For many years, one of the ways women encountered men—beyond family, school, and daily life—was through books.
The novels most often assigned in schools treated male characters with complexity and focus. These men were not always admirable, but they were taken seriously. Their choices carried weight. Their flaws were treated as meaningful. Whether the tone was warm, critical, or somewhere in between, the stories suggested that men were worth paying attention to.
That framing may have shaped what readers expected from men—or at least what they believed was possible.
In the past two decades, that reading landscape has shifted. School curriculums have broadened to include more books by women, writers of color, and authors outside the traditional Western canon. Those changes have brought a wider range of voices into the classroom. At the same time, many of the books that once centered male characters have become less common. Fewer students today are assigned novels that ask them to follow a man’s story closely and take it seriously.
That change is reflected in the world beyond school, too. Women now drive the fiction market. They shape what gets published, what gets shared, and what becomes popular. In many of the books women are reading and recommending, male characters are no longer central. Some are written with care. Others are written off. And many are left out altogether.
This is not a complaint. It’s a shift. But it raises a question I’ve been thinking about.
If the stories that shape your reading life are often critical of masculinity, does that affect what you recognize—or trust—in men?
I’m not suggesting that we are what we read. But I do think the stories we take in over time—especially the ones that are widely shared and reinforced—can influence how we see the world. I’m wondering if that’s happened here.
I don’t have a definitive answer. But I wonder if there’s a generational difference—not in how women feel about men, but in what kinds of stories they were given. For those who grew up reading books that portrayed men with depth and seriousness, that framing may have shaped certain expectations. For women whose reading lives began after the center shifted, those expectations might look different. I don’t know what that adds up to. But I don’t think it’s nothing.
Obviously books aren’t the only influence. It’s hard to say how significant their reach is. But they do shape what we notice, and what we learn to expect. I don’t know if a steady diet of critical portrayals of masculinity changes how readers come to see men—but I think it might.
What do you think?
This topic was at least partially addressed in the last couple of blogs. I am really happy about the move away from so much literature and genre fiction being centered on men. But it’s still obvious (Yellowstone, our political climate, etc) that non-nuanced masculinity is still very much at the fore. And of course what we take in influences us. They wouldn’t be trying to ban all these books, otherwise. There is power in reading. Diverse views and diverse characters are essential for well-rounded individuals and for a realistic look at life in general. Books are in the same vein as traveling. You get to experience the “other” in ways that help you grow and appreciate. I think there is a lot to be critical about in our society’s approach to, and even at times reverence of, masculinity. I honestly don’t think it’s “all men.” I have a wonderful husband and brother, son and son-in-law, and though my dad was very flawed, he was also loving and kind. And I’ve never bad-mouthed men to my kids. At the same time, my son actually considers himself non-binary because of what he sees of men in his own life, and what he considered rampant toxic masculinity. That’s a (cis-het) early 30’s man’s opinion, if only one. He’s seen it at school, at work places, and in meeting people casually.
Growing up I thought misogyny was actually rare. Reading and listening to real-life stories, as well as facing it first hand has changed my view. Not all men, but I do think the many are at least culturally misogynistic. They like women and treat them well, but still hold to stereotypes they grew up with. Kind of like most white people hold race biases they are still working through.
I think women drive the fiction market because women are the ones reading. For a long time, men read as much or more (obviously more the farther back you go in history) than women, but right now, we are the ones more likely to engage with a novel as a pastime. I think that has more to do with how reading is viewed as an activity; at some point, it became a feminine activity rather than gender neutral or even primarily masculine. I’ll add that it has been happening since the ’70s. I studied it in school; this is not a result of the “woke” changes to the reading curriculum.
If I were to blame anything, it would be the changes made to homework. As homework hours have increased, stressing out both parents and children, reading for leisure has decreased. My son, in addition to the two hours or so of homework he brought home, was expected to fill out a reading log every week. Page numbers increased commiserate with grade (ie, read 5 chapter books in second grade, read 500 pages in 7th grade). I feel fortunate he was a reader before those requirements because I believe they were taxing enough to turn anyone into a non-reader. Who wants to do two hours of homework and then read for another hour or so?
I also wonder how much this change has to do with other media availability. For example, many games come with complex world-building and backstories. Guys who used to read science fiction are far more immersed in the sci-fi worlds of those games, TV shows, movies, and graphic novels than they are in the old storybook style of narrative. From what I understand, graphic novels make up the largest chunk of a bookstore’s sales in some parts of the world
I will add that the overstory of distrust of anything said by an intellectual, which controls a large portion of the population in this country, makes books a hard sell to the male market. They’d rather consume a YouTube video that reinforces their worldview than a book that challenges it.
Growing up, we were walked to the library every week. As we grew older, we would walk or drive on our own. By the time a book was assigned in school, I had probably already read it, and many classic novels that were never assigned I read on my own. Fast forward thirty years: The local used bookstore knows my whole family by name and jokes about watching my kids grow up.We are familiar faces at the public library (I would find it odd to live in a town where the librarians didn’t know and recognize me). Both my sons love books, and my youngest (who seems to think I’m made of money) treats himself to a book every time we walk into a store that sells them. So, school has had a minimal impact on their reading choices. The myth that if you read to a kid or if they are forced to read in school, they will fall in love with books is just that—a myth. Teach them that reading is valuable by living out the principle, and they will most likely love it. But you have to be a reader to raise a reader, and if you do, what they read in school will matter less than what they are exposed to at home.
I totally agree with your last sentence. I can remember Sunday afternoons where my whole family was in the living room in total silence, my dad reading the NY Times, mom the Daily News or whatever titillating biography she was reading, and my sister and I both with noses in novels. And we’re still readers to this day.
I can remember afternoons like that, too, especially on hot summer weekends when we all stayed indoors enjoying the air conditioning while reading our books. I would look up from whatever I was perusing because the house was so quiet, but we were all there, just all of us with our nose in a book!
Yes!
I recently made a conscious effort to count the number of female authors at the top of fiction bestseller lists when I noticed one at my local library (NYT) that was 80% women authors. I was shocked. (I don’t normally pay attention to lists like this.) It has been fascinating to see the dominance of female writers – at least at this moment. I’ve been impressed by the size of the romance sections at bookstores in the last couple of years. And the romance panels at the Tucson Festival of Books a week or so ago were packed with attendees. All completely unscientific, but anecdotal evidence that something is very different in the publishing world than just a few years ago.
Personally, I think the changes we are seeing about who reads is related to the death of newspapers. When people stopped (getting and) reading something about their local communities – even if only for a few minutes each day – something important began to change in our society. (I don’t believe television news – especially local TV news – is the same thing at all. It has no depth to it at all.) We are seeing currently what happens when people don’t read. I’m not a sociologist and I doubt I will live long enough to find out what some future sociologist will determine about the impact of reading on humans. Will we find out that reading was how we learned to think? (Sorry, I’m a bit off Dabney’s topic.)
The blog title refers to fiction, but the text refers to books. Maggie Boyd already posted about many non-book forms of fiction people consume. Beyond her point, think back to a blog entry about numbers of books people read. American reading figures gave a mean of 12 and a median of 4 books per year. That means half the surveyed population read 4 or fewer books per year. Contrast that to an average of over 3 hours per day spent watching TV and over 1 hour per day gaming (if a quick Google search can be believed). Or compare the number of books sold for even a major best-seller to the audience of almost any TV show or movie.
This ties back directly to the previous blog, which discussed a more toxic TV adaptation of a series of books. The exposure that almost certainly affects people is more media than books.
So agree with you Mark about the impact of media vs. books – and sort of related to my rambling below about women’s current dominance in the book world. Too many American men just do not read anything anymore, but particularly not fiction.
In my parent’s generation, none of the men were book readers generally. My father discovered non-fiction books in retirement but he still has no interest in fiction. His brother never picked up a book. My only uncle is a big fiction reader in retirement. My FIL is the only exception – but he was so enamored of literature he became a professor of (20th C American literature) and helped create a creative writing program at his college.
My husband is and always has been a huge reader of everything: fiction, poetry and non-fiction. But he pretty much only reads non-fiction these days. His brother never picked up a book of any kind. Nor did my brother. In my brother’s case, he was/is too busy watching sports. Of 4 grandsons (25-30 yrs), none of them are book readers of any kind. Yet every woman in the family has read their entire lives – mostly fiction. We’re huge bookstore and library patrons. We all have/had Kindles. And it appears from my casual observations, this is not untypical of most American families.
To Dabney’s point about the characterization of men today: One of the disadvantages with “media” (vs. books) is that we do not know what is in a character’s head. We know very little about what they are thinking or feeling. We only know what they say and how they act. My memory of the Jack Reacher books is that while Reacher said very little, the stories were told from his point of view. We knew what he was thinking and why he was doing what he was doing. Not so with the television series, apparently. (I read a few of the early books, including the very first one. I watched a few episodes of the first season on television and generally liked them. My husband disliked the second season and he’s not continued to watch it. Apparently, the television show has changed Reacher’s character substantially from what I remember in the books. But that is true of most book adaptations.)
I don’t know where any of this leaves us (as a species) but it isn’t looking good.
I encounter a resistance to reading in boys and girls at school, where the response to “quiet reading time” is generally loud groans from about 90% of the class.
I come from a solidly working class background, and neither of my parents were readers, but it was mostly because they just didn’t have time. My dad worked all the hours God sent to provide for his family and my mum was bringing up me and my brother, keeping house etc. My mum did enjoy the odd book when she got older, but her main hobby was her music and her keyboards.
Mr Caz isn’t a great reader – he likes non-fiction when he does read, although I know he has read fiction in the past, and I can’t remember my brother picking up a book other than for school. But he’s the ‘hands-on’ one in the family; he’s a designer and artist and his hobby is wildlife photography, so again, not much time to read.
So I’m the exception – I was the family bookwork (still am!) and both my daughters love to read when they have the time.
Everyone in my family reads–in every generation. I don’t know why we all ended up like that–we weren’t allowed to watch TV when we were little, that’s a part of it–but we all read, talk about what we read, and recommend books.
It’s true that boys have always had to be, in the schools, encouraged to read more than girl on average. My mom, a lifelong librarian, used to say that you had to tire the boys out to get them to pay attention sometimes and that’s always made sense to me. (I think it helps girls too!)
I went a bit off the key topic in my first post so to answer your main question, No. Fictionalized men are fiction. Always have been. Perhaps it is the time and place in which I was raised and am living in now but I don’t see groups as bad or good, I see individuals that way. So who I meet and how they treat me impacts me more than a fictional account in say, Gone with the Wind, Pride and Prejudice or Great Expectations. All books I read in school.
I’ll add that I am happy we’ve diversified what we are reading in school. There was an implication in the old days that white men should rule, were best suited to it etc. It was a jarring experience as an adult toe learn the actual history and I was happy my eldest learned it younger than I did.
I wouldn’t say my view of men is being changed by the books I read – probably because 99% of what I read now is m/m, so the stories are male-centric told from the male PoV, and of course, those characters are unlikely to be toxic arseholes as we’re meant to like and sympathise with them as the principals in a romance novel.
But there do seem to be fewer hero-centric romances about these days when it comes to m/f romances, and I’m a hero-centric reader, so perhaps that accounts partly for my shift to m/m alongside the refreshing lack of traditional m/f gender politics etc.
My view is being changed more by what I see in school every day (misogyny has been identified as a particular issue in the school I work at) and what I’m seeing and reading about what’s happening in the real world. One of my daughters has a long-term partner, the other doesn’t and is more and more leaning towards not wanting one given all the horror stories out there.
I’ll just say that, statistically, adults who are married report being far happier than those in any other relationship status. Furthermore–this from a Pew study from October–25% say people in the United States have mostly negative views of men who are “manly or masculine.” This is smaller than the shares who say people have mostly positive views of masculine men (43%) or that views are neither positive nor negative (31%).
This is sort of my point. The current zeitgeist in media and in novels is that straight men, especially white men, suck. I don’t think that’s how most people actually feel, however. And I think presenting that as the norm is bad news for pretty much everyone.
And I’d add that it’s much harder to come up with responses to bad actors when we call everyone a bad actor. I think we can say too many men are misogynistic without saying most are.
That is true, of course. The problem for my daughter and many young women like her, is that they can’t always tell who is going to be the bad actor.
Do we really base our view of men on those depicted in the books we read? Isn’t it more likely that we base it on the men in our lives as we grew up? That is certainly true for me, which is why I have never been able to buy into the notion of rape culture, misogyny, etc. I’m an old lady now, so it may be that the world really has changed, but I suspect that what has really changed is the fashionable way to present characters in fiction.
I guess for me, reading is often aspirational. I grew up reading books about marvelous men and then I looked for those men in real life. I’m happy books made me believe that good guys and true love were possible.
I totally agree. I remember in the 80s through the aughts the endless complaints on how romances made women willing to be raped but that was never a reality.
Well, the whole rape thing in romance has been studied ad nauseum. In general, it’s wish fulfillment to not have to do a thing to have an orgasm. Women, usually the caretakers, in part fantasize about rape because it frees them from responsibility. Some studies–here’s one–show that a majority of women have these fantasies.
Yes, I think most people just give an eye roll to anyone bringing out that argument now. However, I can remember numerous arguments that took place here and on other message boards in the early days of romance websites. My favorite book on the subject is Endless Rapture by Helen Hazen. It talks about various reasons why the fantasy worked and how the power differential appeared even in some early m/m works. Tania Modelski also talked about that in her book Loving with a Vengeance. Dangerous Men and Adventerous Women by a variety of romance writers both defended the rape fantasy and advocated for the changes taking place. I did a paper on the subject in college because I was sincerely tired of the derision given to the genre and the purported dangers of these books to “weak-minded women”.
That’s why I’m reluctant to look at how romances depict men as causal rather than responsive. Romance is a consumer-driven market, and women today are not just looking for books by women for women (which is how romance and women’s fiction were viewed in the past) but for stories by women for women and about women.
Hmmmm…..
I’m going to think about that last paragraph!
I agree with you, Lil. I have thought about this and feel my perception of men is, in large part, the result of the men in my life as I grew up and continue to get old and grey. To wit: my father, my brother, uncles, teachers, professors, employers, fellow volunteers across a wide spectrum of activities, politicians and leaders, clergy, etc. I read so much that a lot of it goes in one metaphorical ear and out the other and so fiction men don’t really gain much, if any, traction with me. Like you, I nave never been able to buy into the notion of rape culture, etc. To some degree, that is partly due to to what I see as the gradual disappearance and value of a sense of humour and the ability to keep things in overall perspective. Life, to quote a famous character, is not a box of chocolates, all tasting lovely; some are filled with nuts and can break your teeth. You have to live and learn.
And to the discussion about Jack Reacher, I have been reading Lee Childs’ books recently and, at times, I find them quite refreshing after a steady diet of too much romantic fiction. Here is a “hero” (or not, depending on your view) who just acts on what he thinks is the right thing, using analytical and physical skills many of us shudder at but are sometimes necessary and get results. And he is not misogynistic, IMO, he actually treats women as equals. The women he gets involved with in the books are generally themselves alpha women and there is no dancing about, worrying about white picket fences as both Jack and the women he sleeps with are very clear about what’s what. Isn’t this true of any “super hero” you can think of? Did Superman marry Lois Lane and father the requisite three kids?
My complaints are about the show–I think the series is better although it is not for me!
I am in my thirties and did not grow up in America, if that makes any difference. The books I grew up with were very male centric. Women were objects for the male character to interact with, not subjects. I even read books that presented rape as acceptable or deserved. My experience of literature at school where this was presented uncritically was not good. This was harmful to my development as a young woman. I am very happy to see that publishing has evolved since ! It will make a big difference to young readers not to integrate these harmful messages.
As for why, I think it makes sense, women are the market for many of these genres, they write what they want to read. I don’t think positive representations of men have completely disappeared. I also enjoy fantasy and science fiction and there are many positive representations centering men there. This is because there are still men reading speculative fiction. There are also other genres that center men, they are just not ones we often read, or maybe not ones that are currently put forward by traditional publishing. But with the thriving self publishing market these books can be found.
As for if it will change how society views men, I don’t believe it will. The dominant forms of media, film, TV, video games, advertisements (consumed by both sexes) are still overwhelmingly male centric and viewed through the male gaze. I still see plenty of toxic messaging there that is very negative towards women. Male is still the default, and thus we get more complex, agentic male main characters.
The evolution in publishing might change the views of the smaller group of women who read. I don’t believe it is a bad thing though, to be made aware that you deserve better treatment. It is true though that I think this is deepening the gap in perspectives between young men and young women. Young men are being fed this return to oppressive gender roles through social media, and young women increasingly want to escape it altogether. But why is this bad when it comes from women and taken as a given when it comes from men ?
Very well put and I agree completely.
Yes, fiction, movies music shape or distort our view of people. Currently, books are inauthentic with an undercurrent of bland forced by sensitivity reader checkboxes. The new, since 2000, monoculture of the publishing industry, editors, publishers, … today is as bad or worse than the publishing industry monoculture.in 1960.
one cannot reliably find books from major publishers which are mildly outside of the accepted sanitary guidelines of the publishing houses.
Novels should not be bland, safe like 1950s television.
There are a few exceptions, though reading two novels a month from bestselling author lists and finding only one or two a year as good reading is a letdown. Too many rehashed plots, repeat dialogue, contrived microscopic level personality conflicts,…
i have been reading older and older books and find more worthy ones. Better than having a mobile phone being the third most mentioned character in a novel.