrote to say that they liked something, adding that they usually avoid reading sf and f by women, and so were surprised to discover on reading my website that I'm female. (I always forget that my name doesn't automatically signal female, because it does to me

Comments

[ellen_denham]

I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy by male writers when I was a kid, because that was mostly what I was exposed to. I recall reading Madeline L'Engle and Susan Cooper, but by the time I got to high school, I can't recall reading many female genre authors. It's not that I avoided them, I suppose I just didn't know about the ones that were out there and had just "discovered" some of the sci-fi classics, written pretty much by men

[sartorias]

I knew someone who gave the women he dated the Lord of the Rings test. (He figured if they liked it, they would become friends enough to proceed with dating, but if they didn't, they'd never have anything to talk about.)

[ellen_denham]

Funny, I had to cajole my husband for years to read LotR, because he'd read The Hobbit in a French translation when he was around 20, and found it a little juvenile. Now, he loves Tolkien and even includes Fellowship in the freshman writing seminar he teaches.

[sartorias]

Cool!

This gent was doing his dating at the end of the fifties and early sixties.

[stephan_laurent]

Not only did I get it (the book), I got it (the message). And Tepper's writing made me understand so much more what feminism is, and why I was in fact myself a feminist, that I read all of Tepper's books. The one that spoke to me the most on that particular subject was, in fact, Gibbon's Decline and Fall (interestingly enough Ellen thinks that one falls into the "clubbing over the head" category).
I have always been very gender-neutral in my reading habits; I know many male authors who write excellent female characters and female authors who conjure up very vivid males. And of course, the reverse is true too, but usually I drop those authors - of either genders - rather quickly. My patience for gender stereotyping is finite...

[sartorias]

I myself find Tepper too heavyhanded.

I wonder why this happens...could it be that her message is a "okay, been there, this is not new" so the enlightenment factor is not present? Anyway, i seldom finish any of her books, though some of them begn with tremendous pizaz.