Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Get Rid Of Slimy attiudeS

There is a belief that boys are not reading YA as much because too many writers, protagonists and award juries are females. I think this misses the forest for the trees; that is, the very attitude that says boys do not read YA because it is so female dominant is the problem.

First of all, I think that it is a pretty poor excuse if you assume that boys are not reading because women are writing and conferring awards. It is very patronizing indeed to think that only an author or a protagonist of your gender is the exclusive reason you are reading, or that you get anything emotionally or intellectually out of the books that you have read. As Liz Williams explains, for all the sexism that is rife in the publishing world, books stand or fall on their own merits. The idea that it must have a specific appeal to one gender or another is just dumb.

Secondly, this is a very self-reinforcing attitude. If you think that women are dominating YA (which is a contestable assumption), then first of all you're conceding the field, and second of all you're guaranteeing that only female-centered stories become synonymous with YA. Actually, come to think about it, why do we think that it's all women's fault, when women are no less capable of men of writing compelling stories and characters? Example: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, which has a very compelling female protagonist, or The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater who has a very compelling male protagonist.

In my anecdotal/apocryphal/limited experience, YA seems to be 40/60 male/female. For decades, girls have had to make do with a predominantly male writer base and predominantly male protagonists. I can't for the life of me understand why male readers would be put off by a large percentage (I am not confident enough to say that the YA field is a majority female thing---see the Liz Williams article above) of women writers if they are willing to enjoy female characters in other media (ie, video games, as in Lara Croft).

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