Jennifer Weiner has a very interesting blog post up at the Huffington Post about female writers and how they're perceived to be "less serious" than male writers. If you've been paying attention at all you know it's an issue I feel strongly about, so go read. I will make one small critique: why, why, WHY do we refer to female writers as "women writers"? Woman is a noun, not an adjective. In this essay she uses the term repeatedly but never refers to male writers as "man writers." Just a small nitpick - I see it everywhere and it drives me nuts.
Also, inspired by the discussion a reader and I were having in the comments of this post on speed dating, I'm working on something about why the gendering of fiction as feminine and non-fiction as masculine is a bad idea. Stay tuned.
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3 comments:
There's so much to unpack with these issues. It does seem weird that the majority of people who are heavily invested in fiction are female but there are still these conscious and subconscious barriers.
I know, and I'm sure I will only be giving a bare-bones personal analysis, but you are exactly right about the barriers. I'm tempted to just blame socialization and call it a day.
Socialization it is ;)
PS I sent you an email at the address on your blogger profile. did you get it? (I know I only check my blog-alias email sporadically)
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