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Why is it that not many girls like Fantasy?


rumple9

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Y'all will be pleased to know that this discussion is providing amusement for Australian fantasy author Glenda Larke out there in blogland:

http://glendalarke.b...ad-fantasy.html

No offence, but the "I have several friends who..." defence is a bit risky as it is highly anecdotal and probably says more about that particular circle of friends than anything else. ;) And all I can say is: congratulations! It must be great to have female friends who read fantasy. I have lived in eight towns and two countries, been to the second largest University in the country and apart from on this board, I have never met a woman who reads fantasy.

I once met a librarian who had me read all the new UA fantasy they received to the library since nobody else could be bothered though, if that counts!

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So my wife told me I was wrong.

Apparently similar to the above numbers fantasy skews towards female readership. Scifi skews more toward men, so taken as a whole it's a bit male centric, but fantasy - which is so misogynistic, male oriented and shitty - tends to be read (and moreso than scifi, written) by women.

When I asked whuh my wife responded that yea, it is objectifying and horrible - but that is what women have been told they should want. That a woman's goal has been set as being an object. And, she pointed out, it's not like other genres don't objectify - romance is massively slated on the object side and is overwhelmingly read by women.

Everyone contributes to the patriarchy, she said.

My wife fucking rocks.

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Hmm you know all my female friends read fantasy. But we all met through an anime club, so mayebe the non nerds got filtered out?

And I;ve lost the argument again, what are we all yelling about? There most have been 20 posts in between m' two classes this afternoon, and for the love of Thor I can't figure out what the actual argument IS.

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So my wife told me I was wrong.

Apparently similar to the above numbers fantasy skews towards female readership. Scifi skews more toward men, so taken as a whole it's a bit male centric, but fantasy - which is so misogynistic, male oriented and shitty - tends to be read (and moreso than scifi, written) by women.

When I asked whuh my wife responded that yea, it is objectifying and horrible - but that is what women have been told they should want. That a woman's goal has been set as being an object. And, she pointed out, it's not like other genres don't objectify - romance is massively slated on the object side and is overwhelmingly read by women.

Everyone contributes to the patriarchy, she said.

My wife fucking rocks.

Well, if we take of the epic fantasy limit, a lot of fantasy out there is pretty harmless escapist stuff. Lackey sells well for a reason.

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It's not a foul rumour. She really said it. I still have the Times letters page where Terry Prattchet wrote a great response to that.

"Rowling said that when she first wrote Harry Potter she didn't think of it as fantasy. It was only after they'd been published that she identified with the genre."

And you have reminded me why I won't read any Prattchet. Yes Terry she sells more books than you, get over it.

To touch on another thread. I think if the roles had been reversed here pe

ople would be calling for Rowlings head on a spike. After they rape her of course.

Dammit kalbear you've turned me bitter.

Same with the females oogling over the male authors. If someone male said the same thing about a female author in here, jesus christ the shitstorm.

Talk about double standards.

Also I always thought JV Jones was pretty hot.

Edit: and now I go to class. No one post while Im gone. :P

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Q1. Name at least three queen consorts of England who formented rebellions, including at least one who rode into battle.

Q2. Name at least two queen consorts of England who happily rode to war with their husbands because it was less boring than the court.

Q3. Name at least two mediaeval female pirates/vikings.

Does Matilda count as a queen consort or queen regnant? I'm afraid the only other one I can think of is Eleanor of Aquitaine, and I don't know any names of female pirates.

And I have to agree with Mormont - China Mieville is a good looking man.

Back on topic, I can only think of one woman I know outside of the boards who reads fantasy outside of what I call the "sparkly vampire" genre, but on the other hand I can only think of two or three guys who do so (there are a number who read SF, but very few who read fantasy).

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I'm curious how many SFF books pass/fail this test. I'm pretty sure Rothfuss and Bakker fail but I think with Bakker you have a society where so much power is in male hands there is at least attempted commentary in this regard. Same with Martin, there's some intelligent commentary going on.

Martin succeeds at least in a couple places. And Bakker fails even in his modern books, so not great examples.
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Martin succeeds at least in a couple places. And Bakker fails even in his modern books, so not great examples.

I think it's my weird feelings toward Wise Man's Fear getting in the way of rational thought. I hate this book but love it all the same - it's so...readable? Fun?

I had the same feeling toward Name O' the Wind. Great prose about fantasy Saved-by-the-Bell (Gooooo Bayside!).

ETA: I pretend Neuropath was never written BTW.

Same with the females oogling over the male authors. If someone male said the same thing about a female author in here, jesus christ the shitstorm.

Talk about double standards.

Also I always thought JV Jones was pretty hot.

Actually I think it was me [straight male AFAIK] who did more of that. Though China does make me want to switch teams, I just don't think I could take Marxist legal terms as safe words seriously. Knew some linguists (who were not cunning before anyone asks) who used "Chomsky" as theirs.

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If we're talking the Bechdel, I always wonder (and there's been a few examples mentioned in this thread that rather back the idea up) how much of the failure for many, many modern media works to fail comes from publisher/producer pressure. Because when I look at webcomics, which are by and large published without any creative pressure on the author other than their own and that of the audience they seem far, far more likely to pass that test than any other form of media I can think of. Of the ones on my regular reading list, Goblins is the only one that I don't think does, whereas Questionable Content, Order of the Stick and Gunnerkrigg do, and of the ones I read intermittently, stopped reading or have finished, Diesel Sweeties, Spinnerette, FreakAngel and Multiplex all pass. Looking for Group is the only other one I can think of that doesn't in the time I read it.

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loltergeist, want to hear something funny? As much as my comment may piss you off, I can relate with you. When I was young I made the mistake of believing that because a statement made about women was not true about me, the statement was untrue in general. Nobody is trying to say that you and your friends don't exist, just that you are not in the majority.

Without meaning to make it a point of argument, I can't help pointing out the old feminist standby about how when the characters are men, it's supposed to appeal to all people but when they are women, that's for chicks only.

Part of the reason that male characters and their epic quests still dominate is simply that women will read and enjoy male dominated books but men are much less likely to immerse themselves in a female POV.

Given the oft quoted guideline for writing, "write what you know", it's not surprising that a male author would feel comfortable creating alternate worlds but still stick to men for his POV characters. Pod knows, a man who takes a shot at writing the female POV and flubs it is in for a roasting so why take the risk?

Like many people, I was first exposed to epic fantasy with the Hobbit and went looking for more. What I found was Dragonlance and Feist. There has been much discussion of female characters in fantasy so I will resist the urge to go off about Tika's furry undergarments or Pug's love interests.

To stay on topic I will say that reading from an exclusively male POV is like eavesdropping on a conversation. It may be interesting, you may be engaged for a while but if you have no part in the conversation you eventually drift away.

Madeleine L'engle is the best example I have of SFF that is not male centric. She was a great comfort to me as a kid. It also comforts me to know that many boys also enjoyed A Wrinkle in Time at least.

In college I tried a female fantasy by way of a book called Sister Light, Sister Dark but I thought that was crap and couldn't relate to it at all. I then switched to Anne Rice for a time but then I just drifted away from fantasy all together until a friend convinced me to read Martin.

A couple of codas, when I speak of relatable characters I am speaking of humans with human emotions and motivations. Most fantasies are still written about human characters (in my experience.) Male or female, if you don't understand why characters act the way they do then you're going to lose interest (or maybe that's just me.)

Also, a person can covet freedom without coveting a penis. People who assume penis envy seem to be saying that since men have freedom in this setting and women don't, women who want to be free must want a penis. I'm not sure how to make it clear just how screwy I find that thinking to be.

Maybe it would help if you try to imagine a bunch of male characters, filled with futile longing to bring life into the world by birthing babies. Does it seem likely to you that a lot of men feel like that?

In closing,

Not that I question your femininity or anything, but why do you think you are very feminine?

Most awesomely bad question in the thread! That was fucking hilarious.

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I'm curious how many SFF books pass/fail this test. I'm pretty sure Rothfuss and Bakker fail but I think with Bakker you have a society where so much power is in male hands there is at least attempted commentary in this regard. Same with Martin, there's some intelligent commentary going on.

Daniel Abraham manages at least to some degree in the Long Price Quartet. You know Robert Jordan sort of manages as well, in a way, if you want to be generous. His works have a LOT of other issues, but at least he has women who do interact based on other things than men. It makes me miss EHK talking about women and WOT. Erikson doesn't really have a lot of vested interest in interpersonal relationships and a lot of his characters are very...genderless, so I am not even sure if it's applicable, although I suppose Tavore and her advisor could be used, plus the head honcho of the Empire is female after all.

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And you have reminded me why I won't read any Prattchet. Yes Terry she sells more books than you, get over it.

To touch on another thread. I think if the roles had been reversed here pe

ople would be calling for Rowlings head on a spike. After they rape her of course.

In defense of Grack21....did I just write that? haha....he's talking about a discussion from this thread.

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In closing,

Most awesomely bad question in the thread! That was fucking hilarious.

Oh? Would you be so kind as to share the joke, for I don't get it. If I were to say: "I like playing with Barbie dolls, reading Cosmopolitan and urban fantasy novels with female protagonists, but otherwise I'm very masculine", how would you respond?

More importantly, do you feel that one's own perception of oneself is bound to be correct and should never be questioned?

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...Apparently similar to the above numbers fantasy skews towards female readership. Scifi skews more toward men, so taken as a whole it's a bit male centric, but fantasy - which is so misogynistic, male oriented and shitty - tends to be read (and moreso than scifi, written) by women.

When I asked whuh my wife responded that yea, it is objectifying and horrible - but that is what women have been told they should want. That a woman's goal has been set as being an object. And, she pointed out, it's not like other genres don't objectify - romance is massively slated on the object side and is overwhelmingly read by women...

False consciousness. Very useful concept.

Edit: and now I go to class. No one post while Im gone. :P

We won't.

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Daniel Abraham manages at least to some degree in the Long Price Quartet. You know Robert Jordan sort of manages as well, in a way, if you want to be generous. His works have a LOT of other issues, but at least he has women who do interact based on other things than men. It makes me miss EHK talking about women and WOT. Erikson doesn't really have a lot of vested interest in interpersonal relationships and a lot of his characters are very...genderless, so I am not even sure if it's applicable, although I suppose Tavore and her advisor could be used, plus the head honcho of the Empire is female after all.

That's the most frustrating thing about Jordan, I think, *theoretically* he does a lot of things right. He's got a ton of female characters who in all sorts of positions who actually do interact with each other. That should be awesome.

But it isn't, because they've all got the same personality. Which is incredibly frustrating.

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Guest Raidne

You thought Katniss was a Mary Sue? I mean, she comes off a bit that way in the first book...

Fair enough, never got past that point.

Y'all will be pleased to know that this discussion is providing amusement for Australian fantasy author Glenda Larke out there in blogland:

Hmmm...that makes me feel kind of bad for saying all that stuff about Kellhus.

From the small remarks about how fantasy is not written for women, to the suggestion that the only fantasy book women would ever deign to read is twilight, or one of those vampire/werewolf porn books. Honestly? Give me a break. Not only is that completely inaccurate, it’s also pretty insulting.

Look, nobody was talking about you personally. I have 0 female friends, other than from this Board, that read - and I can't think of a better way to put this - the fantasy that I read. I don't know how to describe it, but I don't identify Twilight, Discovery of Witches, Ann Rice, etc. with the kind of fantasy that I currently read. Nor do I identify Terry Goodkind, Salvatore, and all the other authors I don't know because I don't read their stuff that are always overflowing the fantasy shelves in the bookstore with cheap looking paperbacks in never-ending series. This is a personal preference, probably, but I don't like Erickson because it just reminds me of that stuff. I like Lynch, Abercrombie, Martin, Hobb, Kay, etc. The lesser quality stuff appeals to gender stereotypes to sell. So, a lot of 13 year old boys read Salvatore and a lot of 13 year old girls read Twilight.

So, here is where this gets interesting - when Kalbear says that his wife said that there are more women fantasy readers than men, what was being included as fantasy there? Was Ann Rice included in that? It's not like the majority of Bakker readers are women.

I have been operating under the assumption that when a writer sits down to write, they don't intend to alienate HALF OF THE POPULATION, by writing a book that comes with an invisible "you can only read this if you have a penis" warning. Stupid me for thinking that books were written for people, vagina or not.

I really think the OP was just telling you that he wished he could meet more women that were into fantasy, not that you can't like fantasy because you're a woman. There's a difference.

All the talk of women not being able to relate to the characters, therefore, disbanding the whole genre, is such an ignorant comment. Being able to identify to a character isn’t the sole selling point of a novel, in my opinion. And with fantasy expecting the reader to suspend belief, it goes without saying that fully relating to characters is going to be difficult because of the genre, NOT your gender.

Disagree. I'm going to totally nerd out here and say that I love, love, love the Dumai's Wells scene in Lord of Chaos, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like the books more if the women characters were at all relatable. Min has been elevated to cool status just for not sucking.

Maybe if you stopped being so ignorant you would see that a big percentage of women love to read fantasy novels. In fact, I happen to know a lot of female readers who would state that fantasy is their favourite genre. So maybe you just know the wrong types of women, because trust me, female fantasy fans are out there, and by leaving sexist comments for the whole internet to read, you might just be alienating them without realising.

People keep saying this, but where is the data? Finally, I found a study in progress from Princeton (I think I know why this subject makes us all pissy - type in "books women read by genre" into your search engine and you get discussions about chick lit and romance novels). First, as we know, women read more fiction than men do, making numbers regarding the whole "more women read X than men" thing a little suspect, as we should then be talking about the percentage of female readers that read X vs. the percentage of male readers, or something more like that. 62% of women read fiction, but only 48% of men. Women seriously read twice as many books as men do.

http://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/workpap/WP06%20-%20Tepper.pdf

NPR says women read more than men in all categories except for history and biography. But, you know, like we said, no kidding since the average woman reads twice as much as the average man. Men only account for 20% of the fiction market.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14175229

Data on women reading fantasy is hard to find. Lightspeed Magazine's survey had about a 59/39% male/female. L.E. Modesitt, Jr., says in an interview that men account for slightly more fantasy sales and way more SF sales. He also had this to say:

Women authors can and do portray strong women, and some of them sell very well. Women authors can and do portray strong male characters, and some sell very well. Male authors can and do portray strong male characters, and some of them sell extremely well. Male authors who portray strong female characters usually lose a percentage of their readers.

Okay, an actual survey: http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/female-younger-readers-biggest-fiction-fans-14476/

Women read more mystery/thriller/crime than men, but only because they read more overall and everyone reads a lot in this genre. Romance is 37% women, 3% men. Science fiction is 32% men, 20% women.

This survey counts Rowling as fantasy. Given that women read twice as many books as men and the Harry Potter series is among the best selling of all time, that probably accounts for that statistic right there.

Anyway, I would like to see data on the percentage of women who read epic fantasy and the percentage of men who read epic fantasy, as well as the percentage of epic fantasy readers who are female/male.

I have The Name of the Wind to read. Pretty sure my vagina is furious at my reading choice, because fantasy is the chocolate equivalent of a yorkie bar apparently.

Apparently you're not that big of a fantasy reader - how have you not read that yet??? And I'd love to see if you, as a female, love a particular section of the second book that I literally just paged through, but no spoilers.

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Guest Raidne

If I'm thinking of the right part, I literally DID NOT READ IT. Terribad. And i've re-read both books twice at least. Gah.

Same. It was like watching the 60 second hacking challenge in Swordfish with my computer nerd dude friends, only with every guy on this Board. Yuck.

ETA: I see your edit. :) She's gotta point there, though.

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Just one thing that I feel needs saying about loltergeist's post:

because fantasy is the chocolate equivalent of a yorkie bar apparently.

I'm pretty sure a yorkie bar is the chocolate equivalent of a yorkie bar. :leaving:

As for The Section of Wise Man's Fear: I'm pretty sure the bafflement, squickiness and occasional contempt for that particular sequence isn't confined to just the women reading it. Which is a shame, because it frames what I think is perhaps the best individual scene in the series so far.

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Maybe I'm getting old, or have been reading this stuff for waaaay too long, but...

From my point of view, this board seems to have such a shallow or limited, umm, knowledge of fantasy.

By that, I mean there are so many writers and books that just seem unknown to many of you.

I mean - Urban Fantasy. So many writers have been doing it for so damn long, well before the "chick lit" flood ever hit. Sure, many of those writers are women, but, those books I'm remembering just don't fall into the category you seem to be discussing.

Mike Resnick, Mick Farren, Will Shetterly, John M. Ford, Charles De Lint...Emma Bull, Terri Windling, Esther Freisner..

There's is also, I agree, the thing with Fantasy being combined with Epic Fantasy, which makes sense, but it overshadows the number of really good works that weren't epic in page count.

So, meh, I get kinda confuzzled in these topics.

Personally- I think it's part tradition, ie, fantasy is all for guys, and partly a lot of stuff written "for women" is kinda crap (basing that on women I know, who read fantasy, and call a lot of it crap), which further alienates female readers.

And then there are the writers who are determined to do something, I dunno, that's a "deep exploration of blahblahblah, subverting yaddayadda as a device to and so on..." that don't appeal to a large number of readers.

As a thread crossover, Alexis Gilliand's "Lord of the Trollbats" trilogy for an example. I can't say it IS a great book women should love/be able to enjoy, but...

The guy has an amazingly clean readable style. The plot is quick and interesting, the characters, while not hyper detailed, are distinct. His magic, society, etc, all shows a lot of thought, and work well.

The female characters are believable as women, and not stuck in a stereotype. I mean, we have the Witch Queen, who is determined to see her children on the throne, and is clearly a villain...except, hey, she isn't. She's smart, able, ruthless, but actually cares for teh kingdom.

We have a "homely" farmgirl, an old maid technically, tried as a witch (so the local elite can divy up her farm)..who is rescued by Wizenbeak, a wizard. Of course, as the story progresses, it becomes as much her story as anybody's.

It's not a deep book, but there is some good food for thought in it, some great action, humour, clever scenes....

But nobody here seems to have heard of it.

He does the same with Sci-Fi- End of the Empire does the same sort of thing, showing characters, including the women, rising to challenges, and gaining power because they are the best people for that role.

I guess where I'm going is, it seems writers are desperately trying to re-invent the wheel, and that's what the readers follow, unaware that there are some great books out there, that get overlooked or forgotten because they aren't current releases anymore.

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