Let the Boys Decide: Gender Assumptions and Boy Appropriate Books

I’m feeling a bit militant today, so be warned this is a bit of a rant. 

There’s a lot of outrage today about how Best of lists invariably list more books by male authors than by females. Some male readers claim they don’t enjoy books by women, period.

Where did this prejudice start? As children.

Most women my age will remember being steered toward books that were "girl appropriate": books with female protagonists, mysteries, books about horses, and romances. Most of us fought back. We said, those books were good, we enjoyed them, but we also want to read books about cowboys and rocket ships and dragons. Adult women are perfectly willing to read books with male protagonists. I can enjoy both historical romances AND military SF.

Girls today can read anything they want.

Not so boys. 

Boys are still steered toward "boy-appropriate books": SF, mysteries, boy-protagonist fantasy books are all okay. A romance? Never. The steering can be subtle. Books may not be outright forbidden, but how many times are female-protag, female-authored books recommended with a warning? “I enjoyed this book, but it does have kissing in it, so you may not like it.” 

As a YA author I find it extremely annoying when people decide that a romantic subplot--not the main plot, the subplot-- somehow disqualifies my books from being read by boys. This despite the fact that I love writing action scenes and my Otherselves series includes mirror magic, parallel worlds, volcanic eruptions, dragon attacks, airship battles, kidnappings, slave revolts and more. Think about that. If a man wrote a boy-protag book without a romantic subplot and told girls they shouldn’t read it, people would be outraged. But we constantly do the opposite.

I know, because I’ve done it myself. I have two sons and I’ve had to consciously stop myself from only recommending “boy” books to them. But here’s what I’ve discovered. Yes, my sons’ favourite author is Rick Riordan, but they also enjoyed Anne McCaffrey’s Harper Hall series, Cassandra Clare’s Clockwork Angel series, Gail Carriger's Finishing School series and Kelley Armstrong’s Age of Legend series, which have female-POV and romantic subplots. My eldest son’s favourite book by me isn’t the one that’s divided between girl/boy viewpoint, but Silver Eyes which is first person female POV.

So please, if you have a teen boy who likes to read on your Christmas list, don’t exclude female authors. Don’t warn boys that “they may not like” certain books. Let the boys decide for themselves.

(Also, don't reject books just because they have a girl's face on the cover.)

There is one True World, and then there are the four mirror worlds: fire, water, air, and stone. And each has a magic of its own...

In the Fire World, seventeen-year-old Leah is the illegitimate daughter of one of the realm's most powerful lords. She's hot-blooded - able to communicate with the tempestuous volcano gods. But she has another gift...the ability to Call her twin "Otherselves" on other worlds.

Holly resides in the Water World - our world. When she's called by Leah from the Fire World, she nearly drowns. Suddenly the world Holly thought she knew is filled with secrets, magic...and deadly peril.

For a malevolent force seeks to destroy the mirror worlds. And as Leah and Holly are swept up in the tides of chaos and danger, they have only one choice to save the mirror worlds - to shatter every rule they've ever known...

Buy links: Amazon   Barnes & Noble

Kobo    Apple

 

Reading by Gender

I hate it when other people try to dictate what I should read.  I'm tired of people telling me I should be ashamed of reading YA because I'm an adult, or turning up their nose at romance or dismissing SF/fantasy as "rocket ships" and "elves". So earlier this year when I saw an article going around Facebook called I Challenge You to Stop Reading Straight White Cis Males Authors for One Year my first kneejerk reaction was anger. No, I darn well will not stop reading some of my favourite authors just because they're men.

[NOTE: Most of my anger comes from the title of the article rather than the content. If the article had been called Challenge Yourself to Read more Fiction by People of Colour and LGBT I would have been intrigued instead.]

Then I got curious. The title of the article implies that ‘everybody’ is reading ‘too much’ fiction by men. How much of my reading was written by women and how much by men? (I’m leaving the ‘straight and white’ part out of the equation, because I often don’t know the race and gender orientation of the writer. In fact, some of the names could be men writing as women and women writing as men for all I know. Certainly, someone reading Robert Galbraith’s bio can be excused for not guessing that J.K. Rowling was the author.)

So far in 2015 I have read 27 books by 17 men:  Neil Gaiman, Patrick Rothfuss, Tony Abbott (5), Stephen King, Kelly McCullogh, Brandon Sanderson, David Weber, Jim Hines, Lemony Snicket (4), Jim Butcher (3), Rich Burlew, Brent Weeks (2), Ben Aaronovitch, Alex Bledsoe, Dave Duncan, Joe Abercrombie and Robert Rankin.

Does that seem like a lot or too much? Does it seem unbalanced?

It’s not. I am a voracious reader. I also read 53 books by 42 women this year: Diana Pharaoh Francis, Tanya Huff, Jayne Castle (2), Mary Pope Osbourne (5), Carrie Vaughn, Jody Wallace, Kristin Cashore, Shawna Reppert (2), Jenny Schwartz, J.R. Ward, Meljean Brook, Annie Nicholas, Cassandra Clare, Jeffe Kennedy, Nalini Singh (2), Regan Summer, Suzanne & Melanie Brockmann, Anne Bishop, Rebecca Zanetti, Mary Robinette Kowal, Gini Koch (5), Judith Graves & Dawn Dalton, Angela Korra’ti, Eleri Stone (2), Patricia Briggs, Shelly Laurenston, Seanan Macguire, Shannon K. Butcher, Veronica Scott, Marcella Burnard, Catherine Asaro, Jo Walton, Sharon Lynn Fisher, Catherine Jinks, N.K. Jemison, R.L Naquin, Katherine Addison, Faith Hunter, C.J. Cherryh and Leigh Evans. Which firmly tips the balance the other way.

Statistically, one-third of my reading is written by male authors and two-thirds by women. As I said, I read mostly SF/fantasy and romance (and prefer books with both elements). Romance is primarily written by women (the exception being m/m romance, which is written by both men and women). My SF/fantasy reading is split more evenly between the sexes. So is my YA/MG reading.

Based on a much smaller sample size, my husband’s reading seems to fall out at about 70% men, 30% women. I would guesstimate that my mother’s reading is 95% women authors. Should my husband read more women authors? Should I, and my mother, read more books by men?

After some reflection, I’ve decided that I’m okay with my reading choices. I am not going to boycott male authors, but neither am I going to go out of my way to read 50-50 down the gender divide.

Bottom line: I believe people should read books that they enjoy. By all means, sample widely, try all the genres, read books by people of every colour, gender and orientation, then, once you discover storytellers you like—read them.

How do your reading tastes fall out?