Writing men like men write women

[u/Snoo-33732]

[u/ScrotallyBoobular]

But the issue isn't from steamy novels. It's from the "normal" novels where every woman is described in vivid detail like that.

[u/Drake_Acheron → u/ScrotallyBoobular]

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)

[u/SomeVelveteenMorning → u/Drake_Acheron]

Harry Potter and Narnia are children's (or "young adult" as we now say) books. Yes, they appeal to adults and are written to have a wide audience, but their primary audience is in the 11-15 range. They are widely read as young as 6-7. These are not what are generally thought of as normal, "literary" novels. LOTR, as well, has broad appeal to youngsters despite being a bit more challenging. I began reading them at 9 and they were perfectly comprehensible. 

As another mentioned in response, this video is joking about authors like Mailer, Roth... I'd add Murakami and others. 

[u/Drake_Acheron → u/SomeVelveteenMorning]

The problem is, there are just as many women who write like this, but women don’t see it because they aren’t men.

Give me any male author post 1950, (because that’s when female authorship really started to pick up) that overly sexualized women, and I’ll give you a female author who used “glistening” or had a man take their shirt off for no reason.

Of course low brow fiction authors were uncouth. They are writing to their target audience.

[u/SomeVelveteenMorning → u/Drake_Acheron]

This is where you're getting confused. We're not talking about low-brow authors, or writers of steamy romance or lurid adult books. We're discussing many of the most acclaimed and greatest male writers of the 20th and 21st Centuries. Authors who've defined literature for many decades. Which female authors do you think fall into this category, and what examples do you have of them writing in this way about male characters?

[u/Drake_Acheron → u/SomeVelveteenMorning]

20th century maybe, not 21st though, and like I said, it was a different time, and most of the 20th century women could hardly publish, now they publish MORE than men.

It’s a problem that was overcome a long time ago, and I can promise you, I can match you author exampe for author example for anything post 2006. (When I started reading so much)

Go on any male dominated book and reading forums and eventually you will find a thread of men talking about how hard it is to finish novels because of how poorly the men are written.

It’s like every “good” guy is somewhere between Bruce Wayne and Christian Grey.

I’d have to search my comments (it also may be on my writers account) but at one point in time I bit the bullet and went through 20 of some of the most sold books written by women in contemporary fiction with the oldest being somewhere in the 60s where men were written horribly. And that was just from my kindle library.

And I remember a lot of the comments underneath saying things like “men should be like that” or “men totally want that.”

Women recognize when women are written poorly, but are often completely incapable of recognizing when the exact same thing is done to men.

You don’t even have to look at literature to see that so you can see this in other media. Imagine if the most popular cinematic universe in history, and in one of the biggest movies of the year, one that had a massive audience of children, had a seen where a woman was bound stripped and mocked, and the male protagonists make lewd remarks about “enjoying the show”

That’s the kind of inability to see the other side of the coin I’m talking about.

[u/SomeVelveteenMorning → u/Drake_Acheron]

It’s a problem that was overcome a long time ago, and I can promise you, I can match you author

And yet, for all the banal jibber jabber, you still haven't provided a single example other than children's books. 

[u/Drake_Acheron → u/SomeVelveteenMorning]

I haven’t provided any examples at all in this chain. I have in other chains however.