Those wussies Jo March, Laura Ingalls, Caddie Woodlawn, and Sara Crewe.
With most entertainment, there’s the perception that the people considered “default” won’t read or watch stories about people considered outside the norm - the opposite is not true. And men are still considered default & so they’re not supposed to identify with female characters and they’re not asked to do so (women, however, are supposed to identify with male characters).
But the gist of the theory is that it doesn’t go both ways. Boys tend to read books with male protagonists, while girls will read books with either male or female protagonists, or so the belief goes. The idea that young readers need to identify with the main character would work in the case of the boys, but it doesn’t hold up for the girls.
I think there is a good bit of truth in it. I think Steve Wright already touched upon this, but the population of people on the SDMB are probably not the best sample group to study this. In my personal experience, it’s much, much more of an issue in thinking about boys who are reluctant readers to begin with. I’m sure we have some SDMBers who were reluctant readers as children (who will now come along to post this in the thread 
), but in terms of overall percentage, we (as a group) are WAY off the curve in this area.
This is an idea that comes up a lot when talking about children’s lit. There’s a lot of back and forth about whether it is better to try to cater to it, or if that perpetuates the idea that “girl books” just aren’t as good. I try hard to pitch books with girl characters to boy readers whenever I can, but within a field of recommendations that includes those with male main characters as well (and the “safeties” – books with a fairly balanced partnership between girl and boy characters, like *From the Mixed-Up Files … *and So You Want to Be a Wizard).
I used to think this was a purely social construct, but I’m beginning to lean toward the idea there could be something organic going on as well. Either way, an important aspect of reading and learning is to push your own personal boundaries, so I’m going to keep encouraging boys to consider books that feature girls.
My nephew is now old enough that he recommends and lends books to me. He’s a big fan of Lois McMaster Bujold (although I turned him on to her), Mercedes Lackey, Elizabeth Moon, Anne Bishop amd other women. He’s also a big fan of David Weber’s Honor Harrington and other female protagonists written by men. Of course, I was formative in developing his reading tastes, and I like both male and female authors, so that may have something to do with it.
StG
People hate it when I tell them that anecdotal data is worse than no data at all, but it’s true. The problem is that when people hear anecdotal data they think they’re learned something when in reality they start extrapolating off of one data point, and that’s always fatal.
Was there a lack of strong female writers and protagonists in fiction until recently? Any survey of the field would give that a strong yes. Naming a few counterexamples does not disprove anything.
Do most male sf readers read mostly male sf authors? Any survey of the field would give that a strong yes. Giving yourself as a counterexample does not disprove anything.
Are avid readers representative of any field? Certainly not. Presenting them as counterexamples does not disprove anything.
Balance - what an appropriate name! - says it well. National trends over time cannot be examined by the statements of a self-selected few. The Internet, of course, is the home for the self-selected few to comment on subjects, so I’m not suggesting that what anyone says here is out of line. Please just remember that industry professionals looking at national aggregate data may have a very different view of their field than you do.
Sexual segmentation is a given in the publishing industry. Always has been. I’ve seen absolutely nothing in recent years to suggest that it has changed in any way. Your individual experiences notwithstanding.
The reasons for this, as well as the history of book marketing, are interesting to discuss, for sure. But you do have to start with that fact as a base.
Bravo, Exapno Mapcase!!! This kind of wishful thinking anecdotal evidence drives me nuts, especially when it flies in the face of the evidence. Glad to see that some of the folks here don’t follow the trend, but that doesn’t mean that the trend isn’t there.
As a kid, I would have been much less likely to read a book with a girly cover, than a book with a girl hero, or a book written by a woman. As Exapno Mapcase points out, books have been conceived for a long time as “girl books” or “boy books,” and marketed accordingly, buttressed by societal pressure. Though there has always been a large and notable intermediate category that’s not so easily gender-typable. Interestingly, the Newbery Award winners seem to be heavily drawn from this category, and I’ll note that 2/3 of the Newbery winners over the years have been women. As a kid, I read a fair number of those books, irrespective of the author’s or main character’s gender. Where you really saw the gender differentiation was in series books – Nancy Drew v. Hardy Boys, etc.
So, according to Marjorie Allen, A Wrinkle in Time wasn’t really my favorite book as a young lad? And I didn’t actually love The Girl with Silver Eyes and reread it over ten times?
Huh. Who knew?
I personally think it’s hogwash. I read books with female lead characters all the time. Two major series that come to mind are the Stephanie Plum and the Kinsey Milhone novels. I’ve stopped reading the Kay Scarpetta novels because the author has gone so far out in the Twilight Zone with them that they are no longer interesting. She should have quit four novels ago.
I went to a bra burning feminazi all girls private high school and while I got a lot of experience with female-centric books, I feel cheated that I got out of high school without reading a single Steinbeck.
I have sense read several steinbecks and consider East of Eden one of my all time favorite books (oprah oprah blabh ablahlbjasldkfjasldkfj) anyways, I think it is CRITICAL for each gender to read books with protagonists of the opposite gender especially in a situation like mine when you grow up in single gender education. I feel like I learned a lot about the male mind and male comradery through Steinbeck novels. I mean I was 18 and never been in a class with a boy in my life.
Although the women in his books are always whores…oh well. i’m willing to over look that.
As a librarian, I can say that it’s pretty much taken as a given that boys will want books with boys in them, while girls aren’t as picky. In general, boys will not read as much, they are pickier about what they will read, and they often want non-fiction (tanks, space, robots, sports) instead of stories. In library schools it’s routine to familiarize students with books for reluctant readers, and most of those reluctant readers are going to be boys, so you learn about authors like Matt Christopher and so on for kids who would rather be out shooting hoops than reading.
Though I’m at home with my kids most of the time, I do still work in the children’s room at the library sometimes, and my experience with lots of kids is that it’s true.
Obviously there are going to be plenty of boys who are voracious readers–and a lot of them are going to be here on the Dope–and boys who are big on reading will be less likely to shun books with girls in them. But on the whole–yep, boys will only read books about boys, and girls will read either. A lot of boys out there see reading at all as somewhat un-guy-like, so if they have to read, it better be something with boys in it.
Umm…
If you review the three posts prior to yours, you’ll see that she says nothing of the sort.
There is no natural tendency among boys to shun books with female protagonists. You can simply look at classic fairy tales. At least half of the stories in the classic collections (Grimm’s and Andrew Lang’s are the ones I’ve read) have a woman or girl in the driver’s seat. This carried over into the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, when children’s literature was just beginning. Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz come to mind. Baum was one of the most successful authors in American history, and the OZ books were his major works, so some boys must have been reading them. Those books wouldn’t work unless the reader associates with the main characters, so clearly there were boys who were capable of associating with girls.
The problem is that as time went on, our society became obsessed with separating everything into boys’ stuff and girls’ stuff, especially in the entertainment section. Science fiction and fantasy, the genres that appeal most to young folks, were lumped into “boys’ stuff”. I can’t name a single science fiction authors who wrote young adult books with female characters in the thirties, forties, or fifties. In the sixties and seventies a very small number started to creep in, but there weren’t serious numbers of books about female characters until the eighties.
Nowadays there are plenty of science fiction and fantasy novels about girls, and they’re pitched at all age levels. Nevertheless, the stereotype persists. I think that when publishing companies decide which books will the the “main events”, which ones will get big advances and aggressive marketing campaigns, they still lean towards books with male protagonists.
This thread made me think of an earlier thread about someone who had problems with a three year old boy who wanted to dress up like Dora the Explorer for halloween. There was a good of back and forth over whether this was appropriate, though I doubt that there would be much problem witha three year old girl dressing as Bob the Builder.
These gender distinctions culturally enforced pretty early.
During that time period, though, Edward Stratemeyer already knew that both girls and boys were reading The Rover Boys (1899) and The Motor Boys (1906), and that he lost boys but did well with girls with The Bobbsey Twins (1904). By the time The Outdoor Girls came around (1914-ish), girls were the primary readers. As much as I have a fondness for the those saccharine Bobbsey children, I think everyone would agree that The Wizard of Oz is leaps and bounds beyond the Bobbseys et al in terms of quality, and I propose that is what pushes it beyond the reach of the gender gap (which I think is a good thing).
I’m not sure, and maybe someone else knows more, but I don’t think boys were reading 18th century popular series books like Elsie Dinsmore and The Little Colonel in any significant number. But that probably makes sense, because those books are definitely instructional (as was a lot of literature for children), holding up their protagonists as models of ideal young girls/young women, and were purchased for girls by adults.
I could be convinced that there is absolutely no natural tendency for boys to reject “girl” books, but I think the social roots go back much earlier.
The Tom Swift series was also written for boys, starting around the turn of the century.
I guess it’s fairly obvious that you can count me in with those that loved “A Wrinkle In Time.”
I’m a girl, a voracious reader, always have been.
I also remember pointing out to my 3rd grade teacher that “he” wasn’t gender neutral. I was offended that the default pronoun was always “he.” I used “they” instead. She said it was incorrect and I told her it was more correct than referring to a girl as a he. I have seen articles now they use “they” rather than “he” and especially in my child-rearing/pregnancy books, they switch pretty evenly between he and she. We were conditioned to HAVE to identify with male protagonists.
When I found out I was pregnant, one of the few non-biblical (i.e. Noah’s Ark), non-gender specific themes I could come up with was Dr. Suess, so Thing 1 and Thing 2 exist on the wall of my daughters pink room. (Non-gender specific went out the window when I found out I was having a girl) Someone asked me what kind of doll she has. She has none. She has bunnies and monkeys and bears and bugs, it never even occurred to me to get her a doll.
I find it depressing that there still isn’t much more variety in things for girls than cooking/cleaning/babies/boys. I really hope it isn’t the case for kids books. At this point, she just chews them and has shown no preference for male or female authors, she does like pictures of kitties though (Future Doper).
As much as it pains me to admit this, probably one of the few female authors my husband has ever read was Anne Rice.
How much SF is actually written by men anyway? Aren’t those things churned out/ghost written/formula made? Are we basing this on the apparent sex of the author? Rather than the true sex?
Oh, Mary Higgens Clark is enough to turn me off women writers for life.
In addition to what delphica correctly said, the whole genre of popular mass fiction goes back well into the 19th century. What became known as dime novels were the progenitors. These were already heavily sexually segmented. Lots of cowboy books, adventure stories, and detective yarns for the men; lots of romance novels for the women. There were children’s series as well.
Baum - and Lewis Carroll, for that matter - wrote about female children, true. But they were men and the name on the cover is of utmost importance. And the worlds that they created were not worlds filled with lots of other females, but of mostly male fantasy characters, from the Mad Hatter to the Tin Man.
You can try pulling out all the exceptions and making an issue of them, but they will remain islands in the giant sea of examples.
The vast majority of it. Fantasy is much more a women’s field these days.
Unequivacally no, unless you’re talking about celebrity Star Trek books. Even the series of game/movie/tv tie-ins usually have the true authors’s name on them.
The first time I successfully gratified myself was to the sex scene between Katherine and Michael in Judy Blume’s Forever.
Is that the answer you had in mind, elfkin? 
Actually, my parents rarely if ever discussed sex with me. Though they loved me and were great parents, neither of them was sure how to broach that sensitive topic.
I’m certain they noticed the Blume classics Blubber and Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret as well as the Where Did I come From? and What’s Happening to Me? books tucked away in the nether regions of my childhood bookcase. They gave me at least a cursory glimpse into the mysteries of the female form and psyche.
FWIW.
It never occurred to me to get dolls either. (I have two daughters.) My MIL gave them some old dolls that were hanging around, and they get tons of use. I was kind of surprised, since I was never a doll kid, but they love 'em. Barbie is banned, though!
I actually think that toys and clothes have regressed over the past few years into more gender-stereotyped things than they used to be. Happily, there are lots of great books out there for every girl. Sure, there’s ‘girly’ trash, but there’s also boy trash–trash sells. You’ll also find a lot of booklists, and books, specifically aimed at ‘strong girl’ characterization. One thing to watch out for, however, is historical fiction with a girl protagonist who acts nothing like a real girl would have done and instead fits into a modern feminist image of what the author would have liked girls to have done. It’s not only historically inaccurate, I think it does a disservice to girls by giving them the illusion that feminism was pointless. You can’t appreciate what you’ve got until you realize what was done to get it for you, IMO.
Does that mean that Tom Clancy would turn you off men writers for life? Dreck is produced by both sexes. Go read some good stuff by women, there’s tons out there. Sorry, but that strikes me as a pretty sexist statement.
I had no interest in female-driven stories or female protagonists as a kid, and I don’t have much interest in them now, whether they be in books, movies or video games - and I also have no interest in the Japanophiliac cult of the warrior-woman, anime mercenaries in schoolgirl uniforms, and Tarantino-esque hot female assassins.
I’ve always been into historical war novels and things like that - a world in which life and death is most certainly a man’s game.