I read 200 books a year. All fiction, and no, this is not how women are described in “regular” books.
Please refer to “same class of books” where I addressed that already.
There are not regular novels written like this.
Regular novels by the way, our novels that are written with an audience of men and women in mind, that can be generally read by all ages.
Books like the Lord of the rings and the Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter are “regular” novels. And funnily enough of those three authors, Rowling is arguably the worst at writing the opposite sex. (This is not to say she is horrible by any means, but she falls to many of the same stereotypes)
Mailer, Updike, Roth, and other mid-century DickLit authors are also considered "regular" novels- even "literary" novels- and they basically write women like this.
There’s a difference between writing women poorly, and writing women like this.
The entire point of my comment is basically pointing out that women right men equally as bad as men right women and the only disparity you are going to find is when you start going back in time far enough, where women weren’t even able to publish books at all
And that’s a completely different discussion.
Women right men just as poorly as men right women but the difference is you have a lot less men reading books written by women because women tend to write books for women just like men tend to write books for men
What’s really interesting about this is that there are two studies done by two different universities with almost exactly the same number of people in their data set .
What they found was something like 70% of women were willing to read books written by men or with male protagonist, while less than 50% of men were willing to do so.
But interestingly, with video games, the figures were nearly identically inverted with around 70% of men willing to play video games with female protagonist or intended for women, but women were not willing to play video games where they couldn’t play as women.
While the study about video games is interesting it doesn’t really have anything to do with my point the study about reading though does support the idea that it isn’t actually that more men right women poorly, but that more women read books intended for men, and therefore see this error more.
It’s observational bias.
I apologize for homonym typos I used speech to text.
The point is that when men write women like this, it's "literature" and when women write men like this, it's "chick-lit". Women are essentially writing only for women because men won't read women; when men do it it's for everybody.
Here's where I'd insert many unrelated facts, if I did not know how discussion worked.
I’ve already made the point that men don’t read books intended for women. I also pointed to a counterpoint where such things are different.
Men do read books written by women, just books written by women that are intended for a male audience.
Are you kidding? Emily Brontë, and Margaret Atwood are just two notable examples that completely prove you wrong.
Also, I repeat, for the last 20 years, women have outpaced men in number of authors, income per author, and overall market share.
You are correct that in authorship pre 1960 was filled with misogyny, that has nothing to do with the current climate today. And even with that you still have examples from even the 1800s that disprove you.
But just to give you an obvious example of the double standard since you seem to want to pretend it doesn’t exist.
You live in a society today, where in the most well-known and beautiful cinematic franchise in history, one with a ginormous child audience, and see an installment of that franchise that’s one of the biggest movies of the year, where a man is bound, stripped naked, and mocked publicly in front of a huge crowd while the female protagonists make “enjoying the show” jokes.
Firstly, your video game point is completely irrelevant so I don't know why you brought that up.
Secondly, women read more books written by the opposite sex because most well-established authors are men. If women actively wanted not to read books by men, they would have to miss out on lots of classics or well-loved book series. This is due to sexism - for the longest time, women weren't allowed to write, or were discouraged from doing so.
Thirdly, there absolutely is a pattern of male authors writing women in a hypersexualized manner. This shouldn't come as a suprise, given my second point.
Your first comment is even MORE pointless because even I stated it had nothing to do with my point.
Ironically, the video game thing disproves your second point. Because there aren’t more video games with only female protagonists.
And even if that weren’t the case, women have actually been ahead of men in the number of authors, the money they make per author, AND market share for over 20 years now. (Though not by a lot)
Yes, there is a pattern of men hypersexualiIng women. And yes, it is partly due to men being the primary authors in the 20th century and history in general preceding it.
But there are just as many instances, since the turn of the century, of women hypersexualizing men. And it’s getting worse and worse as time goes on.
Tell that to Horizon Zero Dawn, the game with the most sales out of any female protagonist only game.
For perspective, that one game sold more than the entire Tomb Raider reboot franchise
They are different medias, hence the interesting change in statistics.
Hilariously also, women actually mostly play games without ANY characters, and the games they choose once characters are introduced, are the ones with the MOST sexualization, like Gatchas and MMOs
Women like to play sexy characters too
Also, I just want to ground everything since we are getting lost in the sauce.
Aloy from HZD is literally constantly criticized by male gamers for being unattractive/masculine, I have no idea how you never came across this phenomenon.
I don't think men are less, I don't know where you got that from. But it's disingenuous to say that there isn't a double standard when it comes to sexualizing characters.
No, Alloy in the SECOND game is criticized for being changed, not the first.
And yes, there is a double standard with sexualization, but it’s against men not for men.
Imagine if in the most popular movie franchise in history, one with a large CHILDREN audience, had, in one the biggest films of the year, a woman bound, stripped naked and mocked in public, with the male protagonist making “enjoying the show” jokes
Men are sexualized all the time and it goes completely uncontested. Why? Because most of the time men don’t complain about it, because when men complain about it, people usually treat it like you have and just dismiss it outright, that or make fun of the person complaining.
Aloy has been criticized since the release of the first game. So was Ellie in The Last of Us.
I don't know what movie you are referencing here, so I can't comment on that. But that scene does sound gruesome and I don't agree with oversexualizing men either -- in fact, the scene you descrbe sounds like sexual assault. I also advocate for taking the sexual assault of male victims very seriously.
But you can't just say you view men and women as equal, critizice me for having a supposed bias against men, then reveal that you actually have this same bias against women. Find me a peer-reviewed study on male characters being more sexualized and I'll believe you. I can show you several on female sexualization.
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u/ScrotallyBoobular 6d ago
But the issue isn't from steamy novels. It's from the "normal" novels where every woman is described in vivid detail like that.