I’d say it’s more than possible. That’s one of the reasons I got into SF and fantasy so early. With the exception of stuff set in history, girls didn’t seem to get to do much of anything interesting in books set in the real world. As one of the other posters suggested, it’s fun to place yourself in the shoes of the characters.
I noticed a few years ago that all my books were by men. And now I have a grand total of one (1) book by a woman, and that was at the urging of female friend. And I still won’t buy books by women. Even if the the back looks interesting, if it’s written by a woman, I won’t buy it.
Personally, I never cared in the slightest about the gender of the author. The gender of the character only mattered if it was a stereotypical female doing stereotypical female things. Then and now, I find them both boring and irritating.
Books by Mercedes Lackey, C.J. Cherryh, Jean Lorrah, Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Elizabeth Moon, Diane Duane, Janet Kagan, Andre Norton, Jane Lindskold, Lois McMaster Bujold, James Tiptree Jr, Leigh Brackett, and Tanya Huff are right next to me on my bookshelf. More are by authors whose gender I’m uncertain of. If you are one of those who lump fantasy and sci fi together, there’s even more.
Yes, there are more males than females, but nowhere near 99%.
Going through my mental inventory of what’s on my bookshelf these days, it’s pretty heavily male. There’s the Harry Potter series and I think that’s it for what I’ve got, not counting any female authors in my collection of science fiction magazines and anthologies. I think in my case it’s because I mainly read science fiction (and some fantasy) for pleasure. There still aren’t all that many women in the field and generally those that are I don’t really care for. I’ve read at least one book by them and generally decided that they aren’t my style. And there a couple where I’m just too daunted by how many novels in the same series they’ve churned out (Anne McCaffrey, I’m looking at you) to really try to jump in.
The generalization sure was true for me. A lifelong comics fan, I don’t think I’ve ever bought an issue of Wonder Woman (but did buy lots of Spider-Girl and She-Hulk; not sure why, maybe I just have some mysterious antipathy towards Wonder Woman in particular). And I sure never read Nancy Drew or Pippi Longstocking back in the day.
Looking at my bookshelf, the only novels with female protagonmists I see are Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. But, I have several books each by Joan Didion and Lynne Truss, and some one-offs by Diana Hacker, June Casagrande, Mary Shelley, Barbara Ehrenreich, Amy Yamada, Helene Stapinski and Phoebe Gloeckner. This is from over the course of the past five or six years, and most of these are nonfiction, so I’m no model of balanced readership.
After looking at this thread I realize that I do have neven bought a book by a woman. Of course when I go to Barnes & Noble’s or Borders I usually go straight to the SF/Fantasy section, then straight to the names Pratchett, Simmons, and Gaiman.
Any other guys here read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler?
Since college, I only remember reading one book with a female protagonist: The Handmaid’s Tale.
Oh, and considering what I read when I was young… the only book with a female protagonist that comes to mind is The Golden Compass.
My experience as a teacher and reading tutor largely showed the generalization to be true that boys are reluctant to read books about girls.
Come to think of it, I wasn’t too keen on the idea myself as a kid and I read constantly and almost indiscriminately then. I didn’t have a problem with female authors but “girl” protagonists didn’t interest me unless I thought there was something especially compelling about some other aspect of the story (a girl with psychic powers might interest me, but a girl and her cat, or her detective club or her quest for some boy did not). It wasn’t an automatic thing for me, but just in general I preferred male protagonists that I could more easily identify with and which were more likely to appear in books where I was more interested in the subject matter.
I can remember in about 4th or 5th grade reading Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret because it was supposed to have dirty parts in it. It didn’t.
It seems to me that the premise here is at least something of an overstatement of a fairly obvious generalization. When reading for enjoyment, people generally like to read about characters that they can identify with. The more the character resembles the reader, the easier that is. It’s natural for young and/or inexperienced readers to tend to favor protagonists that are the most like them (at least superficially). Maturity and reading experience usually make it easier to identify with a broader variety of characters. Societal pressures tend to reinforce the division, however, and many casual readers may never bother to look outside of their habitual reading choices.
We can provide enormous stacks of counterexamples, so any attempt to frame the discussion in absolutes is doomed. We can only note patterns and tendencies. There doesn’t seem to be any question that there is a pattern similar to that cited in the OP. The real question is what, if anything, should be done to address it? Should we try to force more books with opposite-gender protagonists on young readers? Would doing so make them more flexible readers, or would the initial difficulty in identifying with the characters discourage them from reading instead? As usual, I suspect that the solution to almost any concern with reading is best addressed by more reading. The identification “muscles” should be stretched slowly and carefully, with more varied characters being introduced as the readers’ maturity increases.
Oh, and in keeping with the informal survey of the thread:
I’m male, and a Fantasy/SF reader of long standing. My bookshelves are fairly evenly loaded with authors of both sexes, with female authors possibly having the edge. Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey, and Pat Elrod are particularly well-represented. My single favorite protagonist, whom I first encountered at age 8 and still love <mumble> decades later, is Jame Talissen–an almost disturbingly strong female character from P(atricia). C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath novels.
Speaking of female protagonists and not authors, I do note that my favorite fictional women tend to be strong willed, aggressive and often violent; typically stereotyped as male traits. David Weber’s heroines, for example, most of whom could dismember me without effort. Cordelia Vorkosigan from Bujold also comes to mind, as do Dirisha Zuri, Geneva, and Relanj Zia from Steve Perry.
Among my favorite books as a boy and teen were Madeleine L’Engle’s A WRINKLE IN TIME and A RING OF ENDLESS LIGHT, both of which have female protagonists.
As a girl, I used to avoid books by female authors, or with female protagonists, except for what I called “horse” books. I hated the way most girls were portrayed, and I associated this with female authors. I read Andre Norton voraciously, but she had 1) changed her name from a female name 2) was writing boys’ adventure stories and 3) I didn’t know she was a woman. While I was young long before there was a “Sweet Valley High” series, but there were any number of books available to me that were the equivalent. Also, if left to my own devices, I would read hard SF in preference to anything else, and back in those days, it was commonly believed that “girls don’t read SF”. I worried my parents terribly.
These days, I’m pleased to find that there’s a great many interesting books out there by female authors and/or with female leads. Part of this is my personal growth, but the larger portion is because more women are writing books that aren’t in the female ghetto (romance, girls’ adventures, etc.). Male authors are also able to write females convincingly.
I’d note that several of my favorite comic authors are female: Kati Kovacs, Sara Olausson and Rumiko Takahashi. They have inspired my style. Aside from that, I had a good childhood with authors such as Lindgren and Tove Jansson and I currently read up on Jane Austen and Margaret Atwood, among others.
So, I don’t think I was ever in a period of my life that I was anti-female authors. On the contrary, it would seem impossible for me to have a book collection and not gather up on female authors as you go.
Again, it’s true that I will. as has been pointed out, be more likely to identify with both male authors and male characters, but I’m looking at the art first, the gender second. Currently looking forward to reading “Prep” by Curtis Sittenfeld.
I’d be surprised if this held true for any particularly avid readers … those of us who will devour the ingredients listings on cornflakes packets if there’s nothing else left to read. As a male SF reader … well, the last SF book I read was Octavia Butler’s short story collection Bloodchild. (Whereas now I’m on a collection of Robert E. Howard’s “Conan” stories. I’m nothing if not inconsistent.)
In my early adolescence, I remember reading Ursula Le Guin just as avidly as I did, say, Larry Niven … but, then, I’m one of those avid readers, and therefore probably atypical. (I wonder if we could get any genuine statistics out of, say, the fifty-book-challenge things on LJ? Might be interesting.)
The previous reference to Wonder Woman made me recall the first time that I read one of her comics. That was around 35-40 years ago. IIRC, I was all for a female protagonist, but there was something a bit too weird about her, or else the writing was all over the place. I did read Harriet the Spy in 6th grade, and some others that were quite enjoyable. I don’t know if there was some role shifting that made them them palatable or what, but there you have it!
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The only books I can think of right now by female authors featuring female leads that I have read are the V.I. Wachowski novels by Sara Paretsky. While I have enjoyed them for the most part, if I read too many in a row I get a little fed up with Ms. Wachowski and Ms Paretsky. I understand that Wachowski isn’t supposed to be a wonderfully lovable character (and is that ever the case), every male character in every novel I’ve read is after Wachowski to 1) fuck her 2) screw her over 3) screw over the city (or whatever) to make money 4) change her in some way 40 or in some fashion is never letting her be “herself”. Every male character is selfish, self-righteous, ambitious, and /or aggressive. As a sensitive, caring male of the 21st century that grates after awhile.
I think I support women’s rights (certainly in a broad sense - yuk yuk) but I read these novels and the feeling I get from them makes me anything but supportive.
I don’t by choice not read books by or about females, and I’m not sure I pay much attention. Of course, since I’m a guy, I think I find it easier to indentify with male protagonists. As a kid I think I looked for books with some sense of adventure. I read a lot of the “Boxcar Children Mysteries”, which are by a woman I’m almost sure. but then I also read Hardy Boys’ book and not Nancy Drew.
So, in summation I’ll say, “Yeah sure”.
From what I’ve seen, most boys go through a “girl-o-phobic” phase sometime in the single digit ages, and this often happens around the same time they start reading in ernest. It would be hard to believe that this attitude, temporary though it is, would not inform their reading choices.
For prepubescent boys, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that publishers already know that boys won’t read books with female protagonists, so the vast majority of books with female protagonists were designed to appeal only to girls. It sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Girls will read boks with a boy protagonist because most books aimed at boys have a main character who is doing something exciting, which is at least exciting.
Hmm.
Well, for the sake of … err … something … obsessive behaviour, probably … Anyway, I just went through my own contributions to dopersread50, from 2004 to the present.
Male authors: 169
Female authors: 36
Male protagonists: 135
Female protagonists: 31
“Not applicable” (balanced genders, or non-fiction, or otherwise not easily classifiable): 39
Please don’t ask me which male authors wrote female protagonists, or vice versa. If I have to go through all that lot again I shall cry.
So … distinctly more biased towards my own gender than I’d expected, actually. But you certainly can’t say that I never read books by women, or with women protagonists.