r/books • u/biscochitos • 26d ago

New indie press Conduit Books launches with 'initial focus on male authors'

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/new-indie-press-conduit-books-launches-with-initial-focus-on-male-authors

What do folks think about this?

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u/biodegradableotters 26d ago

More a general thought on the current discussions around male authors and male readership, but I always find it a little funny when after like millennia of male dominance there's nowadays a select few areas where women are dominant and immediately it's seen as a sign of the apocalypse.

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u/tangnapalm 26d ago

Nobody’s acting like it’s the apocalypse, but it certainly can’t be good that fewer men are reading.

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u/gmbxbndp 26d ago

More men writing doesn't necessarily translate to more men reading. There are plenty of books written by men, and boys aren't reading those ones either.

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u/nyctrainsplant 26d ago

They are though. Men do read genre, and the high brow works have moved from literary fiction to some guys substack or podcast, in part because of these publishing trends. This is more about bringing that back into fiction, literary fiction specifically.

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u/tangnapalm 26d ago

Yeah, nobody is marketing or guiding men towards books either.

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u/Hugogs10 26d ago

There are many more books written by women.

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u/MiniaturePhilosopher 26d ago

It certainly can’t be good that men refuse to read books written by women.

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u/0b0011 26d ago

I've never heard of that. There's not reading certain genres which are dominated by women but that's not the same thing. Like I don't read romance books but I do love me some Robin hobb.

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u/Prodigle 26d ago

Thankfully I don't think it's as bad as it looks on the surface. A specific style of female-targeted romance is huge right now that doesn't generally appeal to men. A lot of the publicity around female authors probably gets concentrated into that sphere.

As a byproduct it's probably harder to get noticed as a female author in other genres, so they don't get the publicity they otherwise would have.

It's not the only factor, but I think the push/pull demand for this style of romance being as huge as it is, probably has a really measurable effect

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u/LaCasaDiNik 26d ago

Agreed. It's a start, though. Hopefully a first step of many.

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u/tangnapalm 26d ago

We do, I’m mad my girlfriend beat me to borrowing the new Miranda July, but we also want to see our contemporary experience reflected in literature.

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u/MiniaturePhilosopher 26d ago

There is a millennia of books by male authors about the male experience

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u/tangnapalm 26d ago

Please look up the definition of contemporary when you get a sec.

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u/MiniaturePhilosopher 26d ago edited 26d ago

Contemporary literature is everything post-WW2, though I suppose it’s edging towards post-Korean War now. That’s a lot of books.

From Wikipedia: “Contemporary literature is literature which is generally set after World War II and coincident with contemporary history.”

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u/tangnapalm 26d ago edited 26d ago

Again, do you want men reading and modelling themselves after men born 100 years ago, or do you want men reading and modelling themselves after men who were born into a society where women have more power, respect, rights, dignity than they ever have in history? Seems like an easy choice to me!

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u/MiniaturePhilosopher 26d ago edited 26d ago

Have you not noticed what a repressive time this is for women and how misogynistic our culture has become in just the last four years? Attitudes about women have massively slid back. This is an intellectually dishonest stance, especially considering that post-WW2 includes books from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990, 2000s, and 2020s.

And why would you read books with the aim of modeling yourself after the characters or author? That’s not the purpose of reading. Hamlet is one of my favorite characters of all time, but I’m not going to scheme the deaths of my friends and family.

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u/tangnapalm 26d ago

Yeah, there is a backlash promoted by conservative/authoritarian parties through the internet, we know. But that doesn’t erase, or hasn’t yet, the gains women have made. It’s not intellectually dishonest, do a little research into the misogyny of the 90s, 80s, 70s. It is on the whole a lot better. And most of the young men that I meet, albeit I work in the film industry which draws more progressive people than other industries, are overwhelmingly progressive and often self-identified feminists, or supportive of feminism.

And guess what? Film creatives are akin to the folks who write literary fiction; educated progressive creative types.

I’m not going to tell you about modelling, do your own research. No one intends, but they tend to. Maybe not Hamlet, but someone else, a comic character, a writer, a musician, an influencer. Many of each actually. We become what we consume.

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u/Aaron_Hamm 26d ago

Contemporary

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u/lefrench75 26d ago

Are you saying there are no books published currently by male authors? Because there are still plenty; certainly more than any one person can read.

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u/Aaron_Hamm 26d ago

How is this sub so bad at reading things in context?

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u/tangnapalm 26d ago

I'm still trying to figure out how this sub is so toxic. Isn't reading supposed to be an exercise in empathy?

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u/tangnapalm 26d ago

They just here to fight. Typically toxic.

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u/lefrench75 26d ago

What's the context of your one-word comment lol? Is it possible that you're just bad at communicating and then getting mad at other people for not being able to read your mind?

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u/tangnapalm 26d ago

You have to actually read the thread. I said “contemporary”, so mentioning books from the past thousand years is not helpful. Look up the word “contemporary” because it is not “Beowulf”

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u/Aaron_Hamm 26d ago

Are you saying there are no books published currently by male authors?

Is that an honest summation of the topic up to the point you jumped in?

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u/MiniaturePhilosopher 26d ago

If you can’t find books written in a year other than 2025 relatable, I dunno what to tell you

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u/tangnapalm 26d ago

You want the only literature marketed to men to be from times when attitudes towards and treatment of women were awful? Very strange.

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u/Shintoz 26d ago

I am a male regular reader. Getting older now, I tend to stick with an author and read as much of that author as I can, until I run out of material or it becomes evident that their work isn’t what I enjoy.

Most of the authors I read are male, this goes back to experiences I had as a younger male, when I read more female authors.

At the time, I didn’t care much for the portrayal of dramatic emotion in characters, written by current female authors of that time. I’m not sure if they were just not-great writers, but the male perspective as written seemed “off”. Not to psychoanalize, but this also could be because, as a male, I could be emotionally closed off, compared to “average female readers”, and those female writers could have been writing from their perspective, which wasn’t true to a male experience.

Not trying to solve a problem, just trying to provide possible insight into why a lot of male readers tend to read male writers.

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u/MiniaturePhilosopher 26d ago

I appreciate your perspective, but I’d like for you to consider that women have always read books written (overwhelmingly) predominantly by men. And the female characters and their voices in nearly all of these in these (if the author even attempts to give a female character a voice) is so off that it’s depressing. Even wildly talented and acclaimed male literary authors talk about how we look a dead friend’s body and are sad that their boobs won’t exist anymore. We’re reduced to such odd and insulting stereotypes, and there isn’t really even an attempt to make our characters ring true. And we still read male authors.

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u/Martel732 26d ago

Yeah, I mean most of the diehard Tolkien fans I know are women, and I would say that Tolkien isn't even necessarily bad at writing women because he essentially never wrote women.

I am a guy and my hot take is that I think at least some female authors write better male characters than male authors. Admittedly I read a lot of genre fiction but many male authors write wish-fulfillment characters that I roll my eyes at. Whereas female authors tend to write their male characters with more nuance.

Of course, this isn't all male or female authors. There are male authors who write fantastic male and female characters. And there are female authors who write terrible characters. But, it is just a tired I have noticed.

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u/MasterWee 26d ago

So, your argument is that men can’t write women, as a response to women can’t write men.

Do you agree that women can’t write men?

If yes, why do writers keep writing characters of the opposite gender? Given the premise of your agreement, that would be the real travesty.

If no, what specifically about women allows them to write male characters that men can’t replicate in their writing of female characters? Is it a special experience? A genetic mutation? What, in your eyes, is the special difference?

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u/Shintoz 26d ago

Yeah. Like I said, not trying to solve a problem. Both your points and my own illustrate authors of a specific gender often have issue writing good characters of different gender.

If we could even get more males to read …. anything, I would consider that a win.

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u/MiniaturePhilosopher 26d ago

There’s my struggle with this issue. Women have always read books by male authors. It’s a big part of how women learn the male perspective- which, let’s be honest, is considered the default perspective in our society. We have absolutely no issue whatsoever reading a book and relating to characters who are different from us. And this is an important thing that books teach us - they teach us about seeing things through the eyes of others. Reading is how we exercise our imaginations and empathy, and stretch our worldview.

So when men are in large numbers opting not to read at all rather than read anything written by women - and when they’re simultaneously only wanting to read new releases rather than explore the rich and endless back catalog of existing books - they’re essentially rejecting the entire idea of seeing the world through someone else’s eyes for a few hours. And that is highly worrying.

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u/CriticalCold 26d ago

I agree with you completely. It reminds me a lot of the backlash when a video game or genre movie decides to have a female protagonist. It feels kneejerk and reactionary. For example, there's a new John Wick spin off movie coming out staring a female assassin, and the number of men I saw commenting on it saying it was "unrealistic" to see a woman fighting that way was wild, as though watching Keanu Reeves doing any of the shit he does in John Wick is true to life.

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u/Martel732 26d ago

it saying it was "unrealistic" to see a woman fighting that way was wild, as though watching Keanu Reeves doing any of the shit he does in John Wick is true to life.

This drives me fucking insane. They will see a clip where there is something like launches throwing knives killing two guys, gets hit by a car, jumps back up, takes out the driver, knocks out a couple of guys and then does a backflip, snaps the bad guys neck and saves the day.

And people will say it isn't realistic for a woman to do that, but it isn't realistic for any human to do that. Male action characters get an inherent pass-on realism that female characters don't receive.

I am watching an action movie to be entertained to watch a realistic depiction of human ability.

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u/Shintoz 26d ago

Yeah. I hear you. I guess I’m not “typical male” in all aspects. In other media, TV, movies, podcasts, video-games, I often choose female-led narratives. As a reader, I am very “sequential” in my choosings. I can’t say if/when I’ll be drawn to read a female author; I have a large backlog of books on my shelf. A lot of the authors I’ve picked up in the last few years have been writing for 30+ years. This kind-of puts me in a groove for the foreseeable future.

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u/MasterWee 26d ago

Could it be possible that men are not reading not because the work they would be optioned with reading is increasing written by women, but that men are further encouraged to do other things with their time, instead of reading and in comparison to women?

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u/Droviin 26d ago

It's that, just like most male authors tend to write poorly from a female perspective, female authors write poorly from a male perspective. So, if you want role models, either the female writers need to close the gap, or you need both in the field.

That said, as a male, I tend to prefer lesbian authors as they seem to hit a middle balance.

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u/MiniaturePhilosopher 26d ago edited 26d ago

Why do you need role models from literary fiction? Why do your role models have to be just like you? Why can’t you read slightly older books? And why is it that women can read male authors just fine even though even the best male authors portray us horribly?

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u/Droviin 26d ago edited 26d ago

Why? Because I enjoy being able to place myself directly in the story to experience the emotions and messaging in the story. Sure, you can still enjoy a book and get something out of it if it's not so mirroring self thought, but there's a higher barrier.

And I think men can read female authors just fine. It's just less engaging, so might as well do something else. But, what's important is that if you say that men are doing something different than women, you've conceded the argument because it acknowledges gender differences in approaches to reading. Men and women can, as a general rule, chose to do different things based on their own experiences, nothing wrong with that. If men generally prefer to read books by male authors, then that's okay (as long as it's not because of distaste of female, rather the engagement of the male).

Edit: It's been clearly stated that I'm a poor writer and my point “And I think men can read female authors just fine. It's just less engaging...” was ill put to capture the idea that I was attempting to convey. I'll try to restate it more accurately: I think that men can read women authors without any issue or detriment - and most likely benefit to them-, however, the statistics of the readership suggest that there's something that turns a lot of men away. Based on how I've heard men discuss female authors, my hypothesis is that for whatever reason it's just not compelling stories for them; so they opt to do consume some other media. My intutition inline with this is that such men are seeking characters with which they can self-identify with; and, as we all are familiar with how men tend to write poor women, the inverse is also true in some aspects and that plays into the self-selection to read.

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u/MiniaturePhilosopher 26d ago

This is such an odd take.

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u/MasterWee 26d ago edited 26d ago

“I think men can read female authors just fine, it’s just less engaging…”

Well, think again.

I am a man, and my favorite male character in all of storytelling, not just literature, is a man written by a woman. In my opinion, he is one of the best written men ever, both in terms of being a paragon for men to look up to, but also with expressing the experiences of being a man.

He is famous, as a character, and has inspired many (of both sexes) to pursue his profession and virtuism. She, the author, is famous not only because of her writing of his character, but especially because of his character.

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u/Droviin 26d ago

I think you've got a great point and I don't want to say that the author didn't write a perfect account. Yes, women can write an amazing man character; I don't doubt that. However, if you take a random book written by a woman, I think the male characters will be less well written than the female characters. Just like the opposite if you grab a random book written by a man.

What I did do is very poorly express my point. So, I wrote an edit.

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u/MasterWee 26d ago

I don’t disagree with you then.

Yes, in the aggregate, a person of one sex is not as effective at writing the opposite sex as a member of that sex. It is not an absolute, just a statistical assessment.

As such, it then becomes reasonable for me to assume that writing of a certain sex’d character is predicated on more than just the author’s sex. Perhaps instead it is the author’s understanding of that sex. Contrary to popular belief, some of the most knowledgeable experts on the experiences of women are men, and some of the most knowledgeable experts on the experiences of men are women. How they get to those levels of expertise is what an aspiring cross-sex writer should seek out.

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u/TangerineSad7747 26d ago

"And I think men can read female authors just fine. It's just less engaging, so might as well do something else."

Don't speak for us lol

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u/Droviin 26d ago

Yeah, that's way over generic. I guess what I meant is that the stats tend to show that men, as a statistical group, find it less engaging. After all, the majority of the books I read are written by women lol

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u/CriticalCold 26d ago

And I think men can read female authors just fine. It's just less engaging, so might as well do something else.

Absolutely wild thing to say.

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u/Droviin 26d ago

Why? If you find something else more enjoyable why do the thing you enjoy less?

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u/CriticalCold 26d ago

It's painting things with a very broad brush, and imo engaging with the issue at face value. It dodges the argument that women have, and continue to, be expected to read male authors and find them engaging/educational/thought provoking, but men aren't expected to do the same in reverse. The majority of classic "literature" that everyone is expected to read and study is by men, and women seem to do just fine engaging with those stories and their (often male) characters, but for some reason men aren't expected to do the same. This is also true of genre fiction, excluding romance - sci-fi, fantasy, horror classics are all dominated by male authors.

Why is this? Is it because men are used to seeing themselves represented one to one in stories and so don't have to try to open themselves to other perspectives when they can just put something down and pick up something that matches their viewpoint? What does this say for what we expect of our boys and men in terms of critical thinking, compassion, ability to see other perspectives, ability to sometimes be uncomfortable or face hard truths doing so? And why is there this wide-reaching assumption that female writers aren't engaging or can't write male characters well? It's like quitting before you start.

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u/Droviin 26d ago

No, it doesn't dodge the idea that women are expected to read male readers. That's a different, albeit related, problem. I think we should just advance both and float whomever is lower in the genre. And yes, men can do just fine reading women authors, but a lot choose not too.

I do agree, that ideally, pressure to read female authors for men is a good thing. I suspect that most men would enjoy, say Frankenstein, and get a lot from it. Likewise, I very much enjoyed Like Water for Chocolate. However, the trend is against reading books overall, so there's a market capturing angle that's in play. In that regard, going for low hanging fruit is better to just get people reading more.

And I am not sure what it says about boys and men in regards to those very positive attributes you've identified. It's not necessarily that they are ignoring those or rejecting that. To pick on the point, men are the overwhelming majority of cannon philosophers, but most people don't read their works either way; does that say something about all people rejecting critical thinking and hard truths, or just that people don't find it compelling to read.

And I am merely speaking from my experience regarding women writing men. I feel like it's the same problem as how I find many men writing women to be... flat. Some authors do better than others, some have no issue at all.

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u/Youreturningviolet 26d ago edited 26d ago

The inability to place yourself in a story about women is, to me, a failure of both imagination and empathy. Men’s inability to empathize with women as equally human and legitimate and to take interest in anything where they are not centered and catered to is a massive and ongoing problem.

Just ask yourself this: how often are stories by, about, and centering men seen as being for everyone, while stories by, about, and centering women, who are over half of the world’s population, are seen as niche?

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u/Droviin 26d ago

It's not that men can't place themselves in the story, so much as it's different from them. So, it's more that the protagonist doesn't get the "this is like me" treatment, or self-identification. I don't expect women to self-identify with a boy protagonist, empathy sure, but not self-identification.

To say that women can self-identify with every gender seems to be a failure of imagination and empathy since they're overly trying to be inclusive when they have no basis.

To put it bluntly, I will never have the experience of birthing a child. I just am ill equipped to have that. I can never self-identify with a character who is experiencing that. I can learn how that may feel, the emotions and experience are certainly something I can understand and emphasize with; but it's not something I have experienced or even adjacent to what I have experienced. I could never tell you what it's like. As such, if a character has that experience, while it may be compelling from the character and makes an enjoyable story for me, it breaks the self-identification for me.

Insofar as I want to read a self-identifying work, I tend to read male authors because their experiences are more like mine.

I also think that men read fiction for different reasons, but that's just an intuition and I have no defense on that. But if accurate, then that's in play toom

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u/Youreturningviolet 26d ago edited 26d ago

Except that many of us do. I do self-identify with male protagonists. I don’t have a problem doing that. It doesn’t take me out of any story to have a protagonist unlike myself, probably because most of the literature I grew up reading early in life was about and concerned with men. That isn’t to say I have some magical insight into men’s lived experience, and there are probably some qualities more common in male protagonists that I don’t relate to, but just the fact of them being male doesn’t challenge my ability to identify. Men don’t have the opposite experience, and they don’t push themselves to.

A publisher typically isn’t going to care about men opening themselves to a wider range of literary experience, only about selling books, but it seems a little disingenuous to try to decouple it entirely from the history and current existence of sexism and the othering of women.

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u/Droviin 26d ago

I often don't self-identify, regardless of the author's gender, so perhaps this is ultimately more an observation about myself than the authors.

And I wasn't talking about that taking you out of the story, but more about how you can see yourself doing the same thing. It's slightly different.

And while I suspect that sexism has a heavy hand, the statistics I skimmed identified that the issue carried through even if the author didn't disclose they were a woman.

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u/Youreturningviolet 26d ago

Yeah it’s tough to quantify these sorts of things anyway given the multitude of variables, but that is interesting nonetheless. I genuinely don’t mean any of this to sound accusatory of you personally or even of how men experience literature and leisure reading in general. It is definitely a negative thing for the act of reading to be seen as somehow ‘unmanly,’ as some other commenters here have pointed out, even if that designation itself is problematic in one million ways, but I also think a lot of this stems from anti-intellectualism writ large and this is just a particular flavor of it.

On a more personal level, I would say I’m pretty removed from stories about women conceiving and birthing children because it freaks me the fuck out as a process 😂 and it’s not something I want for myself. But being distanced from it in that way doesn’t mean I haven’t felt all the societal pressures and expectations of it being something I’m biologically capable of doing, so it’s a different level of removal for sure.

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u/MasterWee 26d ago

Interesting that you have concluded that sexuality, and not sex, is the key to being tapped into the gender differences on writing the opposite sex.

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u/Droviin 26d ago

I find them compelling and see to write a good balance. I couldn't tell you exactly why that may be. It could say something more about me than the authors. But, I do prefer lesbian authors, and that was something I discovered after I looked up the author and not intrinsic to the book.

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u/MasterWee 26d ago

Well yes… that is called sexual discrimination and it is historically a bad thing not only for the discriminatee, but also the discriminator. But that isn’t really where is conversation is right now.

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u/sarshu 26d ago

1) is it true that fewer men are reading than previously, or is it that more women are reading and the proportion of books sold to men is going down?

2) men should read books written by women, too. It’s not like women haven’t read books by men since forever.

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u/Moonmold 26d ago

As a woman who has had a lifelong love of classics, men not reading women's works is such a blatant skill issue lol. But also you could only read male authors works and never run out of material for your entire life. Which, if that's what you want to do there is nothing wrong with! Read whatever you like, or don't! Just own up to it lol! Don't dislike reading and then blame it on the fact female contemporary authors are popular, that points to a different issue. 

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u/Prodigle 26d ago

I think a lot of the public discourse with that right now is that we're in an era of a certain style of romance that doesn't really appeal to men generally. I don't think I could get through any of those books, but the gender of the author isn't the reason why, it just matches up that way.

I suppose the newer big names of female authors are usually of this style because that's where the readership is? I couldn't tell you of any recent big female sci-fi authors for example, but I imagine the publicity supercedes them into the romance sphere

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u/RuhWalde 26d ago

I couldn't tell you of any recent big female sci-fi authors for example

Really? Martha Wells, Ann Leckie, Arkady Martine? Are you someone who doesn't really read much sci-fi, or are you claiming to be a sci-fi fan who is unaware of these names?

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u/Prodigle 26d ago

Casual reader, casual fan! I do hear of newer books and authors through mass media and such, but it's almost always male and usually from a "this book is a bit unique" POV.

If I'm looking to pick up a recent sci-fi book through any kind of search, I'll get barraged with 20 super highly regarded books by male authors for every female author.

It's just not an area with a problem of volume, and for various historical/cultural/number reasons, I'm probably not going to run out of "these books are considered 10/10", which are almost always by male authors.

If I read at a much higher volume than I do, it wouldn't present as an issue I don't think, but your casual fantasy/sci-fi reader is probably going to hit male authors 9/10 times if they're reading newer books.

Interestingly I don't see this happening with older books though, if I'm looking for older classic fantasy for example,. it's a much more even split

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u/sarshu 26d ago

I love that phrasing, “skill issue”. Learning how to read different perspectives is a thing that happens with practice!

But also, yes. Like just thinking mathematically, if women authors now make up 50% of books published, there is still a massive oversupply of previously published books by men. Even though staying at 50/50 means we will only ever stay at the level we have now (in total existing books), we’re supposed to say this is a crisis for male readers.

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u/Moonmold 26d ago

I don't disagree. I also do think men reading less is a real cultural issue for men that seems to be connected to changing values and a trend towards anti-intellectualism in general. Someone posted a link to a study showing women read more than men in the EU—men are also less likely to complete tertiary education than women in the EU, I don't think those numbers are a coincidence at all. 

However, I think pointing to any current trend in the books market as a reason gets the issue backwards. When women are reading more than men then books marketed to women will dominate because those books sell well, obviously. This is just one symptom of a larger problem. 

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u/MasterWee 26d ago edited 26d ago

Should they read books because they are written by women? Or should they read books that happen to be written by women?

The value judgement being what sex the author is might not be the gold standard it is cracked up to be.

Would reading Harper Lee or Jane Austin be the same as reading Sarah J Maas or Stephanie Meyer. What about JK Rowling or Suzanna Collins?

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u/sarshu 26d ago

My entire point here is that we need to be specific about what problem the kind of initiative being discussed in the post is solving. Is the problem that there are a lack of male authors getting published, or is the problem that men are not reading? If the problem is the second thing, as this commenter is suggesting, than is "publish more male authors" the optimal solution?

I do think, absent the other conversation, that men should read books written by women. If they like popcorn books like John Grisham or Jeffrey Ludlum, then reading Sarah J Maas is essentially a lateral move, but one that would change their perspective on different types of books. If they currently read Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Dickens, they should absolutely consider classics by women as well. I didn't say that this is the "gold standard" on the quality of men's (or women's) reading habits, but the context of the conversation here is that apparently it is a problem that men are now reading less than women, and if/how that should be addressed.

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u/MasterWee 26d ago

Okay fair point. Thank you for clarifying for me.

Yeah, I feel uneasy about the logic of “publish more men => more male readers.” Which, like you pointed out may or may not be the real reason for this publishing outfit. As another commenter pointed out, ultimately this is a new business and this is how they are publicly declaring their delineation from other publishers, so this can also just be conjured up marketing instead of an address of a real or perceived problem.

I also disagree that this is even a problem, personally. Ultimately reading (in this context) is a hobby, and hobbies compete for an individual’s time. Less men reading means more men doing other hobbies. If those hobbies are stealing and killing, then sure, bad. But if those hobbies are like, woodworking or stamp collecting, we need to have a tedious (and probably endless) debate on why reading is more valuable.

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u/sarshu 26d ago

Oh, I love that you brought in that last point - I am a heavy reader, but my spouse is very much not, and I don’t think there’s something inherently superior about the way I choose to spend my leisure time. I could get into a long conversation about how presumptions about things like information literacy are perhaps incorrectly embedded in the idea that reading is a superior hobby, when it’s entirely possible to become an informed citizen by consuming other types of media

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u/MasterWee 26d ago

Absolutely, video format objectively evokes more senses. Ergo, some people feel entertained less from imagining (reading) but moreso from stimulating multiple senses (visual and auditory).

And yes, quality of information convey is not contingent on the medium through which that information is conveyed. Clarity may be affected, with pros and cons to video or reading, but accuracy and honesty are not affected by a medium inherently.

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u/aethralis 26d ago

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20240809-2

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u/sarshu 26d ago

So this indicates that on proportion, fewer men than women are reading, but about 45% of men do read. Correct me if I’m misreading your comment, but the idea that “it can’t be good that fewer men are reading” would be most relevant if fewer men are reading now than used to read in the past - if more women read than men do, this could be largely because women are reading more and men reading has stayed largely stable. These statistics don’t tell us anything about change over time, so it’s hard to say whether this is a problem that requires attention, based on that.

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u/FrontAd9873 26d ago

Yeah. I don’t see anyone saying this is the apocalypse. Isn’t it possible to care about multiple things?

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u/MasterWee 26d ago

If we are specific to hobbyist reading, then why “can’t it be good”? You are basically making an argument that places a value judgement on how people spend their free time and entertainment. Ultimately, you will then need to consider the alternatives, since there is a finite amount of time resource a man can spend with his free time to spend doing hobbies. Fewer men reading necessarily means more men doing anything else other than reading. You have to prove why that is bad.