# Why do men not like fiction books as much? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 22, 2012, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768 "2012-05-22T23:14:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2012, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/61 "2012-05-24T23:07:30Z")
> [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > I don’t segregate “boy” books and “girl” books necessarily into the gender of the protogonist though. It might tend in that direction, but I wouldn’t put To Kill a Mockingbird into a “girl” book category just because the narrator is a little girl. I could believe that the gender of the protagonist isn’t as big a deal to boys as many people assume. We had a recent thread where a number of male Dopers said they didn’t have a problem [identifying with female protagonists](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=649966), and a couple of years ago I had [a thread about video games](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=508543) where many male Dopers expressed willingness to, or even a preference for, playing as a female character. I would expect that the gender of the protagonist makes a difference, but the personal traits of the character and what the story is about probably also matter to many boys. I would assume that more boys would be interested in _The Hunger Games_ than _Twilight_ even though both are by women authors and have teen girls as the protagonists, because the former has more action/adventure and the latter has more romance. ---
**Author:** ![Apollyon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/apollyon/32/4238_2.png) [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/62 "2012-05-25T07:08:16Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Science fiction in the old days was, maybe, 10% of the total book market. Female readers of SF were perhaps 10% of that market. So your “collective experience” missed a mere 99% of readers and 98% of females. I note you say “in the old days”; has the M/F readership of SF changed substantially over time? Is it closer now to the norm for fiction? Are there other fiction genres that are also heavily skewed in favour of male readers? (Other than comics, natch). 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Hartwick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@Dave\_Hartwick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Hartwick)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/63 "2012-05-25T13:30:43Z")
> [@Apollyon](#): > > I note you say “in the old days”; has the M/F readership of SF changed substantially over time? Is it closer now to the norm for fiction? Are there other fiction genres that are also heavily skewed in favour of male readers? (Other than comics, natch). 🙂 Judging by the reader reviews on sites like Goodreads, naval fiction, such as the Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin novels. There’s enough of these to make up a sub-genre. > [@](#): > > Fiction genres with a strong imbalance favoring male readers include science fiction (32% of men, 20% of women), literature (27% of men, 22% of women) and graphic novels (15% of men, 8% of women). [http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/female-younger-readers-biggest-fiction-fans-14476/](http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/female-younger-readers-biggest-fiction-fans-14476/) ETA: I’d guess that some sub-genres of speculative fiction, like military SF ala David Drake, lean even more toward a male readership. > [@Kimstu](#): > > Sporting events aren’t any more “factual” or “genuine” than a rock concert or reality talent show, although they’re considerably less scripted. They certainly don’t count as “nonfictional” in the same way that, say, a documentary about the Kashmir conflict is “nonfictional” compared to a Bollywood musical. Or, say, a scientific book about reconstructing evolutionary development from the fossil record is “nonfictional” compared to Jurassic Park. Where I live, sports is considered non-fiction enough that it gets covered by the nightly news, even on high-brow public TV. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/64 "2012-05-25T13:45:20Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > That’s one more study than you’ve come up with, and you’re the one who’s been going on about how anecdotes don’t count. Now that I have linked to a peer-reviewed study indicating that you were wrong about the specific statement that **Lynn Bodoni** was questioning, you’re throwing a tantrum. So was this really about the weakness of **Lynn** ’s evidence, or do you just have a problem with people who dare to disagree with you? Exapno isn’t the world’s greatest debater. He’s right until he grudgingly accepts that he might be wrong (at no time are you right). But as a public librarian, I think I have to side with him here. Over the last decade, girl protagonists have definitely reached parity with their male counterparts. Perhaps not in exact quantities, but the “phenomenon” books feature girls… The Hunger Games trilogy The Twilight saga The Harry Potter series (fun fact, Harry Potter actually has three stars: Harry, Ron, and Hermione) ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/65 "2012-05-25T13:47:28Z")
I think (and this is just a WAG) that this is going to depend on what you consider SF. I like hard SF, though I don’t like engineer porn, where the author tells the reader in excruciating detail just which airplane part the narrator is adjusting (David Palmer, I’m looking at YOU). I regard fantasy as being closely related to SF, but not the same thing. And I consider horror to be a different genre than both SF and fantasy, though horror is usually grouped with SF in the movie section, and sometimes grouped with fantasy in books. There’s a new subgenre, supernatural fantasy/paranormal romance (usually featuring vampires and/or werewolves, and always including romantic or sexual encounters between the monsters and the humans), and I think that the majority of consumers of this subgenre are female, so if you group this in with the SF/fantasy/horror section, you’re going to see a big upswing in female readership. I also think that there are more female readers in ALL sections of SF and regular fantasy these days. Or maybe we’re just more willing to admit it. I see more women browsing in the SF/fantasy section of book stores, and when I go to cons, I also see more women than I used to. I used to be the only woman/girl browsing in SF when I started picking out my own books. Now, I’m likely to see other women. However, I have no way of knowing which subgenre they’re looking for. Maybe they’re looking for the latest _Twilight_ clone. But maybe they’re looking for the latest Vernor Vinge. And if I ask for specific help in the SF section, the person who takes care of that department is often a woman. Used to be, only men seemed to be assigned to the SF section. When I started playing D&D, I was almost always the only female gamer. It was a rare group that had two females in it. Nowadays, the females might very well outnumber the males in some groups, though it seems that males are still the majority of the players, they aren’t the overwhelming majority that they used to be. Now I’ll readily admit that the above are just my experiences, but they’re experiences in several states and stores. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/66 "2012-05-25T14:02:05Z")
> [@Apollyon](#): > > I note you say “in the old days”; has the M/F readership of SF changed substantially over time? Is it closer now to the norm for fiction? Are there other fiction genres that are also heavily skewed in favour of male readers? (Other than comics, natch). 🙂 Man, I wish I could answer this in a sentence. And a thousand words from now so will you. In the dawn of time writers just wrote. Publishers just published. Sometimes the stories would have an element of myth, or the supernatural, or terror, or scientific romance. It all got lumped together. There were fiction magazines but no specialty category magazines or publishing lines. In the early 20th century publishers discovered that readers specialized, and that they did not like paying for 20 stories in a magazine when they read only four. The specialty pulp magazine was born. By the mid 20th century, there were science fiction magazines and fantasy magazines (and terror magazines, which we would call horror and which I’m going to ignore). Most of the time these tried to maintain the lines but some magazines ran both and some writers wrote both and some readers read both but enough readers who were huge fans of one hated the other so much that it was worth making the distinction commercially. In 1949 the Magazine of Fantasy started but changed its name with the second issue to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, because they published a true mix and science fiction was more commercial a name. It stayed an anomaly, but the field was called SF or F&SF interchangeably. In the 1950s SF finally became a book publishing category. Fantasy was a tiny outlier. SF was, in the cliche, about spaceships. The field was overwhelmingly male in every part from publishers to editors to writers to readers. There were always some females, but nobody guesses higher than 10%. That began to change in the 1960s, after the paperback reprints of Tolkien took off spectacularly. Publishers began lines of faux-Tolkien, almost all written by men at first. Eventually they saw the readership of these fantasy lines skewed female and many more females started writing it. The Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) changed its name to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (still SFWA: don’t ask). The overall field, however, was still called either SF or F&SF and everybody understood it internally. SF was for men and Fantasy was for women, although both now had minorities of maybe 30% and certain writers had huge crossover appeal. In the last decade, as romance took over the publishing world, a category called paranormal romance - romance with elements of F&SF - began to grow. It now may be larger than science fiction and fantasy combined. It is overwhelmingly female in authorship and readership. The writers join the Romance Writers of America and SFWA mostly ignores the whole thing. Is it F&SF? Um, probably, depending on who you talk to and the context. Wait. It gets worse. Children’s books and their offshoot, YA books, have always been an entirely separate publishing and marketing category. The very tony publisher Farrar Strauss Giroux wouldn’t dream of publishing an adult science fiction work until the 1980s even though it made a mint off of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time in 1962. All the super-mega-bestsellers of today are YA F&SF - Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, and many more. Their numbers are so huge that they dwarf all the adult fields combined. And their readership skews female, and gets more so with every female-oriented blockbuster. Can I make it worse? Sure can. There are other marketing categories that may overlap. Technothrillers. Alternate History. Steampunk. Action-adventure. Tie-in books (all those novelizations of Star Wars and Star Trek and novels about superheroes and bunches more). And horror, which had its day in the mega category but has faded almost as far as westerns. All of these probably skew male, except for some of the tie-ins. Probably. Nobody seems to play too close attention. So what is science fiction? Which of these categories and definitions do you use? It depends, it depends, it depends. Outside the industry, SF is still about spaceships. Inside, it’s a giant muddle of everything you can think of and more. Magic realism, anyone? ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/67 "2012-05-25T14:02:27Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Exapno isn’t the world’s greatest debater. He’s right until he grudgingly accepts that he might be wrong (at no time are you right). But as a public librarian, I think I have to side with him here. Over the last decade, girl protagonists have definitely reached parity with their male counterparts. Perhaps not in exact quantities, but the “phenomenon” books feature girls… > > The Hunger Games trilogy > The Twilight saga > The Harry Potter series (fun fact, Harry Potter actually has three stars: Harry, Ron, and Hermione) I haven’t read the Hunger Games. And I only read some of the Potter series, but I’m going to sort of disagree with you. In the books that I read, Harry was the central character. Sure, Ron and Hermione were very strong secondary characters, but the books were about Harry. I just slogged my way through _Twilight_ (first book) (it was on the clearance rack, and I was wondering if it could possibly be that bad). I’m not going to discuss its literary merits in detail, however, I really don’t consider this to be fantasy. That’s a pure teen romance book. Sure, there are vampires and werewolves in it, but I could rewrite that book into a mundane story with very little effort. The vampire could be in a witness protection program, or he’s a deep undercover spy, so it’s dangerous for the idiot narrator to get involved with him, and the bad guys/other nation’s spies are targeting his infatuation. Seriously, this sort of thing was what a lot of girls read when I was a teen, minus the paranormal elements. Vampires and werewolves just add a little bit more sexiness to it. But the basic elements of “strong male is irresistibly attracted to ordinary female” that I remember are all there. Yeah, apparently the vampires have some special requirements so that they can’t do EVERYTHING that humans can, and maybe they have to make more adjustments in later books, but in this first book, I would say that this is 98% romance, 2% paranormal. However, there ARE a LOT more female protagonists in SF/fantasy these days. Many, many more. And not all of them are WASPs, either, or straight. So I’d say that the field is getting much more inclusive, not just towards women, but towards all potential readers. ---
**Author:** ![Dave\_Hartwick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@Dave\_Hartwick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Hartwick)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/68 "2012-05-25T14:22:54Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Man, I wish I could answer this in a sentence. And a thousand words from now so will you. No worries, I already did. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/69 "2012-05-25T16:35:53Z")
> [@Dave\_Hartwick](#): > > Where I live, sports is considered non-fiction enough that it gets covered by the nightly news, even on high-brow public TV. Well, that’s another example of the societal gender bias through which things that primarily interest males are automatically assumed to be more “real” or “important” than things that primarily interest females. But it doesn’t change the fact that intrinsically, professional sports are merely staged entertainment. Just like rock concerts, Las Vegas floor shows, or TV quiz shows (which is the quasi-improvisational format that perhaps most closely resembles a sporting event, since how it will end depends on the unscripted play of the game), sports contests are organized, produced and marketed solely to excite the interest and attention of spectators. (And hopefully to make boatloads of money for the organizers as a consequence.) All of them are staged performances, pure and simple. They exist only to be watched for their entertainment value. News coverage of actual non-entertainment events such as wars, accidents, crimes, etc. (discounting _Wag the Dog_-type cynicism about examples of such things being made up for PR purposes) depicts things that exist in real life, not just to make a profit from entertaining spectators. They are “non-fictional” compared to sporting events in the same way, as I said, that a documentary is “non-fictional” compared to a movie musical. Of course, I’m not arguing that there’s anything **wrong** with covering sports on nightly news, if that’s what viewers like. Nor is there anything wrong with showing news footage about a rock concert, for that matter. But that doesn’t mean that the **content** of either of those events is thereby transformed into something “non-fictional”. It’s all just made-up entertainment. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/70 "2012-05-25T17:16:10Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Well, that’s another example of the societal gender bias through which things that primarily interest males are automatically assumed to be more “real” or “important” than things that primarily interest females. But it doesn’t change the fact that intrinsically, professional sports are merely staged entertainment. > > It’s all just made-up entertainment. Please consult a dictionary for the actual definitions of “staged” and “made-up” because you clearly don’t understand them as they relate to sports. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/71 "2012-05-25T17:35:30Z")
Sporting events, quiz shows, rock concerts, etc. aren’t fiction. Sure, they exist for their entertainment value, but that’s not what the word “fiction” means. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/72 "2012-05-25T17:42:34Z")
It’s been claimed in this thread that women read more than men, and also that women’s reading tastes run more toward fiction than men’s do. I can believe both claims, but I’d like to throw out another theory/WAG: Omnivorous, eclectic readers—those who read books of many different types and genres, both fiction and non-fiction—are evenly divided between the sexes, or may even be more male than female. At least, of the people I’ve read describing their wide-ranging, diverse reading, the majority seem to have been men. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/73 "2012-05-25T18:01:01Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > So it could be that at least part of the difference in female and male fiction consumption is simply the counterpart to the difference in male and female (photographic) porn consumption. Men prefer to see it and women prefer to read about it: simple as that. (Well no, the **complete** explanation is almost certainly not as simple as that, but I can easily believe that that’s a major factor.) I’ll agree it’s not that simple. While I enjoy looking at pictures/movies of naked ladies getting busy as much as the next straight guy, I’ve _always_ ultimately preferred written porn/erotica. I’m not sure how much of that was born of necessity and how much is just my nature. I discovered my own personal kink/fetish (spanking/BDSM) when I was 13-14 years old. Too young to buy porn (and you couldn’t get what I wanted at the newsstand anyway), and being almost two decades away from even _hearing_ the word “Internet”, I resorted to writing my own “erotic fiction” (in longhand, in spiral notebooks). Of course, most of what I wrote then was ridiculous, considering I was still a few years away from actually losing my own virginity and my only available “research” material was the occasional peeks into _Variations_ magazine at the nearby convenience store, but it got me started. When I discovered the Internet as an adult, I thought, “Yay! I can find what I’m looking for now!”. Except I couldn’t, and still can’t. Oh, there’s videos out there that cover the topic, but the stuff that isn’t completely faked is either too over-the-top/extreme for my tastes, or focuses on aspects of the “scene” that don’t interest me. And so I’ve continued to write my own, though not as much these days. But when I was in my “prolific” period and publishing online, I seemed to be one of the more well-regarded writers in my “genre”. I had a lot of female “fans” and got a lot of positive comments that my characters felt like real people with personalities and emotions, instead of the more common “cardboard cutouts performing sex scenes”. Interestingly, somebody here on the SDMB posted a link a few years back to an online tool that would analyze your writing and determine whether it was more “masculine” or “feminine”, and I was mildly surprised that it rated my writing as quite “feminine”. Might explain why the ladies liked my writing so much. > [@filmore](#): > > I prefer non-fiction because it’s typically real stories told with real outcomes. I feel like I learn something about human nature and the world when I read non-fiction. > > I dislike reading fiction because I can feel the author shaping the world to fit the needs of the story. I feel like it’s useless to try to figure out what will happen since the author can just tweak the plot however they want. Everything feels so contrived. Most of the time it seems fiction writers are writing the same stories but just changing the names of the characters and the settings. [The Seven Main Plots in All of Literature](http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=210539) > [@filmore](#): > > Women seem to enjoy the actual act of conversing. They enjoy the journey of getting to the conclusion. Men want to know the conclusion and the relevant details that lead to that conclusion. Fiction is a bunch of made up fluff leading to a made up conclusion. Non-fiction typically is about the important details which lead to the conclusion. The way I see it, non-fiction is inherently _limited_ by the “facts”. “Here’s what happened, to whom, and here’s the result”. If the writer wants to make a point about something, he/she is limited to interpreting the actual events. Might as well read the newspaper, IMO. Fiction, OTOH, allows the writer to determine the “point” he or she wants to make from the outset, and then devise the best way to _make_ that point. I’ve always liked something Neil Gaiman said in the special features on the _Beowulf_ DVD: “The important thing about any story where you fight a dragon is not that you’re telling people that dragons are real; but you’re telling people that dragons can be defeated. And that is a huge, true thing, and something that should never be forgotten.” > [@Fiveyearlurker](#): > > As a male and a reader, who stopped reading for about ten years after high school, I can say that high school turned me off reading for quite some time. There was a tendency toward books and authors (The Scarlet Letter and Jane Austen come to mind immediately. I think Jane Austen is responsible for eight of those ten years.) that I simply could not find any interest whatsoever in. I’ve said before that I believe English teachers get it backwards by trying to instill a love of **literature**. What they need to do instead is instill a love of **reading** first. A love of reading may eventually lead to a love of “literature”. But forcing a 16-year-old boy to wallow through _Wuthering Heights_ is liable to turn a kid with _little_ interest in reading into somebody with _no_ interest in reading. > [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > There’s a new subgenre, supernatural fantasy/paranormal romance (usually featuring vampires and/or werewolves, and always including romantic or sexual encounters between the monsters and the humans), and I think that the majority of consumers of this subgenre are female, so if you group this in with the SF/fantasy/horror section, you’re going to see a big upswing in female readership. The only supernatural/paranormal/urban fantasy I’ve read has been the [Greywalker](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=greywalker) series by Kat Richardson. It’s set in modern-day Seattle, has a strong female protaganist, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed every book I’ve read so far (first five). No sex between the protaganist and vampires, though 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/74 "2012-05-25T18:03:18Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > I’ve always liked something Neil Gaiman said in the special features on the _Beowulf_ DVD: > > “The important thing about any story where you fight a dragon is not that you’re telling people that dragons are real; but you’re telling people that dragons can be defeated. And that is a huge, true thing, and something that should never be forgotten.” FWIW I’m pretty sure that’s a paraphrase of something G. K. Chesterton wrote. ---
**Author:** ![No\_Wikipedia\_Cites](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@No\_Wikipedia\_Cites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/No_Wikipedia_Cites)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/75 "2012-05-25T19:20:42Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > FWIW I’m pretty sure that’s a paraphrase of something G. K. Chesterton wrote. Sounds like it’s from the essay about Elfland from _Orthodoxy_ ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/76 "2012-05-25T19:30:56Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Sporting events, quiz shows, rock concerts, etc. aren’t fiction. Sure, they exist for their entertainment value, but that’s not what the word “fiction” means. Take it up with **Dave Hartwick** : he’s the one who at the start of this page brought up this particular entertainment format by replying to me as follows: > [@Dave Hartwick](#): > > > [@Kimstu](#): > > > > But the themes men prefer **in non-text formats** are still overwhelmingly fictional rather than non-fictional. > > Are you overlooking sports? If we want to leave **ALL** performance arts, including sports and music, out of this discussion, then I’m certainly willing to do so. But if someone’s trying to use the example of sports to support the assertion that men in general like “reality” in their entertainment more than women do, they’re talking out their ass. A sports game is no more “real” than a rock concert (although, as I’ve noted repeatedly, it **is** less scripted). > [@Justin Bailey](#): > > Please consult a dictionary for the actual definitions of “staged” and “made-up” because you clearly don’t understand them as they relate to sports. This is a gut reaction of shock and rejection rather than a rational counter-argument. What I said about sports being “staged” and “made-up” entertainment is absolutely true. As I noted in my first post on the subject, I acknowledge that _sports is a type of staged entertainment with an IMPROVISATIONAL format_. That means that the performers don’t know in advance everything that’s going to happen or exactly how it will all end (barring some serious cheating, of course). But it is still indisputably a staged performance, in the sense that it is shown to an audience in a specially designed venue, and it is indisputably made-up in the sense that its traditional genre conventions (rules) are fundamentally arbitrary. If a quiz show is a staged performance, then a baseball game is a staged performance. If a folk dance performance is made-up entertainment, then a football game is made-up entertainment. Professional sports is not ultimately any more “real” or “genuine” than any other entertainment medium. It’s all just people in costumes exhibiting their skills at performing particular actions which are specified by a bunch of artificially determined genre conventions in a staged performance venue. Whether they’re kicking a ball towards a net, remembering randomly chosen facts about Louis XIV, or executing a _grand jete_ is irrelevant to that basic identity. Sports is a form of staged performance carried out for audience entertainment. So far, the only attempts at rebuttal of this perfectly reasonable position that have been presented here are “Well, but sports is covered on the news!” and “Oh, you just don’t know what you’re talking about!” Sorry guys, but those are not valid and relevant arguments. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/77 "2012-05-25T20:05:53Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > FWIW I’m pretty sure that’s a paraphrase of something G. K. Chesterton wrote. > [@No\_Wikipedia\_Cites](#): > > Sounds like it’s from the essay about Elfland from _Orthodoxy_ Hey, cool, I’ll have to look that up. Having been raised in an evangelical Christian environment, where reading fantasy was heavily discouraged on the grounds that it “promotes belief in witchcraft/monsters/false gods”, I liked the Gaiman quote because it summed up my personal feelings perfectly: fantasy stories are not claiming anything in them to be “real”, they’re using the concepts as _metaphors_ for real life. That the quote originated with a respected Christian writer is a beautiful bonus. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/78 "2012-05-25T20:07:10Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > This is a gut reaction of shock and rejection rather than a rational counter-argument. What I said about sports being “staged” and “made-up” entertainment is absolutely true. Sport is a contest of skill. That makes it COMPLETELY different from a music concert and other forms of performance art. You can dress up your argument however you want, but the argument showing that you’re wrong is actually quite simple. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/79 "2012-05-25T20:11:07Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Sport is a contest of skill. So is a quiz show. Or, for that matter, a dance competition. Are you trying to claim that those are not forms of staged entertainment either? > [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > You can dress up your argument however you want, but the argument showing that you’re wrong is actually quite simple. Well then, feel free to make it any time now. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2012, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768/80 "2012-05-25T20:21:50Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > So is a quiz show. Or, for that matter, a dance competition. Are you trying to claim that those are not forms of staged entertainment either? Of course they’re not. Any contest of skill is, by definition, non-fictional. It really is as simple as that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-men-not-like-fiction-books-as-much/622768.md?page=5)