Recent UF grad. Viggo Mortensen appreciation life. Feminism. Dogs. Lots of feelings about television. Shenanigans will undoubtedly ensue.
I'm also on twitter.
Suddenly if you took the gaze of the white male—or even the white female, but certainly the male—out of the world, it was freedom! You could think anything, go anywhere, imagine anything … There was no longer the problem of looking through the master’s gaze. With that gaze, you’re always reacting, proving something. So not having to do that … I think one of the reasons I’m so thrilled with writing is because it is an act of reading for me at the same time, which is why my revisions are so sustained. Because I’m reading it. I’m there. Intimacy is extremely important to me and I want it to be extremely important to the readers, too.
(Source: interviewmagazine.com)
The problem that needs to be fixed is not kick all the girls out of YA, it’s teach boys that stories featuring female protagonists or written by female authors also apply to them. Boys fall in love. Boys want to be important. Boys have hopes and fears and dreams and ambitions. What boys also have is a sexist society in which they are belittled for “liking girl stuff.” Male is neutral, female is specific.
I heard someone mention that Sarah Rees Brennan’s THE DEMON’S LEXICON would be great for boys, but they’d never read it with that cover. Friends, then the problem is NOT with the book. It’s with the society that’s raising that boy. It’s with the community who inculcated that boy with the idea that he can’t read a book with an attractive guy on the cover.
Here’s how we solve the OMG SO MANY GIRLS IN YA problem: quit treating women like secondary appendages. Quit treating women’s art like it’s a niche, novelty creation only for girls. Quit teaching boys to fear the feminine, quit insisting that it’s a hardship for men to have to relate to anything that doesn’t specifically cater to them.
Because if I can watch Raiders of the Lost Ark and want to grow up to be an archaeologist, there’s no reason at all that a boy shouldn’t be able to read THE DEMON’S LEXICON with its cover on. My friends, sexism doesn’t just hurt women, and our young men’s abysmal rate of attraction to literacy is the proof of it.
That moment when you finish a book, look around, and realize that everyone is just carrying on with their lives as though you didn’t just experience emotional trauma at the hands of a paperback.
I’m almost done with “A Visit From the Goon Squad” now but I keep putting off the last few pages because then it’s going to be OVER and oh oh oh.
(Source: treesquirrrel)
You’d think the very thought of a romance writer would bring a smile to people’s lips. Ah, how nice. Love. Making love. Laughter. Kissing. But no, the world is upside down as far as I can see, and romances and their writers are ridiculed, hisses and generally spat upon. For what reason? One of my favorites is that women who read them might get mixed up about reality and imagine a man is going to rescue them from Life. According to this theory, women are so stupid that they can’t tell a story from reality. Is anyone worried that the MEN who read spy thrillers are going to go after their neighbors with an automatic weapon? No, I don’t remember anyone thinking that. Nor do I remember anyone worrying about murder mysteries or science fiction. It just seems to be dumb ol’ women who might think some gorgeous, thoughtful, giving hunk is going to rescue them. Honey, if any woman thought a gorgeous hunk was going to rescue her, romance novels wouldn’t be forty percent of the publishing industry.
Remembrance (Jude Deveraux)
Truth bombs exploding all over the place here. It makes me sad especially to hear women dog romance as stupid and vapid when they have never read one. I think romance novels are feminist — most of them show strong female characters taking control of their lives. Characters who won’t settle for less than a respectful partner who truly loves them. I don’t see what’s bad about that. Not all men are as buff as romance novel heroes, but to say that honest, honorable, respectful men who are capable of deciphering emotions don’t exist in the real world is very insulting… to men. And what’s wrong about fantasizing about a male hot body? Turn on a TV and count the idealized women.
(via missworded)
(Source: quotationsoflove)
Put bluntly, if you call yourself a reading man, but don’t read books by women, you are actually neither. Such a person implicitly dismisses whole swaths of literature, and then flees the challenge to see himself through other eyes.
I’m not saying that we’re the end-all or be-all of romance reviewers (that honor almost certainly belongs to SBTB), but it’s still important to be out and proud about our love for trashy books. I want all of Tumblr to know that we are all super smart, super funny, and all-around awesome women, and we read romance novels.
I think of the romance genre as a haven for women. It’s one place that I can reliably find strong, intelligent, and often funny female protagonists, and men who respect them. Ironically, even though romance is often stereotyped as being full of angry, domineering dudes and submissive kittens, this is where I go when I want to avoid that shit.
Literature is still a man’s world. It chaps my ass to no end that Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon and his interchangeable sexy microbiochemicryptologists are generally considered “real” literature, and Loretta Chase’s Carsington brothers are trash. Romance is written off as formulaic and repetitive, but nobody mentions that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is, even at its best, another cut-and-dried mystery.
So there’s sex. Another reason that romance is often dismissed is because it’s “porn for women.” As my friend Rachel says, “SO WHAT?” It’s not as though we read romance novels with a Hitachi magic wand in one hand and a bottle of lube in the other, but if someone out there wants to do that, big fucking (ha) deal.
I know that most of the books I read aren’t the sexy equivalent of War and Peace or Ulysses (thank fucking God for that, actually), but reading is my favorite hobby and it is how I enjoy myself. If I want to watch a movie, I don’t always pop in Citizen Kane. If I’m watching TV, it’s not usually NOVA. I enjoy romance novels because they are FUN. That is the point of a hobby.
This ended up being a bit of a rant, but I think it’s important to say. I may be here to mock shitty romance novels, but I’m also here because I want the good ones to be taken seriously. It’s no less than they deserve.
My name is Jayne, I read romance, and I am not ashamed.
I’ve never read a romance novel, but yesyesyes to all of this. I’m taking a science fiction class right now and our professor keeps making degrading remarks about romance novels and other “genre” fiction. His attitude about women authors and women-centered lit is very off-putting. We are reading several female authors, but the way he frames their work is weird: “This is an example of FEMINIST SF. You can tell because it has STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS!” It’s kind of difficult to articulate what exactly is wrong with his attitude, but I hope you guys understand what I’m getting at. SF has a particular problem with dealing with women, especially feminist, writers and stories, but it’s something we see in literature at large. Not only the actual text, but how it’s read.
(Also, if I hear one.more.word about how Lisbeth Salander is a feminist icon for the 21st century and how she’s so strong and interesting I will actually shoot someone. She is the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Girl, an impenetrable woman who is undone because she ~falls in love~ with the male hero. You don’t identify with her as you read, you objectify her body, her tattoos, etc. You identify with Blomkvist.)
that link i reblogged, about the neurological lack empathy white people have regarding non-white people - self not excepted, i assume - and this isn’t the most important part of that post (which you should read) but i think about this: … and then i think about people arguing in favor of…
Bravo! I am so pro-multiculturalism and expanding the canon it’s not even funny.
