Our favorite dummkopf Jessica Valenti has a new column up about how she’s holding off for the moment on “suggesting you put away all books written by men or only listen to female musicians”, but she will confess that she creeps on men on the subway to judge them for their Twitter feeds.
I was riding the subway recently when I noticed my seatmate scrolling through a Twitter feed that looked remarkably like mine. I was tickled to be sitting next to a like-minded person, but as I looked on I noticed there was one thing that seemed to be missing from his newsfeed: women. He was following fantastic and smart men, but still – as far as I could tell, all men.
You noticed? How did that happen? Were you fem-spreading into his space? Fem-breathing his air? Did you brush any part of your body up against him while you were creeping on his feed? Did you boob-brush him?
Ewwww. That’s sexual assault, you know. Keep your tits, your hands, your eyes and your body to yourself, you pervert! And stop being such a nosy bitch. #BanNosy! Aside from her blatant disregard for another person’s privacy, what is Jess moaning about today?
…when your worldview is solely shaped by men, you are missing out. And like it or not, your taste in music, books, television or art says something about you: it sends a message about what you think is worth your time, what you think is interesting and who you think is smart. So if the only culture you pay attention to is created by men, or created by white people, you are making an explicit statement about who and what is important.
Oh really? That’s an interesting claim. And just what are we missing out on? Let’s look at the top ten bestselling books by women, both fiction and non-fiction (excluding children’s books) for 2014 from Amazon.com:
- Jesus Calling: Enjoying Peace in His Presence – Sarah Young
- Unbroken – Laura Hillenbrand
- Divergent – Veronica Roth
- To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
- Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
- The Goldfinch – Donna Tartt
- Wonder – R.J. Palacio
- Make it Ahead: The Barefoot Contessa – Ina Garten
- If I Stay – Gayle Forman
- Insurgent – Veronica Roth
I’ve read four of those books (Unbroken, Divergent, Gone Girl and Insurgent) and the only other two I might be interested in are Mockingbird (incredible that I have never read it) and Goldfinch. I quite liked Tartt’s first novel The Secret History. I missed out on a cookbook, a religious guide, some psycho-babble and a teen-fiction book about a girl who loses her memory.
What did the men write during this time?
- Strengths Finder 2.0 – Tom Rath
- The Fault in Our Stars – John Green
- Killing Patton – Martin Dugard
- What If: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions – Randall Munroe
- The Heroes of Olympus – Rick Riordan
- The Book Thief – Martin Zuzak
- Humans of New York – Brandon Stanton
- Game of Thrones – George R. R. Martin
- Capital – Thomas Piketty
- How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie
I’ve read Book Thief, Game of Thrones and How to Win Friends. I might be interested in Patton, What If, and Capital. Six out of ten bestselling books written by men are non-fiction (three for women), so right off the bat, we can assume that if you read only women, you’ll be reading mostly make-believe. I guess Valenti would like to see a world in which people spend most of their time in imaginary places with imaginary people rather than immersing themselves in facts, history, theory and research?
Color me shocked.
Let’s take a look at the best-selling books of all time (excluding the Bible) written by men and women and see what our world views would look like if we read only women:
Top ten bestselling books of all time by women:
- And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
- Steps to Christ – Ellen G. White
- The Hite Report – Shere Hite
- The Tale of Peter Rabbit – Beatrix Potter
- Harry Potter – J.K.Rowling
- You Can Heal Your Life – Louise L. Hay
- Diary of a Young Girl – Anne Frank
- To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
- Valley of the Dolls – Jaqueline Susan
- Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Top ten bestselling books of all time by men:
- A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
- The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
- Dream of the Red Chamber – Tsao Hsueh-Chin
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
- She: A History of Adventure – H. Rider Haggard
- The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint Exupery
- The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown
- The Catcher in the Rye – J.D Salinger
- The Alchemist – Paolo Coelho
- The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care – Benjamin Spock
If our world-view were shaped solely by reading women, we would be reading deeply personal autobiographies (Frank) and fictional accounts of a personal stories (Mockingbird) , soap operas, fiction aimed at children, illustrations the victim narrative (Heal Your Life), pornography (the Hite book, and yes, I’ve read it), a murder mystery and a spiritual guide.
If our world-view were shaped by reading men (and it is), we will be reading sweeping sagas and epics that involve entire civilizations over time (Rings, Lion, Red Chamber, Code), parables meant to critique philosophy (Prince, Alchemist), social commentary (Rye) and how to care for children. The difference between a saga and a soap opera is that the undercurrent of an epic is the survival of an entire civilization and way of life, while a soap opera generally only concerns a handful of families in competition with one another.
This actually fits in really well with feminist philosopher Carol Gilligan, who wrote a book called In A Different Voice, and the tl;dr is that women make morality and justice very personal (how will this affect the people I care about?) and men make morality and justice universal (would I want this to apply to everyone, everywhere?). At first feminists loved Gilligan because she seemed to be saying that personal morality was better – more nuanced and more likely to achieve true justice, but they quickly realized that if this is true, women cannot be trusted to make moral decisions that are intended to apply universally. The feminist hordes quickly turned on Gilligan and shredded her.
I keep a list of the books I have read and I counted back to November 2013 – I have read 80 books since that time. 62 were by men and 18 were by women. Just under a quarter of all the books I have read are by women, so I guess in Valenti’s view, I’m sexist against women? Or I’m interested in universal subjects, not deeply personal ones, and I prefer a great deal of non-fiction? I am particularly interested in military history, and there is not a lot of that written by women.
Here’s the list as an imgur file, if you’re interested.
Most people, I think, choose books based on the subject matter, and they choose subjects they are interested in. I would say there are definite prejudices that come in to play, but that is because those prejudices are reasonable and rational. It is perfectly reasonable to think that when choosing between two books about warring factions in the Scottish Highlands, the one written by a woman will be a romance novel and the one written by a man will be narrative non-fiction. Not many men want to read about rippling chests and tight loins in a kilt and rape fantasies on the heather, while plenty of women do. Not many women want to read about how to maintain bowis and dorlochis in inclement weather when a battle looms and plenty of men do. At the end of the day, I doubt anyone gives a rat’s ass if the romance novel was written by John Wordsmith and the battle bio by Jane Inkwell – they care about the subject matter, not what’s under the kilt of the person who wrote it.
Valenti demonstrates her sexism perfectly with this particular column. Read books by women because a woman wrote them, not because the subject matter interests you. Here’s a hint, Jess: write shit that doesn’t put most men (and a whole lot of women) into a fucking coma, and they might want to read you.
And stop creeping on men on the subway.
It’s gross.
Lots of love,
JB
[Ed.note: this post originally appeared at www.judgybitch.com as is reprinted with permission here.]
