# Is your Kindle sexist too?: Do you tend to read authors of the your same gender? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 18, 2011, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177 "2011-03-18T18:00:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/21 "2011-03-18T23:12:30Z")
I’m male, and I have no problem with female authors. Just looking around, I own books by Andre Norton, CJ Cherryh, Tanith Lee, Mercedes Lackey, Tanya Huff, PN Elrod, Jane Lindskold, Jean Lorrah, Holly Lisle, Patricia Wrede, Jo Clayton, Janet Kagan, Marion Zimmer Bradley (including most of her _Sword and Sorceress_ short story collections with all-female authors), Emma Bull, Julian May, Doris Egan, Doris Piserchia, Katherine Kurtz, Louise Cooper, Leigh Brackett, Pamela Dean, Melissa Scott, Sheri S Tepper, Diane Duane, and P.C. Hodgell. I’m sure I could find more, and I’m not sure of the gender of others. Now, there are certain character types, styles, subjects and so on that tend to be favored by women authors that I find boring or irritating; but that just means avoiding those specific authors/books or skimming over those parts. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/22 "2011-03-18T23:23:48Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I’m male, and I have no problem with female authors. Just looking around, I own books by Andre Norton, CJ Cherryh, Tanith Lee, Mercedes Lackey, Tanya Huff, PN Elrod, Jane Lindskold, Jean Lorrah, Holly Lisle, Patricia Wrede, Jo Clayton, Janet Kagan, \*\*Marion Zimmer Bradley (including most of her _Sword and Sorceress_ short story collections with all-female authors), \*\*Emma Bull, Julian May, Doris Egan, Doris Piserchia, Katherine Kurtz, Louise Cooper, Leigh Brackett, Pamela Dean, Melissa Scott, Sheri S Tepper, Diane Duane, and P.C. Hodgell. I’m sure I could find more, and I’m not sure of the gender of others. > > Now, there are certain character types, styles, subjects and so on that tend to be favored by women authors that I find boring or irritating; but that just means avoiding those specific authors/books or skimming over those parts. _Sword & Sorceress_ did not have all-female authors. It had female _protagonists_. (And even then then it wasn’t _all_ female; Jennifer Roberson’s Del & Tiger stories started there, and those have a male narrator, himself the sidekick to a female hero.) ---
**Author:** ![Sefton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Sefton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sefton)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/23 "2011-03-18T23:30:42Z")
Male here, and I have plenty of female authors on my Kindle. June Casagrande, Barbara Tuchman, and Nellie Bly, just to name a few. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/24 "2011-03-19T00:07:38Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I’m not convinced that’s true, but let’s say it is. Are you entirely uninterested in reading about women’s inner lives? No, I am not. However, as I said, the unrealistic portrayal of men in many of the novels I have read written by woman becomes too jarring for me to enjoy them. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/25 "2011-03-19T00:22:26Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > _Sword & Sorceress_ did not have all-female authors. It had female _protagonists_. Bah, sorry. ---
**Author:** ![BlackKnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/26 "2011-03-19T01:45:33Z")
I don’t have many books on my Kindle, but my bookshelves are “sexist”. As others have said, it has more to do with the types of books I like to read. I very rarely read fiction, and when I do it tends to be the “classics” such as Shakespeare or Twain. The non-fiction I read tends to be pop-science or computer / math related. While there are certainly good books by female authors in these categories (my Kindle contains “Complexity: A Guided Tour” by Melanie Mitchell), the authors of these types of books are predominately men. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/27 "2011-03-19T01:50:27Z")
> [@Lasciel](#): > > [Women are still a closed book to men | UK news | The Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/may/29/gender.books) > > The study is limited to fiction, and non-genre fiction, and to a small population, but it’s pretty interesting results. > > A quick google-fu couldn’t find a larger study immediately. > I break the trend of women reading equally between men and women authors. > > I read mostly men, because very few women write in my preferred genres (scifi and fantasy), and the ones who do often are writing romance crossovers, which I am in no way interested in reading. > > Interesting exception - most of the nonfiction I’ve read lately has been by women. I’m kinda the same, except that most of the non-fiction I’ve recently read has been written by men. This is partly because i’ve started listening to a lot of audiobooks while walking the dog; for that, non-fiction works much better, and works by men also work somewhat better, because they’re less likely to have a narrator who sounds like Barbie on helium. There’s a reason that lots of female authors used to go by either initials (HM Hoover) or fake names (George Elliot). Hell, even JK Rowling didn’t use her first name because she didn’t want to deter male readers. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/28 "2011-03-19T03:05:08Z")
I don’t read fiction very often these days, but back when I did, I read plenty of female authors. (I’m male, BTW). I’d read more male writers, sure, but I’d say 20 - 25% of the authors were female. I got sick of fiction after about a million novels and now find that, apart from a couple of favourite authors (Terry Pratchett, for instance), I just can’t read it any more. The last female fiction author I read was JK Rowling. I read mostly history and and science nowadays, along with some biographies and a little true crime stuff. All far weirder and far more unpredictable than fiction. Many of the authors are female - looking through my eBook collection, I see: **Rebecca Skloot** - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks **Deborah Blum** - The Poisoner’s Handbook **Amy Stewart** - Wicked Plants **Emily Dickinson** Complete Poems Autobiog/memoir) **Loretta Lynn** - Coal Miner’s Daughter **Pat Benatar** - Between a Heart and a Rock Place (I’m not really a fan, but I read pretty much any music-related book I find, and it looks interesting) **Patti Smith** - Just Kids (I _am_ a big fan of Ms Smith, and I read this in dead-tree format, but I’m happy to _own_ it as an eBook.) So that’s about 20% of my eBooks, which makes my Kindle reasonably non-sexist. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/29 "2011-03-19T03:13:24Z")
Damn, I managed to completely overlook **Mary Roach** , I also have: Stiff - The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers Packing for Mars - The Curious Science of Life in the Void Bonk - The Curious Coupling Of Science And Sex ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/30 "2011-03-19T04:08:39Z")
No Kindle, but of the 60 or so books I read last year, only five were by women. Except for Harriette Arnow, Pat Barker, Penelope Lively, and Margaret Laurence, my favorite writers are men. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/31 "2011-03-19T05:05:43Z")
I read a lot of science non-fiction which tends to be written by men unfortunately. But I generallly have no idea who wrote the books I read, having picked them by browsing titles in the Kindle Bookstore. 15.04% of the authors on my Kindle are women. 21.28% of the books on my Kindle were written by women. The gap there is because when I do read genre fiction it seems the series I’ve read are more likely to have a female author. ---
**Author:** ![multimediac17](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/839c29/32.png) [@multimediac17](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/multimediac17)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/32 "2011-03-19T07:29:43Z")
This is why JK Rowling chose to be “JK”, isn’t it? Because she didn’t think young boys would want to read a book by a female author. ---
**Author:** ![Student\_Driver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3da27b/32.png) [@Student\_Driver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Student_Driver)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/33 "2011-03-19T07:52:14Z")
Looking at my bookshelves, there’s a definite bias toward male authors, and I’m a male. For poetry, erotica, 'zines, fantasy, and short stories, the authors are mostly female. Essays and (auto)biography are about 50/50. For novels and classic literature, about 2/3 male. For comics, non-bio non-fiction, and reference, almost exclusively male. Classic lit, non-fiction, and reference make up the bulk of my library, so my library is mostly male as well. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/34 "2011-03-19T08:22:48Z")
I pay no attention to the gender of authors. I read whatever interests me, and that means a healthy range of both. It may even be close to a 50% split, though I suspect probably more like 60/40. I don’t have an e-Reader, so can’t check statistics. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/35 "2011-03-19T11:37:07Z")
Female authors often have a different outlook to the world then the one that I hold, so that what they often find interesting or relevant to the story doesn’t hold the same appeal to me. If we’re in a desperate struggle against the nazis/Mongol hordes/KGB/earthquake etc. then I’m not really concerned that Brad is holding back romantic feelings for Sue, or hearing what Sue is wearing in great detail, or the full and complete details of herbal recipes. Also I find that authors who try to depict the feelings and outlook of the main character of the opposite sex are unconvincing usually. This applies not just to women authors depicting men, but men trying to portray women. Even my favourite male authors can and do fall down on this. But there are exceptions to the rule, the most notable one being Colleen McCullough, who in her "Masters of Rome "series showed true genius in her character depiction, both male and female. That said, I’ve tried and failed to many times to enjoy the work of women authors , actually reading quite a few of their books (Rosemarie Rowe,Ellis Peters, Lindsey Davis amongst others), so now I just don’t bother to try anymore. Can I just say that I had to rephrase the previous paragraph several times because each of my previous attempts sounded like sexual innuendo. (Enjoying women authors, trying to get into women authors etc.) ---
**Author:** ![Carmady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f04885/32.png) [@Carmady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carmady)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/36 "2011-03-19T11:47:42Z")
In roughly descending order, and based largely on the books under my bed, my favorite authors are: Fyodor Dostoevsky Italo Calvino G.K. Chesterton Raymond Chandler Isaac Asimov Fritz Leiber Joseph Heller Agatha Christie Dashiell Hammett Saki Edward Gorey Douglas Adams J.D. Salinger Albert Camus Kurt Vonnegut Arthur Conan Doyle Franz Kafka Roger Zelazny Neil Gaiman C.S. Lewis 20 authors, and only one woman. I’m a little surprised, but I don’t think I am biased against female authors. There are many alternative explanations, such as: 1. I am biased against new books. Due to sexism, women are less represented in the mostly older books I read. 2. Women tend to be less represented in some genres I enjoy (Agatha Christie is an exception, and is my second favorite mystery author). 3. Bias against women is self perpetuating, partly through exactly the kind of list I just posted. Many of those authors I learned about from recommendations, and in turn recommended to others. If the “original source” for these recommendations was biased, then that bias will be unintentionally passed along with lists like this. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/37 "2011-03-19T15:17:00Z")
I am male. Among novels I’ve read in the last year or so it looks like 30 to 40% were written by females. Among non-fiction books, it’s over 90% male. That may be a function of the kinds of non-fiction books I like: popular to semi-technical works about physics, astronomy, economics, and linguistics. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/38 "2011-03-19T16:19:14Z")
I tend towards reading male authors instead of female authors. However, it’s more about the style of writing that female authors tend to write in that puts me off. There are certainly lots of female authors that I’ve really loved reading. For instance, I thought _Water For Elephants_ was great, and I’ve really enjoyed reading Julia Glass’ work (although I thought _I See You Everywhere_ was not nearly as strong as her first two). The problem for me with many female writers is that I think they do such a poor job describing conflict between their characters in a very realistic way. I used to love reading Patricia Cornwell’s books, but after the fourth or fifth, she began attempting to introduce more conflict between the recurring characters she developed, and she was really just very hamfisted with it. On the other hand, Nevada Barr writes in the same genre, and I’ve continued to enjoy each of her books very much. Somewhat similarly, I tend to steer clear of female British mystery writers, because they appear to like to bring dozens upon dozens of characters into their books. I see that as really poor writing or poor editing; it’s just not necessary from a narrative standpoint and makes the books lose any momentum. For my most recent example of this, I dare you to read _Careless in Red_, by Elizabeth George. If you do, just for fun, keep track of the number of different characters that are introduced throughout the book. On both of these points, I would point to J.K Rowling’s work for examples. Certainly lots of needless characters and a significantly poor job done by her editors, but the most glaring problem is the simplistic, unrealistic and two-dimensional nature of her handling of conflict between her characters. I’m certainly not saying that men are reliably better writers than women. I’ve read plenty of bad fiction written by men. But they are typically bad in very different ways compared to women. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2011, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/39 "2011-03-19T20:52:16Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Bah, sorry. When I achieve perfection, I will mock you for your lack of it. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2011, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177/40 "2011-03-20T20:48:03Z")
I don’t tend to keep track of who is the author of the books I read any more than I pay attention to who sings the songs I listen to, but I do notice that all the webcomics I read are written by men, even the ones I though had to have been written by women. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-kindle-sexist-too-do-you-tend-to-read-authors-of-the-your-same-gender/575177.md?page=3)